Cranky did he hint back in September about todays (Oct21) announcement about their new city will be Panama City, Florida and that the local land developer will make quarterly cash payments to them to help cover operations costs for the first 3yrs and share in the profits.

Uh, no. I’ll be writing about this sometime this week (if not tomorrow).

Either WN needs the money or this is something that is done more then we hear about with carriers. Not counting EAS service with Uncle Sam.

Which “European Airlines” would those be? Lufthansa? FlyBe? British Airways? Tyrolean? Albanian Airlines? Aeroflot? Ryan? Swiss Airlines? Air Berlin? Sky Europe (hard to serve food when you’re not flying, eh?)? Air Moldova? Sibir Airlines? KLM? Bulgaria Air?

I doubt that _all_ European airlines serve meals on _all_ flights. More so, even if they did their would still be the issue of price. It may seem like less service to not serve me more than an orange juice on on a flight from Denver to Minneapolis. But I’ll take having the option of spending an extra $5 or $20 on food and drink on the airplane + $300 round trip over $500+ round trip and cheap roast beef sandwich. Maybe this was a big deal years ago when food and drink choices were crappy. But these days we’ve got decent coffee and food widely available at most any major airport. Plus we can always just bring a bag of craisins or a cliff bar and a bottle of water on the airplane if we want.

While the exact definition of service varies, I suspect for most fliers, even the once every other year types, have seen a change in what they expect for service, in what they value.

United started direct flights to YYJ last year via United Express. While it is much better than the SEA or YVR bag drag, it has been ridiculously expensive from the start — it seems to always be around $500.

United and Air Canada have a nice little lock on the flights to Vancouver since Alaska dropped that route last year, and prices have been constantly rising.

Speaking of SWA code shares, I’m surprised that WestJet hasn’t taken up these routes.

Food essentially disappeared after 9-11. Seriously, give it up. It was chicken or beef that was mass produced. Something had to give, apparently food and MY PENSION had to go so YOU can travel cheaply.

People can also sit home and not eat or drink for five hours…..

So, no drinks and snacks on Transcons either?

BTW, European airlines do serve a drink and a snack (sandwich) on short flights. Why do you have to buy your own food for a US coast-to-coast flight?