I post this just because I myself am soon heading down to Baja for a week of kayaking and I figured y’all would be interested. Seems Alaska Airlines, my favorite airline after JetBlue, has ramped up flights down South of the Border. The airline is expanding its capacity by 22 percent with new flights to Mexico from Seattle and Portland. More to come.
Spirit Airlines Return of the Mullet Sale
How all these Spirit Air promotions found their way into my email, I haven’t a clue, but I can tell you the only reason I haven’t removed myself from their mailing list – they’re promotions crack me up! Perhaps, I’ve got a childish sense of humor, but when I saw the Return of the Mullet sale happening, I had to laugh. Someone please tell me what mullets have to do with scoring discount fares? In their cheesy little promo they claim to place business class travelers in the front and the rest of us with the party in the back, much to the likes of a real mullet hair style. Gnarly isn’t it? Well, whether you have a mullet or not or decide to get one on a drunk night in the Dominican Republic check out their low-low fare sale happening right NOW! Their big mullets in paradise, crazy sale ends tomorrow night at 11:59 PM EST and if you’re quick you’ll land a cheap seat. If you’re slow then I guess you won’t go.
I could list a small sampling of what the fares are looking like, but there’s too many to name and you know who you are, where you need to go and how you plan on getting there. Let me say this though: I’ve never flown with Spirit, but I’m told their ridiculously low prices are real.
Grin and Bear it: The Pains of being a Flight Attendant
I’ve always felt that teachers and cops were two professions that everyone should be force to work for a few months so that they could better appreciate what these people have to deal with on a daily basis. When I became a waiter shortly after college, I added that profession to the list.
Now that I’ve read a short column in Budget Travel called Confessions of . . . A Flight Attendant, I might want to force people to work that job as well.
Did you know, for example, that when a flight is delayed Flight Attendants don’t get paid for the extra hours? You think you’re having a bad day waiting in an airport for three hours? Try doing it while in uniform but being off the clock. Three hours of moaning passengers and you don’t get paid a dime to grin and bear it until you actually close the cabin doors. Ugh!
Or, how about working a job where anyone who wants to be pampered or otherwise attended to can simply press a button and you have to come running. More ice? Ding! A pillow? Ding! Are we there yet? Ding! I’m cold. Ding! Hey Baby, what hotel you staying at? Ding! Ding! Ding!!!!
Thank God for airport security because otherwise we’d see an epidemic of disgruntled airline employees gunning down their whiney passengers.
Dirty, Filthy, Nasty & Unclean Airplanes
I’m far from having some kind of germ phobia, but something should be done about the nasty little surprises found on planes – I agree. Ever reach into the seat-back pocket in front of you to find some kind of sticky, gooey, unwanted souvenir waiting for you? Yeah, it’s gross. It has happened to me, but not only that I’ve gotten on flights where crumbs were left on my seat by the previous passenger. Eww… What was it? Granola? Possibly some type of hardened baby upchuck? Did I really want to know? Due to the time restraints between booting off the previous passengers and boarding the new passengers they weren’t able to clean the plane and the crew offered their deepest apologies while all the new passengers (including myself) tried their best to tidy their seats for the next few hours.
This NY Times Business piece highlights just how bad the situation has gotten. The major problem: widespread layoffs in the airline industry. There are fewer cleanup folks waiting at the gate and rushed cleanup jobs. Another huge problem is said to be the invitation of food from the outside, often creating piles of wrappers, empty containers and some leftovers behind and on board. Easily, it would help if every passenger made a mental note to hand their garbage to a flight attendant when they come around smiling with trash bags in hand and no, trash should not be left in the overhead compartment as pictured here, but even then should people feel guilty for bringing food on planes? Is the blame being passed here? I mean, most airlines offer nothing more than honey-roasted peanuts for a four hour flight!
Another point made in the article that really brings it home is about Delta’s deep cleaning schedule. Jetliner deep-cleaning (brushing, scrubbing, vacuuming), much like a car deep-cleaning and should be scheduled every 30 days. According to their article here, Delta let theirs slide to 15 to 18 months. Double eww! The story goes on to say that these days Delta is working hard to clean up their act. My suggestion: you read the entire piece for yourself. Delta may have a pretty bad rep, but I’d say all airlines need to watch it and do something about the tidiness of their aircraft. In the meantime I guess we’ll have to pack our own Febreeze and Lysol in tiny plastic bags if we want to make sure it’s semi-clean.
Have a filthy airline story? Please, share it…
Working in the Air
Singapore Airlines is spending $360 million to upgrade their inflight entertainment and service. So far so good. The only problem is that they are equipping every seat with access to Sun Microsystems’ StarOffice Productivity Suite. This program, similar to Microsoft Office, has a bevy of spreadsheets, word processing, and other work-related software.
Now there is simply no excuse to not work while traveling. No more sleeping on the company dime when they shoot you off to Singapore for that big meeting. The company is paying you to go, and now you can toil away while en route.
Companies hoping this will improve productivity should also note that part of the upgrade will include “1000 on-demand options including movies, TV programs, interactive games, audio CDs.”
In other words, there’s plenty of opportunity to procrastinate and goof off. Just like at real work.