Welcome to the first airline-owned restaurant!

by George Hobica on

Airfarewatchdog visited recently a new restaurant in our neighborhood and boy were we surprised at what we saw on the menu.

That’s right, diners! This restaurant is under new management! At Trans Air Airlines, we sure weren’t making money flying people places, so we thought what the heck, why not try the fine dining business to earn some “ancillary revenue” as we like to call it. While you’re waiting for your server to take your order, please enjoy reading about this exciting new concept!

First of all, we’ll now be giving discounts if you buy your meal online in advance of your visit. If you must cancel your reservation, we will provide a refund, minus a $100 “service fee” ($250 for foreign-sounding menu items, such as Coq au Vin). If you have commenced your meal but cannot finish it for any reason, there are no refunds. This applies, for example, if you choke on a fishbone, turn blue, and collapse face first into the mashed sweet potatoes.

And although we aim for exemplary service (we are Trans Air, after all), please be advised that from time to time, due to circumstances beyond our control or any other Force Majeure event (that’s a French term meaning “anything we refuse to take responsibility for”), we reserve the right to cancel your meal without notice. Or we may substitute an entrée of our choosing, say, the Steak and Frites a la Nonstop ($17.95 plus meals tax, sales tax, Federal meals excise tax, city kitchen inspection fee, electricity surcharge, and whatever other fees we can dream up now or in the future) with the Connection Burger ($7.95) or any other meal of our choice. As per our policy, in the event of such substitution you will receive a refund for any price difference, minus a “service fee” (see above). Meal delivery times are also not guaranteed, although delays of more than six hours are uncommon. Unfortunately, we require that you remain at your table while waiting.
And please be aware that if your steak frites special is burnt to a crisp when it finally arrives (delivery times are subject to change and cannot be guaranteed), you can’t send it back to the kitchen for a redo. Instead, please email our customer service department. They might send you a $5 coupon valid for your next meal. Or they might not. And please don’t hold your breath waiting for an apology from our overworked, taciturn waiters if they screw up your order. Most of them are furloughed Trans Air flight attendants and are on food stamps.

And please do not converse with your fellow diners while you wait, otherwise you may discover that the person at the next table paid only half what you did for his steak frites special. Please visit our Web site for our full contract of dining.

Also, while you wait for your meal, please refrain from filling in the comment cards. We are aware that the seats are thin and uncomfortable (we’re trying to keep costs down in order to offer you the best possible prices) and we know the tables are so crammed together you have to crawl under them to reach your chair.

You may have also noticed that our menu prices change several times a day (best to check online before leaving home).

Now a word about our fees. In order to keep menu prices low, we have instituted the following extra charges:

  • Coat check: $5 first item, $10 second item, $20 third and additional items
  • Napkins (paper): $1 per person
  • Napkins (cloth): $5 per person
  • Ketchup and mustard: $5 per item per table
  • Booster seats: $10 per child
  • Water refill: $1
  • Second water refill: $2
  • Third and subsequent refills: $3

These fees are subject to change without notice and are non refundable, even if the waiter forgets to provide them.

We regret that we have eliminated placemats, crayons and coloring books for the kiddies, flowers, and those plastic cocktail stirrers (use your plastic spoon please).

And if you’re fed up waiting, next time please try our VIP section (over there, behind the velvet ropes). Here you’ll experience an even better level of service. You’ll note that menu prices are about 10 times higher than in our “economy” section. We realize that most people scoff at the idea of a $700 hamburger deluxe, but to each his own.

A final note: we will be closing off part of the restaurant next month, reducing our seating capacity by 50 percent, and subsequently will be increasing our menu prices. However, we will continue to provide the same level of service you have come to expect. Business has been terrible lately (we have no clue why), and we hope that by providing fewer tables, eliminating staff, and introducing new fees, things will turn around. Fingers and toes crossed!

By now, you’ve probably been waiting quite a while for one of our dedicated “meal attendants” to take your order. Please be advised that because our staff has “timed out” (that’s industry speak for working the maximum number of hours permitted each day) you’ll need to stay where you are until breakfast (see aforementioned contract of dining). We recommend the waffles, priced at $2.95, $3.50, $5.00, $7.60, $9.15, and $10.95 depending on advance purchase.

Thanks for your understanding. Now sit back, relax, and enjoy your night.

George Hobica is the founder of Airfarewatchdog™, the most inclusive source of airfare deals that have been researched and verified by experts. Airfarewatchdog compares fares from all airlines and includes the increasing number of airline-site-only and promo code fares

Five great ways to use your frequent flyer miles

by Grant Martin on

As the economy shrinks and belts begin to tighten, mileage programs are playing a larger and large role in the everyday consumer travel lanscape. Many travelers are turning to their caches of miles for use in lieu of spending their hard-saved money on a ticket. Similarly, airlines are also paying attention to our mileage accounts, changing many programs to restrict the number of awards that they permit and making our free flights few and far in between.

Let not these pressures cause you to spend your miles unwisely, however. Like any good investment, miles should be managed, earned and used efficiently. Wasting a wealth of miles on an inexpensive ticket is not only a shame, but also a poor return for your time invested in earning these very valuable rewards.

Not sure where to start? Here are five great ways to use your current stash of miles.

High season tickets: We all know that its more expensive to get to Cancun or Europe during the summer months when the kids are out of school. Mileage rewards don’t reflect this swing however – it costs the same number of miles to fly to London in February as it does in July. They are restricted in volume, however, as demand for those high season tickets will be greater. That’s why you need to book your tickets early. Check with your favorite carrier to see when availability opens, but as a rough estimate, you’ll need to think at least 8 months in advance.
Upgrades: Our good friend (and fellow blogger!) George Hobica from Airfare Watchdog wrote an excellent article on using your miles to upgrade your coach ticket the other day. It’s true that not all fares and itineraries are upgradeable, but if you find the right combination of paid coach fares frequent flyer miles, you can score a business class ticket for pennies on the dollar of a normal business fare.

Alaska: The Arctic circle is as close as Albany as far as most miles are concerned. Consider spending your miles on a longer haul, expensive flight instead of a short haul jaunt upstate.

Last minute flights: Anyone who has tried to fly at the last minute can tell you that airfare prices skyrocket as the departure drops below 14 and 7 days respectively. Conversely, more award availability often opens up. The one caveat to this availability, however, is that fees often incur in kind. Those with elite status can often get around this atrocity, but those with no perks may have to cough up a little cash.

Friends and Family: Don’t keep your 100k miles to yourself – as long as you book the ticket, you can put anyone’s name on the reservation. This is a great way to surprise your girlfriend or parents with a trip overseas or to come see you, all without spending more than a few dollars on tax. Those with fewer scruples can even venture into selling their miles on Craigslist or to a friend, although those transactions are usually “illegal.”

Charity: Almost all mileage programs have charity partners. If you and your friends are all traveled out, why not donate the miles to the Red Cross? It’s better than letting them expire.

Galley Gossip: 20 ways to use a maxi pad in flight

by Heather Poole on

Before I share the list – 20 ways to use a maxi-pad in flight, I first must explain
how this post even came to be. I don’t want you to think I spend my time sitting around thinking about maxi pads. Trust me, there’s a method to the madness.

So there I sat at La Guardia airport in New York inside flight service operations, relaxing in a beat up, reclining chair, not watching the weather channel on the screen in front of me. I’d been sitting there for hours due to the fact it was my turn to serve standby. For those of you who aren’t familiar with airline lingo, standby is a term used when flight attendants on reserve are required to spend three to six hours, depending on the airline, at the airport just sitting around and waiting to be called out to work a flight in case someone doesn’t show up at the last minute. At my airline, this happens once or twice every reserve month.

On that particular day Sean sat in the recliner beside me. He’d been cracking me up since the moment I’d sat down. Now I’ve written about Sean in the past. In fact, he was the lead flight attendant, the one in charge, in the Galley Gossip post about a child who had gotten lost in first class. At some point our conversation turned serious and Sean shared a story about a medical emergency that forced him to become quite resourceful and do something that impressed me greatly. He used a maxi pad as a bandaid.

“You’re brilliant, Sean. You really are. I would have never thought of doing something like that,” I said, and that’s when it hit me, “hey, we should make a list of all the different ways we could use a maxi pad in flight!” We didn’t make the list, but we did laugh about it.

Flash forward three months later. On a flight to Los Angeles, I walked into the galley, looked up, and saw it – a maxi pad shoved between two ceiling panels. It was there to soak up condensation that would otherwise drip on me. Right then and there I knew I had to make the list, and with the help of my crew, flight attendants who never cease to amaze me, we came up with 20 unique ways to use a maxi pad in flight.

The day after the list was created a passenger on our flight back to New York stepped into the galley, held out a white sleeve, and in a British accent asked, “Do you have anything I can use to get this off of me?” Red lint covered her white cotton blouse. “It’s from the blanket!”

“I’m sorry,” said one of my coworkers. “There’s nothing we can really do…except give you a few wet paper towels to wipe it off.”

“But I’ve got somewhere important to be when I get off this flight and I can’t go looking like this!” she exclaimed, shaking both arms at us.

If we hadn’t made the list the day before, I would have never thought of using a maxi-pad as a lint brush, which means I would have never said, “Well…there is something we can use…” I nodded my head in the direction of the lavatory, smiling mischievously.

Heather, one of my colleagues, explained to the passenger that a strip of tape on the back of a maxi pad could be used to remove the lint- that is if she didn’t mind patting herself down with it. The passenger just nodded and then disappeared into the lav.

Two minutes later the passenger spun around in the galley and sang, “It worked! Thank you so very much.”

20 WAYS TO USE A MAXI-PAD IN FLIGHT…

  1. Headrest
  2. Oven mitts
  3. Light shade
  4. Condensation absorbent.
  5. Towel
  6. Mop
  7. Bag handle
  8. Hair remover
  9. Band aid
  10. Tape
  11. Arm rest
  12. Eye mask
  13. Lint brush
  14. Curtain holder
  15. Shoe insole
  16. Cool compress
  17. Beer koozie
  18. Coffee filter
  19. Post-it note
  20. YOU TELL ME!
  • That’s right, this is your chance to channel your inner flight attendant and come up with an interesting way to use a maxi-pad. Just leave a comment below and I’ll choose the best idea. May the best wanna-be flight attendant win!

    And just when you think you’re done with a post, you go to flickr.com to search for photos to go along with your bizarre post and find this…
    (just had to share!)

    Photos courtesy of (smiling girl) pinkcandylemon, (hair tie back) Hyesterical Bertha, (blister cover) Elizabeth Mcquern

Galley Gossip: The mile high club – a question and a story

by Heather Poole on

There’s a question I’m always asked whenever someone finds out I’m a flight attendant, a question that never ceases to amaze and simultaneously makes me cringe regardless of how often I hear it, a question about you guessed it – the mile high club.

“So…have you ever caught anyone joining the mile high club?” If it’s a single person doing the asking the question is usually direct and to the point, a just-the-facts-Ma’am kind of question, which I have no problem answering. But If it’s a couple doing the asking things can get a little creepy. Only because there’s always a quick glance at each other before the question is asked, followed by a nervous giggle between the words SO and HAVE, and a blush after the words MILE HIGH CLUB.

Now I actually began writing this post last month when someone going by the name of AlexaRPD asked the following question via twitter…

How many times have you caught people, uh, fraternizing in the bathrooms on one of your flights? Is there a standard, corporate policy about what to do with folks who get caught going at it on the planes?

That question led to a few tweets back and forth about flight attendants knocking and unlocking lavatory doors or hovering over guilty parties hiding under blankets. It didn’t take long before I realized all of this would eventually end up in a post. That post started out like this…

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Dear Alexa,

It’s been quite a few years since I’ve caught anyone joining the club. In fact, the last couple, a celebrity couple, I encountered exiting the lav looking a bit disheveled and not at all embarrassed have since divorced. Knowing what I know now, I’m not so sure they were even joining the club since they have a reputation for partaking of illegal substances. Joining the mile high club is not illegal. But that’s only if you stop doing whatever it is you shouldn’t be doing when you’re asked to stop doing it. Why? Because passengers are required by law to obey flight attendant instructions.

I had planned on writing more but for whatever reason became distracted and never finished the post. It happens. But a week later I found myself in a hotel in San Francisco not far from the airport. That’s where I turned on my computer, logged into twitter, and immediately received a few messages from three different followers about Alexa officially joining the club.

“No way,” I wrote back. “I don’t believe it.”

“She did! And she did it with three Marines! She wrote all about it on her blog!”

I could tell by the exclamation marks the guy was overly excited and needed a hard dose of reality. “I can barely fit in lav with my three year-old son, let alone another adult person,” I typed, my head shaking side to side. “How small were the marines?”

Out of nowhere Alexa tweeted, “I could care less if you believe me!”

“Cat fight!” several people tweeted at once.

“Send me the post!” I requested. Two seconds later a link popped up on my screen. I took a deep breath and clicked.

Yes, I really did read all about Alexa’s erotic escapade in an airplane lavatory with three Marines. Of course I read it purely for logistics, analyzing how something like this could have actually taken place in such a contaminated confined space without alerting other passengers or crew. Sure I was a little surprised to see myself, one of the flight attendants, briefly mentioned in the story. And relief actually swept over me when I realized there was some order involved. The Marines took turns.

Honestly, it’s really hard for me to believe that people actually are able (and want) to join the mile high club, especially in this day and age of air travel. Not just because the bathrooms are small, but because flights are full and people are almost always lined up to use the lavs. Whenever a passenger takes a longer amount of time than what might be considered normal, you better believe other passengers are quick to ask me to intervene.

knock, knock, knock – I’ll bang my fist on the door. Two seconds later I’ll ask, “everything okay in there?” Taking a deep breath, I pray that everything is, in fact, okay in there because I really don’t want to have to put my ear against the locked door and hear something I seriously didn’t want to hear.

Just when I thought I had finally finished with this post, I logged into twitter and typed, “Just finished the mile high club post.” Here are a few interesting responses…

  • I was once propositioned to join the club, but declined. The guy ended up buying me jewelry from the duty free cart instead. The good ole days!
  • I came uncomfortably close to joining in the lower lobe galley on a DC-10
  • I’ve never understood the ‘mile high’ club,as most seem to join in the lavatory. Do you know how dirty plane lavs are?
  • I’m a flight attendant and just had this discussion with some pax who were sitting across from my jumpseat!
  • If only the lavs were cleaner and larger
  • My advice for those considering is ONLY on the 777 with a passenger from your ticketed cabin – the loo between F and J – that’s ALL I’m saying

Don’t forget to check out the “G” rated mile high club!

%Poll-32973%

Photos courtesy of sparkypics (couple), Sagrado Corazon (flight attendant)

Bowermaster’s Adventures — Swine Flu and Tokyo

by Jon Bowermaster on

The direct flight from New York to Tokyo is one of the longest, thirteen hours and forty-five minutes, looping across Canada and the Bering Sea before paralleling Kamchatka and the eastern islands of Japan. It’s a long way to travel for humans and viruses alike … though I have to admit I hadn’t thought about the latter until we touched down at Narita International Airport and found among the departure cards we needed to fill out included one labeled “contagion.”

Alex Nicks and I have come to spend a few days filming tuna auctions at Tsujiki, the world’s largest fish market – all under one open air roof are sold four hundred different fish species (700,000 tons sold each year, taking in $5.5 billion a year) and employing 60,000-65,000 wholesalers, accountants, auctioneers, company officials and distributors. The next few days promise to be fun and wild, thanks to the constant whir of all those people focused on the matter at end: selling and buying big fish.

But when we land at Narita, even before we could stand and stretch after the long flight, the plane was boarded by a dozen Japanese men and women cloaked in blue surgical gowns, caps and masks. We were instructed to stay in our seats as one of the insurgents, carrying a portable thermographic imaging gun to detect fevers, pointed in our faces, clicked the trigger and quickly assessed whether or not we were swine flu carriers. As the besmocked team moved aisle by aisle through the plane one of the stewardesses whispered that they recently quarantined eight passengers who arrived on a Northwest flight “for five days.” While I have no idea what that encompasses – locking them in a small airport room, sliding sushi and water under the door? – I’m certainly hoping it doesn’t happen to us.
They are clearly looking for symptoms of flu, including coughs and colds. A week ago three Japanese were quarantined upon arrival in Tokyo after testing positive in preliminary checks. They were a high school teacher in his 40s and two teenage boys who had been on a school trip to Canada where they visited Ontario on a home stay program with about 30 other students, taking part in various programs hosted by a local high school in the town of Oakville. They were isolated upon arrival, on April 24, and are still recovering at a hospital near the airport.

Looking down the aisle as the blue-gowned, therm-armed team does its job I wonder if that’s our fate too? A couple days ago thirty-seven passengers and two flight attendants on an American Airlines flight from Los Angeles were detained overnight for similar reasons. They were released after tests revealed that an ill passenger was not contaminated with the new H1N1 influenza A strain, or swine flu.

Cleared after one hour, they gave each of us our very own face mask and sent us on our way. When we finally arrived in downtown Tokyo I spot random individuals on the street wearing white surgical masks. Taxi drivers, worker bees on lunch break. One thing I note is that it’s different here than in China, where many of the half billion city dwellers wear masks every day to keep away heavy airborne particulates created by coal burning, auto exhaust and general, everyday pollution of the air.

In Japan, as neat and orderly a country as you can find, it appears they are concerned only about swine flu. Stopping into a drugstore I ask the manager how the sales of masks are going and he says “about 50 percent higher than usual and we are running out …. If this keeps up, it’s going to be a very, very good year.” I think he was talking about his pharmacy’s bottom line.