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Recent Comments:
JetBlue and Gadling are giving away two All You Can Jet passes {Gadling}
Aug 30th 2010 2:46AM If I won the contest, I'd do a "Round Trip America" trip to get to know this country of ours. JetBlue serves many of the great American cities - New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New Orleans, and Washington DC (to name a few), and it would be a great chance to get a brief taste of these cities and know this country better....
Budget Travel: San Francisco {Gadling}
Jan 14th 2009 8:53PM I agree about the musee Mechanique - I remember it when it was located under the Cliff House, and it is a must visit whenever I'm in San Francisco.
The new place at Fisherman's Wharf may not have the charm of the old, but the machines are the same - and well worth the effort to see, especially the mechanical circus.... (Of course, the coin operated player pianos are fun too.)
Suzanne Pleshette Was One Sexy Lady {News Bloggers}
Jan 22nd 2008 12:23AM Regarding Suzanne Pleshette -
One can easily see her talent and skill from the beginning. Too bad one of her better roles is not available yet on DVD - the lone air crash survivor in "Fate is the Hunter". After seeing her in that, there's no way that anyone who loves good acting wouldn't take note of her appearances....
Increased prices to fly due to 'congestion fees'? {WalletPop}
Jan 21st 2008 11:58AM Two issues were noted in previous posts:
(1) Airlines treating us like cattle because it maximizes their profits. (2) Airline costs are high because of labor costs.
Let's address these problems - unions exist because labor organized to fight management abuses - many of them salary related. (And we all know cases of rotten management somewhere!) Businesses (in theory) exist to return profits to stockholders. Simplify the equation to a single boss and a single worker - a boss offers a salary for a given unit of work, and a worker offers work for a given unit of salary. If the worker asks for too much, the boss hires a different worker. If the boss offers too little, then the worker tries to find work elsewhere. Looking at the problem from the point of a single boss and worker, it's simple....
But we are not looking at a simple equation. Workers are expecting pay scales based on airlines past successes. Airlines have costs imposed on them due to past regulations and contracts which no longer are sustainable. Government has not defined the markets in a way that natural forces check and balance both airline management and labor. Nor has it managed resources well (landing slots, transport to airports, etc.). Couple this with an American culture that rewards false economies (such as buying things at the lowest price without regard to quality), and we've seen air travel go to blazes.
How should we address this in a way to save real money, and yet use markets to our advantage? For me, it's choosing not to use airlines for shorter trips. It also includes choosing my airports carefully (and I can do so in the NYC region), which may include driving out of my way to avoid airports with excessive congestion. If we start acting rationally, both airlines and their labor will start doing the same. And we may see realistic, sustainable, reasonably inexpensive fares with quality service return.....
Increased prices to fly due to 'congestion fees'? {WalletPop}
Jan 21st 2008 1:09AM It's either use congestion fees to have market forces relieve overscheduling (and resulting delays) takeoff/landing slots, or have the public continue to suffer because airlines schedule more flights than the airports can handle at any given time....
I hate paying more for a flight - but I'd rather know that a 2:00 pm flight will leave at 2:00, rather than have to wait until 2:30 for a false economy. Time can be critical in making connections - and I once had 15 minutes to make a connection from one end of O'Hare airport to the other. If my plane didn't depart and take off on time, I'd have never made my last minute connection. (And for those claiming that I shouldn't have scheduled this flight - I didn't. It was the result of my regularly scheduled flight getting delayed in Denver, rescheduling the first leg of my return trip on a second carrier, and having to make the last flight of the day into my local airport.)
Heck - for trips of under 250 miles, I'll either drive or take Amtrak. The way I figure it - the headaches of arriving at the airport 1 1/2 hours early, having to go thru security (which is another joke and a half), have the flight delayed due to overscheduling of slots, and then sit in a very uncomfortable seat, makes flying a hassle I'll avoid if I can help it.
PS: If you regularly use Amtrak, you'll appreciate the comfort factor compared with air travel. Too bad we don't have reasonable high speed trains like they do in Europe.
