Two bits of advice: If you get on a plane, begin chanting loudly in Arabic, and then shout out, "I want to kill all the Jews," it's unlikely you'll make it to your destination on time. On the other hand, if you strip off your clothes and run in front of the White House naked, you will earn a free trip for your troubles, although whether you want to spend a night at a local hospital undergoing a psych evaluation is entirely up to you.
After last week's thwarted terrorist attack, you'd heard that airlines and airports had stepped up security, and you can expect a friendly TSA employee to give you a good pat-down the next time you catch a flight. But prepare yourself for some ridiculous questions, too. Says one passenger: "They were asking us what we had for lunch." [NYP, CBS News]
When you boarded a plane in the old days, you might have worried about a terrorist storming the cockpit, a mid-air mechnical problem of some sort, or even a drunk pilot passing out behind the controls. Yea, well, there's officially a new danger in the sky: Your pilot could be too busy surfing porn on the web or watching videos on YouTube to realize he's missed your destination.
The Way We Live Now: Anesthetizing ourselves with cute trends. Mancession? Let's talk about it! Recession sex? A trend for the ages! Cooking school food from scratch? It must have some significance! Just don't mention our hopeless, soul-sucking economic demise.
The financial collapse has gifted us with some first-class public relations kerfuffles—those bonuses at AIG and the big three automakers arriving in DC via private jet, to name just two—and there might be another one on the horizon. AIG is giving the survivors of the Miracle on the Hudson plane crash a hard time about reimbursing them for their lost property, medical care and therapy bills.
The Way We Live Now: Without pity. You're a crocodile? Now you're a handbag. You're fat? Buy an extra airline seat. You're Jewish? Sammy Davis Jr.'s menorah isn't fucking free, you know.
We realized the airlines were hurting, sure, but now they're getting a bit ridiculous. Northwest plans to save money by no longer providing passengers with spoons—just forks and knives—while other airlines are planning to reduce the size of the cutlery in an effort to contain costs. On the bright side, since most airlines don't actually feed you anymore, you probably won't notice the difference. [Telegraph via Recessionwire]
They're already wrapping subway cars with ads and covering tray tables with marketing messages. Why not just cover every square inch of planes' interiors with pitches for Claritin and Tide detergent? Why not, indeed. A handful of US carriers are now planning to increase revenues by putting ads on bathroom doors and overhead bins. [AP]
Today's a special day for American Airlines frequent fliers! Customers aboard two AA flights from New York to LA will get to test out the airline's new in-flight Internet WiFi, which will be officially introduced (at $12.95 a pop) in a few weeks. Thought the drunk guy next to you was annoying? Now the other guy on the other side will be chatting away on Skype and showing off his favorite clips on YouTube. [NY Sun]
One night last week I found myself watching the NBC Nightly News—a rare occurrence, because I am not yet old. The lead story was about how American Airlines was going to start charging a $15 fee for each checked bag. Grumbling! Populist outrage! What will these dang companies do next?! It became clear at that early moment that despite the economic necessity of the move, American was going to get absolutely slammed in the court of public opinion. And now the verdict is in: they did!
American Airlines has been having some PR problems lately, like being picketed by its own pilots and canceling 3,300 flights last week. So the company did what any $2 billion corporation would do: they started a laughable blog! It's hosted on Blogger, and it has 3 posts so far. And if their social media eloquence doesn't save the company, nothing can:
Ryanair, the cheap European airline that you used that one time you got drunk on vacation in London and said "Dude, let's just go to fucking Dublin RIGHT NOW," is in a spat with regulators over the quality of its ads [NYT]. Well, not exactly the quality—they suck, obviously. The ad pictured got Ryanair in trouble with the UK advertising authorities because it "appeared to link teenage girls with sexually provocative behavior." Maybe true, but it also appears to link Ryanair's advertising department with one guy who has only a pair of scissors, a book of clip art, and a Xerox machine. And when the regulators tried to crack down, the company responded: hell, all these newspapers are dens of iniquity themselves! Our ad fits right in!
Airlines have figured out that we don't generally like eating the trail-mix crap they try to skewer us out of $3 for, so they've started charging for "better quality food" on long flights, such as "chilled black olive spaghetti salad ($8 on Delta)." The real kicker comes from the general manager of one of the companies that sells prepared foods for flights: "That's our biggest challenge: matching the supply to the demand." Why? Because they "discard any meals that do not sell after a round-trip flight."That's right! They. Throw. It. Out. Let us eat cake? [NYT]
