Don’t Be An On-Board Revenue Generator

Gene Sloan of USA Today’s Cruise Log blog points out an interesting remark by Royal Caribbean CEO Adam Goldstein in an earnings call Wednesday.

Questioned about passenger spending on the cruise line’s new mega-giganta-ship, Oasis of the Seas, Goldstein said the ship “has proven to be an even stronger onboard revenue generator than we had foreseen.” Passengers are not only paying premium rates to sail on this massive ship, they are spending quite merrily on extras when aboard.

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An Old Favorite Departs My Price Range

About 20 years ago I paid about $1.50 to get into the Balneario Tabacón hot springs in La Fortuna de San Carlos, Costa Rica. Today, daily admission costs $85.

And today I got an email announcing that in celebration of being designated the best international spa in the Luxist Reader’s Choice awards, the Tabacón Grand Spa Thermal Resort is offering three-night spa packages for $1,487 per person, double occupancy. Ayurvedic meals are included.

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On Exit Rows, Fees And Discrimination

Continental Airlines started charging passengers for exit row seats last month, an idea I hated even before a recent case in Britain  illuminated the conflicts that arise when an airline confuses a safety feature with a revenue source.

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Advertising En Route

Have you noticed that every time you are immobilized in public, something tries to sell you stuff?

Stuck in traffic? There’s a billboard. Pumping gas? Audio and video commercials on the pump. Eating in a restaurant? Big-screen TVs everywhere.

Airlines are already putting ads on your boarding passes. And ultra-low-cost airlines like Spirit are plastering ads in the interiors of their jets. So it’s not surprising that the legacy carriers are looking at opportunities to sell “brand placement” on their aircraft, as CNN reports.

I don’t believe the world of commercial aviation will fall apart if we passengers are subjected to yet more advertising in-flight. I just wonder at what point a company that sells you a service has an obligation to treat you like a paying customer instead of a captive audience to be sold to the highest bidder.

Democracy In The Security Line

Passing through airport security in San Diego recently I saw something that made me wonder about how the principles of democracy are applied in airport screening.

There was a separate line for first-class passengers that allowed them to walk right up to the screeners while hundreds of people waited in the general line.

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Continental To Charge For Exit Rows

Continental Airlines will begin March 17 to charge a fee for passengers who sit in exit rows that provide extra leg room, as the Chicago Tribune reports.

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Fix The System, Don’t Punish The Passengers

The federal government’s response to the (forgive me) underwear bomber is a bit like the response of an incompetent teacher who can’t control a class: just punish everyone.

The main question here is how Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab got a valid U.S. visa and how his name was cleared on the flight manifest by U.S. authorities. The other really important question would be how he managed to get on board with his shorts full of explosives.

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Senators Still Flying Like Aristocrats

Are you worried that your senators might not be able to get home in time for Christmas after the health care reform vote? Don’t worry, they’ll be fine.

As USA Today reminds us, senators (and congressmen) have the right to make multiple reservations on commercial airlines to accommodate their uncertain schedules. It’s a right denied to the rest of us, of course.

So, no matter how many of their constituents will be inconvenienced or bumped, our democratically elected senators will exercise their un-democratic privilege to get home just fine. 

As I’ve mentioned before, this cozy arrangement with the airline industry might explain the reluctance of the our elected leaders to pass an airline passenger bill of rights. What would they need it for?

AirTran Terrorist Story: Not True

There are people who want to believe in conspiracies everywhere. There are people who want to believe the worst about all Muslims. And there are people who lie.

Put them all together, and you end up with an email about how a courageous passenger thwarted a terrorist dry run by a group of Arab men on an AirTran flight out of Atlanta last month.

Except it was very clearly a simple misunderstanding with a man who didn’t understand a flight attendant’s instructions to turn off his camera. And he apparently spoke Spanish, not Arabic. And the self-proclaimed “hero” who wrote the email wasn’t even on the flight, as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

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Another Air Traffic System Meltdown

It is so totally not acceptable for a “computer glitch” to seriously screw up air traffic around the country. Yet it has happened again, a week before the heaviest travel period of the year.

The cost of fixing this with more programmers, technical support, hardware, whatever it takes, can’t be greater than the economic toll of these meltdowns. Yet they continue.

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