Good morning Happy 75th birthday to the Golden Gate Bridge, which opened in May 1937. It has become one of the world’s most instantly recognizable bridges, and is approaching its two billionth vehicle crossing sometime very soon. Although having the longest span in the world when built, it lost that title in 1964 to the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, and nowadays is the ninth longest suspension bridge, with a 4,200 ft main span length. The longest [...]
Good morning I had another burst of intense self doubt earlier this week. Are airlines really as stupid as I say they are? Or am I missing something so thunderingly obvious as to imply I’m even more stupid than I suggest the airlines sometimes are? This was triggered by the confirmation that Delta is indeed buying an oil refinery, and was underscored by the near unanimous chorus of approval by the usual talking head commentators [...]
Good morning It is a strange and semi-random process, deciding what to write about. I started off Thursday this week with some half written materials for publication today, and then during the morning, stumbled across a strange news item. At first it seemed worthy of a single short paragraph in today’s compilation of stories, but as I struggled to distill the nonsense implied in the story down to a single short paragraph, I realized that [...]
Good morning Anna and I are now back from our time in the Orlando area, and – as promised – here is a huge newsletter and lots of other articles to compensate for the very short one last week. Last week’s hotel stay was a helpful reminder, of sorts, to be stranded in a hotel with appallingly slow and sometimes totally stopped internet service. We take these things for granted, and plan our business lives [...]
Good morning I had mildly commented on the computer system changeover for UA/CO last weekend, and suggested you keep on top of any issues that might be arising. I tried not to indulge in any greater fearmongering because I thought that surely this changeover would have been massively tested and trialed and would be routine and user-transparent. Boy, was I wrong. But if you’re not a subscriber to Joe Brancatelli’s excellent newsletter, and/or if you [...]
Good morning Sometimes I like to open these newsletters by mentioning an anniversary date that falls during the week. This week, I’ll instead refer to the pending demise of another of the major names in US aviation history – Continental Airlines. Continental was formed in 1934, originally trading under the name of Varney Speed Lines, an airline operating in the southwest. It was renamed Continental in 1937 after being bought by its long-time CEO, Bob [...]
Good morning There are a couple of great additional articles this week; one where I gratuitously point out not just one but two ways that new airlines could be formed and viably operated, and the other where I bemoan this administration’s eagerness to disarm our pilots due to air travel now being sufficiently safe as to make armed pilots no longer needed as the ultimate last ditch defense (or so they say). Other than that, [...]
Good morning Travel has understandably been on my mind this week. Our September North Korea tour had three more people join – at this rate it will soon be that one in every 50 foreigners visiting North Korea in 2012 will be Travel Insiders. Amazing. Shall we try to make it one in every 40? One in every 30? I’ve also written a new piece to add to the growing collection of material about travel [...]
Good morning I spent last week in and around Las Vegas. I’d quickly booked a ‘generic’ hotel on the strip for my stay, choosing based on convenient location (close to a monorail station) and price, and it was only as I was walking through the casino to their lobby that I started to get a terrible feeling of deja vue. Then I realized – oh no, I’m back at the Flamingo. The last time I [...]
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