Re: OR UNITED?? Soon, no free drinks if you fly US Airways

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Mary Shaw [mary.shaw () gmail com]
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2008 10:43 AM
To: David Farber
Subject: Re: [IP] Re: OR UNITED?? Soon, no free drinks if you fly US Airways

I sometimes take an empty water bottle through security with me.  The first couple of times, I asked first, now I just 
do it.  No problems so far. I take an empty disposable, not one of my good Nalgene bottles, though, so if they take it 
away there's no great loss.  If anyone asks, I'm taking it to refill at a water fountain instead of paying exorbitant 
prices in the terminal.

As for charging for nonalcoholic drinks, the flight attendants are going to hate it.  Expect push-back from that side.  
They hated it when they had to collect money for meals, and soon after that the rental price on headsets went away.  
They gave away headsets for a while, now they simply sell them (I think for the same price they used to charge for 
rental, but I carry my own so I wasn't paying a lot of attention.)

On a flight about a month ago I was seated next to an off-duty flight attendant. We watched someone struggling forward 
against the flow with a vastly oversized bag that wouldn't (obviously wouldn't) fit in an overhead compartment.  I 
asked him if the second-bag charge was creating more carry-on and slowing boarding (he thought so) and whether creating 
incentives in favor of checking bags would give faster boarding, hence faster turnaround, hence higher utilization of 
aircraft.  He said that it would, but no airline would be brave enough to be the first to go that route.  (Of course, 
they'd have to fix baggage handling to make that alternative viable)

I have long wondered why airlines didn't get together with luggage delivery services to provide low-cost baggage 
delivery to my destination.  Wouldn't a lot of passengers put up with a day or two of latency in exchange for 
point-to-point carriage, high probably of correct delivery, and a few bucks?  Surely that would be less expensive than 
doing the sort and load under connecting-flight time pressure. I know that such services exist, but they seem to run 
upwards of $4/lb for 2- to 3-day delivery, which is much too high to be attractive ($25 for a 50-lb bag is 50 cents a 
pound, but pickup at home and destination would be worth another few bucks).  What would it be worth to an airline to 
outsource some of the luggage handling? Is there any incentive for the airlines to subsidize the luggage delivery folks 
and get some of the baggage handling nightmare out of their lives?

Mary Shaw

On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 9:20 AM, David Farber <dave () farber net<mailto:dave () farber net>> wrote:
Not quite, you can buy in the terminal past TSA at their outragious prices djf

________________________________________
From: Jonathan Smith [jms () cis upenn edu<mailto:jms () cis upenn edu>]
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2008 9:07 AM
To: David Farber
Subject: Re: [IP] OR UNITED??  Soon, no free drinks if you fly US Airways

Of course, since you can't bring your own water bottles due to TSA
restrictions, this
means you have to pay to not be dehydrated....this is pretty bad.
-JMS


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