Tag: airports

Life after Spirit: It has begun

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

MSN: Delta to cut snack services on what they deem short flights

At a quick glance, this doesn’t sound like a big deal at all.  Many on social media are very quick to opine such, claiming those people who see it as doom and gloom to be overreacting.  And in all fairness, it really doesn’t sound like that big of a deal, considering the fairly logical rationale behind it: shorter flights struggle to even complete snack service, with an extremely tight window that offers almost no margin of error, and any sort of turbulence or complication leads to some people getting snacks and others not, leading to a negative experience for some.

However, it’s the timing of this business decision, coincidentally as soon as Spirit Airlines has wrapped up operations, that raises my eyebrow, and gives me the impression that this is just the start of eventual perk-removing, that starts with snacks on a small scale to test the waters of reception and blowback, to eventually transforming into a fare class that might as well be called the Spirit fare, but without the actual Spirit prices.

Although the removal of snack service really doesn’t sound like a big deal at first blush, Delta will probably save somewhere in the neighborhood of like $8-12M in snacks they don’t have to purchase, more if this slashes their alcohol stocking.  These savings of course, will not mean that they will be passed onto customers, and in fact will probably pad the end-of-year bonuses to guys like Ed Bastian, who reportedly made around $24M in bonuses last year, and a conglomerate of old white male shareholders.

I can’t speak for any airlines, but I’m not going to assume Delta is the only one doing it, with their offering of some basic bare bones fare class, that’s basically already like Spirit Airlines, with no assigned seats, no checked bags, last to board, and the kicker being no SkyMiles earned, but it still costs like 3x the price of a Spirit RT.  I imagine this fare class will become more expensive with the removal of Spirit Airlines as a competitor, further entrapping would-be travelers with bullshit prices for the shortest of flights.

The point is, airlines are already fucking the people on a daily basis with their bullshit high fares, and the people are entitled to take back as much as humanly possible from them for how much they’re paying.  It’s not so much about the actual snacks themselves being removed as much as it’s an exploratory malicious act of deception with the end goal being more cash pocketed at the corporate executive level.

It starts with snacks, and little by little, 350 mile flights turns into 500 mile flights, the little bag checker displays start showing up outside of Delta gates, with ominous threats to start charging for personal items.  All while the fare classes continue to escalate, citing inflation, the Strait of Hormuz and the rise of jet fuel.

Randos on the internet can claim that it’s no big deal, but will be wondering why their round trip from ATL to DCA costs $479, gets no snacks, and no SkyMiles are awarded; all while Ed Bastian makes $30M in bonuses at the end of the year.

I know the death of Spirit was a good time for many on the internet, with all the jokes and memes to have come out of it, but it seriously was not a good thing at all for the entire industry, and the only ones who will suffer from it, are people who need to travel.  Eventually, nobody will be able to travel at all, unless it’s on their employer’s dime.

Spirit Airlines dying is not good for the industry

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NPR: Spirit Airlines ceases all operations after failing to get bailed out by the government, effectively killing the company and costing thousands of people their jobs

I know that for years, Spirit has more or less been the butt of almost all jokes when it comes to airline travel.  Costs money to breathe, nickels and dimes for seatbelts and bathroom access, it’s the Greyhound of the skies, only a certain demographic travels on Spirit, etc. 

However, regardless of all the people who think they’re comedians, there was a definite place for Spirit in the industry; there is always a place for the company that deliberately tries to be the cheapest option, in a sea full of companies who couldn’t give two shits about customers.

I remember when Spirit rose from the ashes in like 2006 or 2007.  I didn’t know they had existed for a decade before then, but I remember how aggressive they were at trying to build a customer base, and I vaguely recall they had flights as low as like $14 and other mind-boggling fares, all to fill seats, sell their mission, and let people know that they existed.  I never did capitalize on any of those dirt-cheap fares, but it definitely did its job at announcing their arrival in the market.

I’ve actually flown Spirit more than most people probably care to admit.  Sure, they’re cheap, and their seats are basically plywood with light fabric covering them.  Yes, they do nickel and dime you for just about everything they can.  Yeah, luggage can be problematic if you don’t plan well.  But the thing is, if you know all the rules, and are willing to adhere to them, they’re actually not that bad.

In spite of their general reputation, I can’t say that I’ve ever really had any major problems with their performance.  Sure, there have been some delays here and there, and last year was the first time in which they inexplicably cancelled a flight on me, causing me to have to scramble, but by and large, I have flown with Spirit many times, to places like Washington DC, Dallas to Las Vegas, and they’ve typically been pretty satisfactory.

I’ve never needed to swindle, try and game the system, or cheat the agents at the gate, as long as I prepared properly, they’ve always been cost-effective and reliable at getting me from point A to point B.

So I’m sad to hear that they’re now basically dead.  Not just because tens of thousands of people are losing their jobs, not just because that hundreds of travelers were boned and left absolutely stranded and shell shocked at the notion that their flights were cancelled on account of, the carrier going completely tits up right in the middle of their itineraries.

But because the airline industry needs cost-effective carriers like Spirit, in order to keep the monopolies honest.  Sure, lots of people wouldn’t mind paying more to get a little more comfort, a checked bag, in-flight snacks and wi-fi, but when the price difference starts creeping into $300+, that typically tends to make even the most cash-flush flyers begin to scratch their heads and deliberate whether or not the cost difference is worth it.

And when companies like Spirit go away, and take their $149 RT from Atlanta to DC off the table, it leaves the lowest option to be like Delta’s basic $299 RT that passengers don’t get to choose seats, get no SkyMiles, get no cancellation policy, basically everything Spirit already did, but for double the price.

It’s crazy too, because from my point of view, Spirit didn’t operate too differently than like, AirTran did.  But for whatever reason, Spirit could just never get to that point where they grew to the point where they were enticing by a bigger company to come assimilate them like the Borg and the people running Spirit would have succeeded in the American Dream of being able to get to a position to where they could sell out.

Especially over the last few years, there were always rumors or press snippets about Spirit merging with others, like Frontier or JetBlue, but clearly nothing ever came to fruition with those.  I have no idea nor do I care to research on why that was the case, but it just seems sad that everything always seemed to fall through, and Spirit was put in this position of being the first head cut off in regards to low-cost carriers.

I don’t fly nearly as much as I used to these days, but I always did consider Spirit to be a viable option, and I can’t help but feel sad that they’ve been put out to pasture.  As much as I still bemoan the departure of AirTran from eons ago, I figure the next time I see the lowest cost option to fly to BWI or MCO being like $379, I’m going to be salty at all the parties involved that contributed towards the removal of Spirit from the field, knowing that I probably could’ve saved at least 50%, had I been willing to pay for my oxygen and sitting on covered plywood.

I guess this makes me sound old

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A few years ago on Thanksgiving, my family missed our flight. 

Actually, we did not miss our flight, but rather we missed the recommended two-hour check-in period because mythical wife and I were parents new to two kids, had a boatload of cargo to haul with us, and had to check-in at a service desk, instead of just going straight to security as if we didn’t have all the extra crap.  And the only reason why we missed it is because ATL’s parking garage is the worst in the nation [fact] and the 15 minutes in which it took us to get from car to terminal was the difference between making it and not.

Being late, I can take responsibility for.  Airline travel these days is a stressful ordeal most of the time, multiplied by the fact that it was a holiday.  Add to the fact that parenting is hard, especially at the time, two kids under the ages of two.

What really bothered me about the whole situation was the fact that after we were told that we would not be getting onto our flight, was the fact that for the next hour and 50 minutes, while I was on the phone with Delta trying to figure out what our options were, was knowing that our aircraft was sitting there, still waiting for cargo to be loaded, still waiting for people to board, still, just fucking waiting.  Meanwhile, thanks to some uppity gate agents hiding behind the subjectively conveniently wall of protocol, my family was denied clearance, and I had to drop $700 on the spot for two new day-of holiday tickets in order to go to Virginia for barely 12 hours, all for being 10 minutes past a recommended check-in time.

Look, I know that rules are rules, and my family wasn’t there at precisely 2+ hours before departure time.  But I’ve witnessed in my rather copious flying experiences people in way more dire and illogical, and should-be-fucked situations emerge victorious, all because there’s a generous amount of discretion, grace and ability to read the room involved with being in airline customer support.

I was ten minutes late.  I wasn’t a dick or raised my voice or created a scene with the agent.  I also understand the needs of the baggage handlers and that their time needs to be accounted for.  I wasn’t asking for super special treatment, and to be escorted through security through special assistance.  I just wanted a little bit of grace and understanding for our parenting situation, and a little bit of leniency on the time, especially since there was more than enough of it remaining to make our flight.

But no, we were stonewalled, marked as no-shows, and not allowed to advance on our original itinerary.  The reasonable flights were refunded as credit, but that needed to be used immediately along with $700 extra dollars to book two new flights, and it led to a real shitty holiday travel experience.

All because a gate agent didn’t really feel like working, and used the wall of protocol to shield themselves behind.

It’s not lost on me that from a cold hard facts point of view, the agent did nothing wrong.  From a procedural standpoint, they did everything to the T, and when the day is over, you really can’t ask for much more from an employee.

Nobody is required or expected to go above their required duties, and I know there’s a lot of gray area when it comes to Office Space debates on doing the bare minimum versus trying to do more, but when the asks are not difficult or require little extra effort, but the result is the satisfaction and gratitude of helping another person accomplish something, why the fuck not give it a whirl?

I’m sure that there have been points in my life where I’ve hidden behind the exact same wall of protocol, but I’m fairly certain that if I did it, it was coming from a place of antagonism, and I was probably aware that my refusal to budge was going to be seen as an act of hostility, from whom I was being obtuse with.

Well that introduction went a little long, because what the whole point of this whole post is that I recently had a situation with a colleague, where I asked for some assistance with a project, and was met with a surprising amount of resistance, a deflection from a shield of protocol, and a conclusion where the task was not completed, and will have to wait an entire week for this person to come back from PTO before it gets completed.

Like the airline story, they’re not in the wrong with the course of action that they chose to take, but the ask I had for them was to convert two sentences and three bullet points into a smaller, digestible 2-3 sentence paragraph; a task that I’ve seen not just any copywriter, but this specific copywriter accomplish in less than five minutes.  I even vetted the ask with them over Teams before entering the request into Workfront, which was met with a response indicating how easy it would be.

But once they received it in Workfront, they responded to the group that the due date for the task was already past-due because our PMs are suspect in capability, and that it would have to wait until the following week due to their upcoming PTO, and that they recommended assigning it to another copywriter if it was urgent.

To this type of response, I scrunched my brow at the screen, and wondered why the fuck they had agreed upon its ease if they weren’t going to help out with it in the first place?  Furthermore, this all happened at like 10 am in the work day, there was more than enough time to just knock it out, then I could do my part, and we could close the entire project out, and that would be one less ticket looming over our workloads.

Aggravated, I decided to not reassign the task, and to make sure it remains on this copywriter’s plate.  It has the time, but it could have been done so much sooner, and on principle, I’m going to make sure that they still do it, and lord help me if they complain about their workload when they get to it then.

I get wanting to coast before a vacation, but I’m also the type who absolutely abhors the idea of anyone having to pick up or fill in or finish something that I started.  I’m a monster when it comes to trying to close out all my tasks, tie up all loose ends, and knock out anything that can be knocked out before I go radio silent.  To me, it just seems like common courtesy, but as I very well have learned throughout my life, nobody works harder than a Korean, and I feel as if I’m a step above the rest on top of it.

Ultimately, my mind immediately thought to the notion that this wasn’t just ordinary apathetic work avoidance, but rather more typical to Gen-Z work ethic, and no matter how nice and chipper and glowy of personalities a worker can be, the barest of bare minimums is to be expected, and that anything that might be construed as exceeding such, is absolutely out of the question.

Nice enough and chipper and pleasant as this copywriter is, they still turtled up behind the shield of protocol as if I were asking them to find the cure for cancer.  Shifting the request to the other copywriter was out of the question to me, because they’re younger and more apt to bitch about an additional request being made of them, and I don’t want to hear it.  But even in spite of all the remaining time in the day, they didn’t have the time to address my ask, but they did have time to get on the department Teams channel and wish a happy birthday to fucking Mariah Carey.

Perhaps the five minutes of doing such should be construed as five minutes of flagrant not-work time spent, and they should make up for it by spending five minutes on the task that I had asked them for.

Either way, I suppose complaining about the perceived work ethics of those younger than me qualifies as one of those things that justifies the fact that I’m old now.  Whatever though, at least I know I’m capable of getting shit done, even if others might consider such attribute as giving shit away.

Like sending gorillas to do custodial work

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

That’s the best analogy that comes to mind when I think about the bright idea to send ICE agents to Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Intergalactic Spaceport, Nail Salon and Chicken Tender Museum in order to assist with crowd control and the nightmare scenario where the vast majority of TSA agents are no-showing because they’re not getting paid.  Sure, they’re marginally capable of perhaps doing some base job functions like staring at people menacingly while behind a gaiter and holding an automatic firearm so that people think twice about trying to cut any lines and shave an hour off their wait, but there’s a higher possibility that these ICE clowns make things worse, escalate a situation, and there’s probably going to be more arrests and possibly deaths, before any progress or civility is restored to the airport.

I’m just really glad that I don’t have any upcoming flight bookings coming up, because I’d probably punt on any airline travel I have coming up if it required me to go through ATL right now, because it doesn’t seem to matter when people are rolling up to the airport these days, the waits just seem to grow commensurate to how early people are showing up.

Mythical wife and I are current with The Pitt, and the most recent episode introduced a sub plot where two ICE agents bring a woman set to be detained to the ER, because she was most likely injured during a raid that they conducted.  And the presence of ICE in at the hospital passively makes all sorts of minority staff, patients and waiting patients to peace the fuck on out of the Pitt.

When Doctor Robbie tells them to stay the fuck to themselves and not be meandering around, they basically roid rage and attempt to interrupt the treatment of their detainee and send her to detention without treatment, with no regard for her injuries, and when an RN intervenes, he gets taken down and arrested as well, and in classic Pitt logic, there is no situation that cannot be made worse, somehow.

I feel like this is exactly what’s going to happen at ATL, with ICE wandering around the airport now.  All sorts of Hispanic and other minority would-be passengers will see them lurking around, and decide it’s not worth getting targeted and possibly detained and shipped off to a concentration camp detention center, and slip on out of the airport and ironically, ICE will have assisted in relieving the congestion of humanity at the airport, slightly, but seeing as how this was probably also the intention of the whole plan, it begins to grow the narrative that airline travel is becoming more of a white privilege than it already is.

Regardless, it’s just sad, laughable, and endlessly pathetic to see the state of, well, everything these days.  ICE agents trying to do TSA functions is like asking gorillas to do custodial work, at first they’d probably show remote capability of the bases of functions, but ultimately something is going to set them off, and ragey, power-tripping violence is going to be inevitable.

The craziest part about all these airport nightmares is that the guy sitting in the White House was named like 3,000+ times in the Epstein Files.

Fat chance airfares are coming down

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

CBS: Airline industry projecting to save millions of dollars on jet fuel in 2026 on account of the massive amounts of collective weight loss throughout the planet due to GLP-1 drugs

It really is incredible.  GLP-1s have become so prevalent and so effective on such a massive scale, that it’s impacting an industry that requires some really creative routing in order to make a relation.  The correlation between weight loss drugs and the airline industry seems like quite the reach, but at the scale of the collective weight loss of the world, it actually makes perfect sense that the airline industry is set to start saving tons of money on jet fuel, if more passengers are weighing less than ever before.

The thing is, the first thought that came into my head upon hearing about this news was, will the airlines pass any modicum of these savings onto passengers?  Of course, that was a rhetorical question, because anyone with a pulse already knows the answer is, absofuckinglutely not.

It’s just like every single price hike in history in any business; companies get used to seeing the increased revenue, and it doesn’t matter at all if the reason(s) used to justify a price hike(s) are rendered invalid, there’s not a company in history that is willing to roll back a price hike, and the airline industry is one of the most flagrant at conducting such business.

Like when they used the fuel crisis of 2008 to jack up their fares, those fares didn’t come back down once crude stabilized.  When they basically colluded to eliminate free bags across the board, nobody was willing to be the disruptor and go back to free bags in order to undercut their competition, they had gotten far too comfortable with the bag fees adding to their bottom lines to risk lowering anything.

This is no exception; a plethora of reasons, including rising weights were blabbed in order to justify their fare hikes, and it won’t matter at all if the world has collectively dropped 5% of their weight, there’s a 0% chance that any airline is going to discount even a single fucking nickel from their fares.

If anything at all, they could feasibly go the other direction and start jacking fares up again, citing airplanes becoming too aerodynamic, and that they’re getting to their destinations faster, causing more crowding at airports, more idling, which of course, means the need for more jet fuel, or some other randomly convoluted justification to spin up more fare hikes.

Originally while I was thinking about this post, I was going to opine where all this collective weight loss is going, because the food that caused it still exists, and at what grandiose level does the Earth ultimately collapse upon itself from the collective increasing weight of, existence?

But once the wheels of piss and vitriol towards the airline industry get churning, it’s like an avalanche of shit-tily nihilistic opinions about a bunch of greedy old white fucks, and how much I think the general concept of investing is what is causing the world so much collective despair across the board.

I get that it’s a cool thing to hear that people are the world are losing so much weight thanks to GLP-1s, that the airline industry are slated to save nearly $550M in jet fuel this year, but when you stop to ponder what happens next and realize that consumers and travelers don’t stand to benefit from their magical savings, it just gets me all fired up and once again mad at the greedy ass business in the end.

A microcosm of what’s wrong with the airline industry

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m sitting at the gate, awaiting my flight.  I’m going to DCA, so I can go help my dad out with some stuff that I really shouldn’t have to help out with except for the fact that my dad isn’t a very capable individual and has increasingly just been chalking everything up to aging and doing his best to live out The Korean Story™.

I don’t often disclose my personal expenses, but in this case, this round trip to and from Washington DC is running me $570.  Way back, when AirTran still existed, I could get this exact RT for $159 if I played my cards right.  Full fare, and not when I had the ability to fly standby on a moment’s notice.  Obviously, inflation is a very real and unfortunate thing, and it’s been nearly 20 years since I used to be able to get those reasonable and cost-efficient fares, but the fact that it’s gone up 350% seems outlandish and reeks of white people greed.

The gate I’m sitting in is relatively deserted.  Flying on a Wednesday night is great in that regard.  The aircraft will more than likely have upwards of 140 seats all in all, but if I had to guess, maybe barely 50% of the aircraft will be full.  If I were still doing the standby thing, I’d be doing a dance at the gate because I would have a 100% chance of getting on this flight.

That said, there’s absolutely little reason why this fare should have been remotely close to $570.  There used to be a time when flight fares would fluctuate somewhat on account of the demand of a particular flight, and a flight like this should probably have been cheaper than what I was forced to pay just so I could help out a family member, because clearly there was not a heavy demand for the flight.  I’d hate to imagine what it might have cost to go Friday through Sunday.

I used to be salty when this route had gone up to like $379 from all carriers, but now I’d be doing cartwheels if I could get a RT for under $400 these days.

A few weeks ago, there was an article where Delta’s CEO Ed Bastian was quoted, saying shit along the lines of blaming low-cost carriers AKA Spirit and Frontier, for the degradation of airline passenger behavior throughout the country.  My knee-jerk reaction at hearing this was, sure, yeah, a lot of unruly people do fly Spirit and Frontier, that’s not entirely wrong, my own criticism has ol’ Ed Bastian in the crosshairs, because man is clearly so out of touch with the people that he probably doesn’t seem to realize that most people are probably unruly because they’ve been given no choice in life but to pay egregious fares in order to travel, and whether they take a low-cost carrier along with all the other unruly poors, or they shell out money they probably can’t afford in order to travel, they’re going to be bitter and pissed off about it in the end all the same.

I know that I’m feeling quite salty and full of piss at having to shell out $570 to make a routine flight to a destination not even two hours of airtime away.  I just happen to have a little more restraint and keep my vitriol and venom encased in harmless text on a brog that nobody on the planet reads except for me, as opposed to feeling entitled to dress like a 2000’s-era NBA player, and act about as much of a shithead as one.

Ed doesn’t seem to grasp that if Delta would ease off the gas on their price gauging and make flying a little more accessible to the people, not only would everyone flock to Delta if they’re the first ones to cut costs, it would then force all the other carriers to follow suit in order to keep up, and if the royal everyone, is just a little bit happier about not going as broke in order to travel, the civility of airline passengers would inevitably improve.

And then Ed’s completely out-of-touch analysis of the masses would begin to improve, traveling would stop feeling like such a colossally insufferable experience, and call me crazy, everyone would probably make more money in the end, because that’s often just what happens when consumers are actually made happy sometimes.  There’s enough empirical evidence to show the sheer profitability of people not being shitheads to the masses, and hopefully the airlines will rediscover this and the skies may become a little friendlier when they come to that revelation.

I’m drained and I need a vacation

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As I’ve often said in my life, if there were a such things as a mythical purgatory, mine would undoubtedly look like Reagan National Airport based on how much time in my life I feel that I’ve wasted here.  Even now, I am once again stuck here on account of multiple flight delays, probably because of some rain as if the stuff has never existed in the history of the universe.

And it’s not one of those old “well maybe if you actually paid full fares” accusations I used to get when I had a flight pass and could jet set on standby flights any availability I got, because that ship has long sailed and I’m on a full-ass fare and still dealing with the insufferable passage of time at DCA.

Anyway, as the title of this post so succinctly reads, I am drained and I am in need of a real break.  The week of Thanksgiving started off a little bumpy, but limped towards progress, the holiday itself was really personally fulfilling, and there were a lot of good memories.  However, my holiday started with a long-ass drive, concluded with a long-ass drive, and now I’m stuck at my personal hell just trying to get home, so I can get back to work without really having any time to have unwound or relaxed, at all.

As I’ve said in the past, I’m probably at that stage of life where a lot of people my age have to accept and understand the mortality of our parents, as well as the onset of babysitting, assisting, holding hands, arguing about independence while trying to not step on eggshells of frail personal egos and the fears of change and mortality of them themselves.

This past week was basically all of the above, trying to see if I could convince my dad to move into a home down in Georgia.  The place where I brought him allowed for us to do a trial stay for a week, and I loved the idea of doing over Thanksgiving, because I always made me feel very sad over the years of my dad being by himself on just about every holiday, and I could have him spend this year’s with me, as well as hope to see if he could accept the place as a viable landing spot to get him out of his current home which is too big, has too many stairs and way too isolated from any family members who are willing to help him. 

Although there were some good times during the week, like having my dad over for Thanksgiving and ensuring that he wouldn’t be by himself, and having him spend some time with my kids, his grandchildren, the end result is basically no real different than when we started.  Such wasn’t really unexpected, and I’m honestly not really surprised, but it’s still disappointing that all the time, care and effort I put into everything led basically nowhere, and at the end of the day I can’t make him make a decision, and it’s up to him to decide, something at all, no matter how much logic and truth my sister and I try to get into his head.

Needless to say, I am just drained.  My life in general operates at a pretty high stress threshold to begin with these days, and adding my dad and all his end of life affair footwork on top of it is perpetually overflowing me on a regular basis, and I don’t feel as if I’ve had a chance to unwind, decompress or just catch my breath in weeks.

I think I may have to use a vacation day in the coming weeks to just take a random midweek day off where I can not be the first fucking person up in the morning, get some actual sleep, and hopefully a feeling of actual physical and mental recharging.