Militants & Air Hostesses ...

I wrote this a while ago ...

Today on a flight to Pittsburgh, we had a crazy militant air hostess. Take this - She did not allow me to keep a bottle of water in the seat pocket in front of me ... I could not even keep a book in there !

She stood there in the aisle, with her arms crossed, with a disapproving shake of her head, peering at me over her glasses - Only two magazines and an air sickness bag can be kept in the seat pocket. Guys, I wish I had a photograph of her to show you - This would be so much more effective that way.

And what took the cake was her wanting me to switch off my noise cancelling headphones during landing ! Give me a break - It consumes about 0.0001 Watts or so ...

The way air hostesses fuss about electronics, you would think that an easy way for terrorists to crash a plane would be for ten of them to board the plane and switch on their cell phones at the same time !

And of course, everyone knows that it has been established that cell phones have no impact on the functioning of the airplane.

Bangor, Maine

I wonder how the people of Bangor, Maine feel when jets bound for New York/Chicago are diverted to their hometown's airport whenever there is a terrorist threat :-)

Indira Nooyi ...

... is going to be the next CEO of Pepsico. The first woman, and the first Indian-born person to be elevated to that position.

I had written about her in a previous post: She seems to be a fascinating person - A member of a teen girl band when she was younger, she is a devoted mother and brings her kids to office where they do their homework in the offices of various executives :-)

Have the terrorists won ?

Its been stressful travelling during the last few days with increased security and long waits at security, along with sniffer dogs showing interest in my bags (Probably because of the huge pile of unwashed clothes inside !)

There has been talk that the US Govt would restrict passengers from taking on carry on baggage altogether. In debating this, me and a few colleagues were conjecturing that this would lead to very low PLF's (Passenger Load Factors) on short hop flights (Like Raleigh-Atlanta), with people preferring to drive the distance (4 hours) instead of wait in line at security (2 hours) and then spend time on a cramped jet (2 hours).

This could push airlines into bankruptcy again, and push the US into a recession.

Today, I was at Houston Airport, which used to be extra-busy even in the pre-Orange Alert days. I was at security at 6 PM, which is normally the peak travel time. And guess what ? I was the only person in line. 6 PM at Houston, and one person in line ! If people believe that travelling is too hazardous or simply too much of a hassle, that is going to have a significant impact on the US Economy (in terms of airline losses, increased congestion on highways, higher gas consumption et al), then the terrorists would have won.

The solution to the US fuel crisis ...

... is for Americans to start learning how to drive manual transmissions.

I guess the guys at Hertz felt really generous and gave me a brand new Ford Mustang when I was in Chicago. I was really excited about it, considering that it has a 4 litre engine, and I expected it to have amazing performance. However, I had not factored in the fact that it was an Automatic, and consequently I was disappointed with its performance - In fact, my own car with its 2.5 litre engine (Its a manual), has much better acceleration.

About 95% of the cars in the US are automatic transmission. And I believe now, that the reason that Americans buy these oversize gas-guzzlers is because thats the only way they can overcome mediocre performance. If more cars were manuals, Americans could buy cars with smaller engines and experience the same levels of performance as a large engine automatic.

For example, the Mustang gives about 20 miles per gallon on the highway, whereas my car gives 30 mpg - A savings of 33%.

Three ring circus

Why does everyone seem to have a cynical view of marriage ?

I heard this from a married friend - "Marriage is like a three ring circus - the engagement ring, the wedding ring and suffe-ring" :-)

Caesarean Sections

My sister had a daughter, just over a month ago, via a Caesarean Section. I never believed for one minute that she would need to have a C-Section, and I am still not convinced that she needed it.

The advice of a doctor is difficult to ignore, especially in the face of one's own ignorance and fear surrounding these medical issues. And this certainly seems to be exploited in India, with 70% of births via C-Section, as against an average of 7% in the Developed World.

Of course, Doctors and Hospitals have a vested interest in guiding women towards a C-Section, considering that they can charge three times the amount they charge for a regular delivery. Of course, there are some nitwits that choose C-Sections, so they can artificially control the birth time and thereby the birth star of their child, but that is certainly a small number.

I believe that the solution to this problem is legislation by the Government that will ensure that doctors can charge only one rate per delivery, regular or C-Section. This will certainly remove the financial disincentive associated with regular deliveries.

Crazy journey and stupid terrorists

So, I was at Raleigh airport last evening, waiting for a 4:05 flight to Chicago, connecting to Dallas. I was cursing the fact that I had not booked myself on a later flight, as I was missing Ozzfest, something that my friends Dwight and Jen had really wanted me to go with them to.

4:05 comes and goes, and there is no sign of any of the South West airline gate agents. I am quite unconcerned at this point, but when it turns 4:30 and there have been no announcements, I get concerned and ask South West customer service whats happening. And then they tell me that the inbound aircraft is delayed and would come in a few minutes. At 5 PM, they announce that the aircraft has landed but has some problems with the hydraulics and will take atleast 3 hours to fix. That means that I would definitely miss my connecting flight and the earliest I could get to Dallas would be 11 AM the next day.

So, I cancelled my South West ticket, and looked online for the best alternate flights. American, United and Delta all had flights that would get to me to Dallas (via Atlanta) at around 11 PM. For some reason, I chose Delta, and I checked in my bags and settled down in the departure lounge. We boarded a few minutes past schedule, and I was not overly worried. Then came an ominous announcement - Weather concerns in Atlanta ! There were major thunderstorms in ATL, and we took after after a delay of 2 hours - I thought that there was a good chance that my connection to Dallas would be delayed as well, so I was still hoping to make it to Dallas. When we landed in ATL, I called customer service and asked them about the Dallas flight, and I was told that they were still boarding. Luck was on my side - Or, so I thought. We went on to spend 75 minutes waiting for a gate (There were about 50 planes in a queue - Quite impressive, it would have been, in better circumstances). So, I missed my connection, got myself booked onto the 7 AM flight.

I finally got out of the airport at 1:30 AM, and there was a sea of people waiting for the hotel shuttles. So, I got to the hotel at 2:30 AM and set the alarm for 5 AM. I finally woke up at 5:27 and ran down to get to the airport at 5:50 AM, which is usually plenty of time ... However, I didnt know at that time about the UK-US terrorist plot ! There was a whole K-9 unit, and a huge queue. I finally got through security at 7 AM and literally ran a mile to Concourse A where the gate was just being locked. The lady would not let me on despite all of my entreaties, and I got onto an American Air flight instead at 7:30 AM, which was on time.

However, of course my bag was not loaded on either flight, so it was stuck in Atlanta. I am now in Dallas, on the way back to Atlanta, where I will hopefully be re-united with my bag, which contains some very valuable shirts ;-)

Air Deccan II

I am so pissed with Air Deccan that my ire is now going to pour over into a second post. In response to Gargs comment on the previous post where he said that Air Deccan's target was people who were more concerned about a bargain, than about quality of service - Well, I am certainly concerned about quality of service and I am sick of subsidising the one rupee tickets of co-passengers.

I would understand if they took money from their marketing budget and introduced one rupee tickets. However, when they sacrifice quality of service to provide low priced tickets, that just ridiculous ...

And on a tangential point, with none of the blame accruing to Air Deccan, would these damn political thugs that seem to have become the staple customers for Air Deccan's Madurai - Chennai flight, stop shouting on a crowded (and hot) plane about their latest gang war exploits ? Please spare us the gory details of which body part you cut off in the latest ambush. Seriously, nobody is impressed. This is not the Selur area TASMAC.

I am taking my custom back to a good old friend - The Southern Railway !

Air Deccan

Sometime back, I wrote about Air Deccan's success in disrupting status-quo in the fairly staid airline industry by launching no-frills flights with extremely lean operations. This meant that they served no food on board, had only one air hostess, had no assigned seating and turned around their aircraft in 15 minutes.

And all of this was fine, except that they have now really started scraping the bottom of the barrel for ways to save money. Some examples:

• Boarding cards are no longer printed at Madurai Airport. They are handwritten !
• They switch off the a/c for almost half the duration of the flight
• Flights are frequently "preponed" by upto 15 minutes
• They have dumb-ass schemes such as "Simpli-bid" which is an inflight auction

And I really wish they would realize that there is absolutely no need for one lakh tickets at Rs.1 each. People will pay more, if only Air Deccan wakes up and realizes that air travelers generally expect a somewhat more comfortable journey than a share auto rider.