AviationGeeks.com - Blogs

Windows and Southwest Airlines are back this season to make our Customers’ travel experience jollier with the Picture Perfect Holiday. Starting December 13, Windows and Southwest Airlines will offer free holiday photos to Customers and Employees at 21 airports nationwide. 

For six years, Paul Lovine and his girlfriend, Kat, have been flying between Burbank and Oakland to see each other as much as possible despite the distance. In the process, the couple has accumulated literally thousands of miles traveling the popular route, proving their loyalty to Southwest, and their love for one another. 

TRAVEL firms are big pushers of new technology when it helps to get more customers through their doors and lower their costs. Buy tickets online? No problem. Check in online? Even better. These days with some airlines you don’t even need to print out a boarding pass, as it can be sent directly to your phone.

MOST airplane accidents are survivable. But when we think about plane crashes, we don't usually think about smoky cabins and emergency landings. We think about fireballs and deaths and mangled wreckage. 

WE FLYERS are a fickle bunch. Although happier with North America's main airlines for a second consecutive year, we're still not as happy as we were before the recession, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2011 North America Airline Satisfaction Study. The reason: high fares and fees. Indeed, passengers' satisfaction with costs on traditional network carriers dropped from 582/1000 to an all-time low of 555. 

LONG COMMUTES are terrible. But you already knew that. I had a long commute once, for less than a year. It was tolerable at first—I did a lot of sleeping on the train. But as veteran commuters know, a commuter train isn't the best place to sleep—and unless you can sleep standing up, you had better make sure you get on first. 

ON WEDNESDAY, prompted by posts from Kevin Drum and Megan McArdle, we talked about hotel room indecency. A quick review: How common is it for hotel staff to walk in on naked or half-naked guests? Very common, according to hotel staffer Jacob Tomsky's New York Times op-ed. What should we do about it? Mr Drum suggested a "zero-tolerance" policy. Ms McArdle warned that absent-minded types like herself often forget to lock doors and are walked in on accidentally.

INCENTIVES, economists tend to say at the drop of a hat, are everything. Well, clearly the officials at Homeland Security don't hang out with economists much. If they did they might have learnt an easy lesson about incentives from a beagle I met on a recent trip through Newark airport.

Southwest Airlines is at it again, doing some innovative things. This time they are announcing a new and improved rewards program for frequent fliers. Their Rapid Rewards plan was already a bit different. Most airlines you collect miles. The longer the route you fly, the more miles you get. The old Southwest Rapid Rewards program was based on flights. You fly eight round trip flights, no matter the amount of miles and you get a free trip. Now, the new Rapid Rewards program will be dependent on the amount of money you spend on your ticket. Hmm, interesting.

Perhaps it was our post on this blog two weeks ago about the launch of the "we're mad as hell about airline fees" campaign that caused it to go viral.