unixwiz

In the past month I have been across the country a couple of times to California. And have noticed some changes (I have not flown in the US for over a year, outside the US more than in the US.)

First off let me start with US Airways. They charge for EVERYTHING now. Check a bag, $15. Check 2 bags $40, check 3 bags $140. So naturally everyone tries to back as much as they can in to their carryon bags now. Which leaves less and less room in the overhead bins. So now assume that every one on a Airbus A320 checks one bag that will give them $318 more than they had before. Now doesn’t seem like that big of a deal on money wise, the probably burn up that much in fuel just taxing to the runway and the inital take off (approximatly 2 barrels of Jet A fuel). The one that gets me is that they started charging $2 for softdrinks and water on their flights. This is supposed to be one of their money generating ideas too for getting money for fuel. How cool is that, if every one on the plane did buy a single drink they would only make $162. Likely again to be burned off of the taxi from the runway. The funny thing about this is that now that they have started charging for beverages, they are probably using more fuel now than they did before.. Some people may ask why, but it is simple. If you are like me, once they started doing this I started taking a couple of 24oz bottles of water/soda on the flight with me. (You can’t go for 6 hours with out a drink..) So now if everyone is like me and does the same (some don’t but if they all did) you would now have an extra 468.4 pounds of weight on the plane. That is in addition to the soda/beverages they already pack (approx 234 pounds, 2 x 12oz cans per person estimate) that no one is going to buy.

It seems to me that it would be cheaper for them not to allow people to bring drinks on board and give the free drinks, than it would be for them to allow people to bring stuff on board and stock stuff that no one is going to use.

Now I see today that United is going to start doubling its fee for a second checked bag from $25 to $50 starting tomorrow for flights after November 1. This is only going to encourage people to try and stuff more and more in to their first checked bag. What is even more crazy is that you could conceivably pay more for your luggage to travel than you are paying for your self. Especially if you have a family. There was a family of four in front of me the other day with at least 8 suitcases (2 per person) that they were checking. On USAir that would be $160 just for your luggage to travel. If it was United, it would be $260.

I guess gone are the days of the “free” ammentities of air travel, free checked bags, free drinks, free food, free snacks.. At least for the airlines I have to fly.

Last week could have been the best week for me yet this year. But like everything else that has happened this year, it was probably one of the worst. First off I was overseas for the last week. It was a trip I had been looking forward to for a while and it finally came. But the problem started last Saturday night. I started getting that feeling that I was getting a sinus infection. True enough Sunday morning, it had come. Off to the doctor since I was to leave at noon. Went there and got some medication and went back home and waited for my ride to the airport. They showed up and I tossed up in the air whether I should even go or not. But I decided to go since usually these infections are gone in a couple of days, well before my meetings were to start. This turns out to be a pretty bad decision on my part, one that I won’t make again. After almost 14 hours of travel, by the time I got to the destination, I was getting extremely hot and dizzy. By the time we got to the hotel, I was feeling like a freight train had ran over me.

I went and got a shower and then fell on the bed and slept for about 8 hours or so. I got up and ordered some room service and only ate one slice of the kids mini pizza I ordered. I then felt even worse both physically and mentally. (and monetarily since the meal I ordered was almost $40.00). I then went back to bed and fell a sleep again.

The next morning my traveling companions came to see me and I was even worse now. They went to our local office and talked to the people there and had the medical people call me. After talking to a nurse for a while she asked that I come to the office so they could have a look at me. I made the 5 minute walk in the 35degree temp, and by the time I got there my body temp was already up to 101.5 degrees. (So I wonder what it was before I left the hotel.) They did the normal exams and thought that I may have caught the flu on the way over. Their only suggestion was to get plenty of rest and liquids.

Needless to say I spent nearly the whole week laid up in bed with a high temp trying to keep it down. I ate next to nothing the whole week because I just couldn’t do it so I lost about 8 to 10 pounds. Once Thursday came around I started feeling better by the night. Friday morning I was feeling pretty good and once again it was time to get on a plane back to the US. Everything seemed to be going good until we started the decent in to our first stop. This is where everything to a turn for the worse again. My ears never popped, no matter what I did, I could not get them to pop (in fact it is two days later now and my left ear has still not popped). Got my bags and transfered them through customs and immigration and got them rerouted to a different airport than the original one they were supposed to do. Off to the gate for the next flight.

The final flight home was delayed for almost 2 hours because of apparently maintenance problems on the SAAB 340 we were to take and the fact that United ground workers lost their contract and a bunch of them walked off the job. We were finally on our way a little after 11PM and the ride was for the most part smooth (it was my first time on a small turbo prop plane), until we were about 30 miles away from my home airport. That is when I just wished the plane would land. We were being thrown around like dust on the ground. My temp and blood pressure and heart rate just skyrocketed and my ears were still killing me. Once we finally landed I was so glad to be back in my home town and on the ground. I had a friend pick me up at the airport since my car was at my house. Finally got home around 15 after midnight. So I had been up for almost 28 hours straight by now. I never realized how much I appreciate the Sleep Number bed I have until I fell on it that night. I slept so good till I broke out in a high temp fever again.

It seems like everything has started all over again. Almost like groundhog day. So now I am going to go back to the doctors tomorrow to see what else they can do to try and fix me up. I was so upset that I made such a long trip and got sick. I hope there will be another trip there soon and I won’t be sick to go on it.

When I was in Denmark I stayed at Copenhagen Island. They had a really cool bed side lamp/table that I forgot to try and see if there were any markings on it for who made it. Does any one know who makes this? It is really cool as it has a motion sensor in the base of it that when tripped will light up a LED light that points towards the ground. Was one of the neatest things I have seen in a while. I would like to find out who makes them and if they are available in the US.

I was going through the pictures on my phone and found some from when I was over seas.
The first one I found was this one:

The store was named “dope” which was right down the street from the “fcuk” store.

The second one was from a Royal Copenhagen store (Amagertorv 6, 1160 København K, Denmark)

The price was 399:- at the time I was there, translates to roughly $78.56USD. Yes that is $78.56 for one tea cup.

The third was of Tivoli Garden’s entrance. Did not get to go in it, but it is like an amusement park and a flower/tree garden all together.

The final picture was of Hans Christian Anderson, some what of an icon there..

I was going through my RSS feeds tonight and saw this USA Today article about how USAirways is pulling more flights out of Pittsburgh, PA.. As I read down through the article something else catches my eye:

As for commercial service, the following cities will lose US Airways service to Pittsburgh: Charleston, W. Va.; Chicago O’Hare; Denver; Erie, Pa.; Norfolk, Va.; and Toronto. Depending on the final scheduling decisions of US Airways’ regional, US Airways says it assumes the following cities will also likely lose Pittsburgh service: Bradford, Pa.; Clarksburg, W. Va.; Franklin, Pa.; Jamestown, N.Y.; Johnstown, Pa.; Lewisburg, W. Va.; Louisville; Morgantown, W. Va.; Nashville; Parkersburg, W. Va.; Syracuse, N.Y.; and Washington Dulles. Among the non-hub flights US Airways is expected to keep are routes to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Orlando, among others.

The key thing in that excerpt, the Morgantown, WV, Parkersburg WV, and Clarksburg WV. We just finally got commercial air service back since the flop with Regions Air (dba Continental Express), and now we have Colgan (dba USAirways Express). So if they are going to cut the flights out of the Tri-City’s to Pittsburgh, were are the flights going to go now? Dulles, Regan? Either would be cool if they did, make my life a little easier. I predict in a year USAir will only be flying a couple of connecting flights out of Pittsburgh to PHL and CLT. This sucks really bad as now I have over 50,000 miles on USAir and not really anywhere to go from Pittsburgh..

What I think should happen is that JetBlue take over PIT and make it a major hub like BOS and JFK are. There are always problems with flying out of BOS and JFK due to either weather, or too many planes in the area etc… Now is the perfect time for JetBlue to make a nice hub that rarely experiences weather problems or delays like JFK/BOS do. This would help JetBlue fix the delay problem before the FAA steps in to start changing flight schedules.. Which reminds me because of the amount of congestion in JFK I got an email from JetBlue saying both of my flights that were routed through JFK have been changed. The first one was changed by like 10 or 20 minutes on the connection through JFK. The second flight they instead are rerouting it through BOS.

Come on JetBlue, increase your service at PIT and make it a good hub again. I think you would do very well there.