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An out of control passenger, foaming at the mouth, tried to open the exit door of an airplane at 30,000 feet. This could have been a disaster, but fortunately, there was a hero on board. Give it up for practicing Muslim Jabir Hazziez Jr. (h/t Steve Benen)
Archive for the ‘Airline Industry and Travel’ Category
December 5th, 2011
Hotels are willing to pay me if I accept less frequent maid service. I approve.
December 1st, 2011
Category: Airline Industry and Travel, Economics
A NYT Times letter writer is upset that business and first class airplane tickets can be claimed as a business expense, meaning that all the people trapped in coach are subsidizing the fats cats sipping champagne in the front of the plane. I fly over 100,000 miles a year every year, only buy coach tickets [...]
October 24th, 2011
Take it from someone on a plane: guns in *checked* baggage are not a security threat. The mental metonymy that makes them seem so is a liberty threat, and one that I hope our institutions will forestall.
September 30th, 2011
Category: Airline Industry and Travel, Health and Medicine
I am not part of the cult of randomized clinical trials: For many questions they are often inappropriate, poorly designed or both. But when the clinical trial method is skilfully applied to the right question, the results should be taken seriously. As I describe on Stanford’s SCOPE blog, that’s why I have started wearing compression [...]
September 10th, 2011
I fly twice today on the dreaded date (It’s already 9/11 in England, despite what the post time says above), from London to Chicago and then on to San Francisco. I’ve had this routing and schedule before and was sad to see that there are more unsold seats today than usual. I didn’t book on [...]
June 27th, 2011
Category: Airline Industry and Travel
Every person has a secret vice. Some people emit global-send tweets of racy pictures they intended to reach merely one inappropriate recipient. Others have drug or gambling issues. My vice is less extreme, but sometimes more annoying. Through an ineffectual combination of parsimony and disorganization, I make cockamamie travel plans vulnerable to implosion.
May 22nd, 2011
Category: Airline Industry and Travel, Psychology
I fly enough that it became sensible about a decade ago to buy an ongoing membership in my preferred airline’s “club”, which offers peace, quiet and free coffee away from the crush in the terminal. At one of the airline’s hubs, the club was remodelled a few years ago, bringing in very nice furniture, more [...]
May 15th, 2011
Category: Airline Industry and Travel
Why I’m not flying Virgin Anything ever again.
April 4th, 2011
Category: Airline Industry and Travel, Management
Has there ever been a better way to avoid work that reciting this bromide? It sounds like real common-sense homey wisdom, comes trippingly off the tongue, and raises the fear of all the things that could go wrong if we go turning over rocks and stirring things up. Look how well it’s working for Southwest [...]
