I know what she meant (and, I suspect, so do all the people attacking her for this remark):
Right-wing author and pundit Michelle Malkin filled in for Bill O’Reilly tonight on The O’Reilly Factor. During a segment on a newly-proposed Airline Passengers Bill of Rights, Malkin said, “So you’re behind this Passengers’ Bill of Rights move. I have to tell you, in general, I’m skeptical of anything that has Bill of Rights tacked on to it.”
She wasn’t talking about the Bill of Rights, although with her writings sometime, you can detect that she doesn’t hold some of them in very high regard (Numbers 4-8, in particular), but she was talking about creating a Bill of rights for silly things like, well- airline passengers.
Airleine passengers are already protected by the criminal code, the big daddy Bill of Rights, and, most effectively, their wallets. If an airline hoses enough people, they will not attract customers and either fold or change their ways. That will have more of an impact than any silly “Airline Passengers Bill of Rights.”
craigie
Fixed.
Keith
Thing is, how many times has Malkin joined on one of these out-of-context dumpfests? Two wrongs don’t make a right, but the irony is still a bit amusing.
Eural
Hey, I’m not trying to hijack this thread but I’m trying to find a news item that I remember seeing several months (?) back and I’m lost. If anyone has a link on a recent report detailing the economic impact of the 9/11 attacks could you throw me a link? This seems to be a pretty informed group and Gooogle is not getting me anywhere. Thanks!
craigie
Right, and it is a quote that fits right in with what she actually says on a daily basis – that’s why it resonates. If she’d said “I love kitties” nobody would be interested.
rimshot
And think of the ratings if she’d said “I love pussy”
dslak
I’m in the same boat with you. If she isn’t obviously fighting the urge to crack up every time she tries to defend herself over this, I’ll be forced to add ‘no sense of humor’ to the ever-lengthening list of her vices.
Darrell
As usual, the left reveals itself to be mostly filth. From the TP comments..and a number of others were edited out, presumably worse.
Followed by tons and tons of typical mindless leftist diatribes like this
No cherry-picking needed either as these comments are representative. Ya know, for all the talk about ‘freepers’, there’s really no comparison when you look at the moonbats on the leftist sites. Both sides are not “equally” extreme, not by a long shot.
Jimmy Mack
The unbigoted left at its finest. Good to see that George Soros funding of Think Progress is paying dividends in the form of such thoughtful leftist commentary.
Otto Man
Should we stop the thread so that Darrell and Jimmy Mack can get their panties unwadded?
jake
Bartender, get this little lady a Medal of Honor and a desk in the State Department!
I suspect she will come through unscathed and if not…um…so what? Let me know when FAUX dumps O’Reilly and starts broadcasting the Malkin Report. That would be damn funny.
Kirk Spencer
No cherry picking? Bah. “numerous remarks edited” was ONE. And some discussion as it’s a new thing on that list to have a word or phrase [edited] instead of seeing the whole thing dumped.
And there are over 20 messages starting about a third of the way down where “mandolin” does a darrell and the thread takes off down that sort of road.
Oh, btw, Darrell? I don’t see any death threats in there. Of which I’ve seen several posted to left-wing pundits. So I’m going to have to agree with the words of not equally extreme, but not the way you mean it.
dslak
Some liberals are racist assholes. QED, no conservatives are racist assholes.
Darrell
No doubt left wing pundits fabricating death threats from unsourced emails in many if not most cases in order to raise their “victim status”. Seriously, if the threats were authentic, why not send to the police or FBI for investigation to root out those “conservatives” for the punishment they deserve?
Pb
Indeed–another Freudian slip for Miss Internment.
grumpy realist
Ah yes, the inevitable Darrell attempt to change the topic of discussion.
Ms. Malkin might want to do a Google search on “Bill of Rights” and see how many other areas the phrase has shown up connected with before making any commentary.
What will be most amusing will be to listen to the libertarians wailing about the Total Evil of regulations and how this should be Left Up To The Market once again. Ignoring, of course, that the call for such a “Passenger’s Bill of Rights” is due to the fact that the airline companies in their “voluntary self-policing” have not been providing customers what they want. This is how regulations usually get constructed.
Fascinating how for all the talk of libertarians’ lauding of self-organization of systems, the decision by a sizable chunk of consumers to demand regulations covering a service the consumers pay for is somehow considered verboten.
carpeicthus
It’s still funny. Plus, she might not have meant it that way, but it doesn’t make it not true.
Otto Man
Good thing Malkin never does anything like that.
carpeicthus
Both sides are not “equally” extreme, not by a long shot.
It’s interesting when Darrell manages to be so wrong that he says something correct. Clocks running backwards are correct even more often and broken ones.
carpeicthus
*than* broken ones.
jake
Poor Darrell, he thought the right had a monopoly on slavering cretins who have their heads stuck up their arseholes.
dslak
No doubt those racist comments about Malkin at Think Progress were posted by clandestine conservatives in order to make liberals look like racists. Yeah, that’s it . . .
Kelly
I used to read Malkin’s blog, but stopped. I want more reasoned opinion than rhetoric, and she fell far short.
However, I want to defend the Bill of Rights issue. Yes, many people do adopt this phrase,but I’ve always found that it is meant to do the same thing as the original Bill of Rights the Founders of the US created — to remind each of us that we only have rights if we enumerate them to ourselves and then stand up for them and don’t let others steal them from us (as England was happily treading on the colonist’s rights). There are no doubt some who would argue that customers of an airline deserved to sit on the runway for ten hours, if they bought a ticket for a carrier that would do something so horrible (which presumes you would imagine that such a lunatic decision would be allowed to stand for more than two hours at most). The Airline Passenger’s Bill of Rights does not have any force of law, it is more to remind each of us that we don’t have to accept being treated this way. And, perhaps, to remind the airlines that passengers aren’t baggage…the thought of not having use of a restroom for 9 hours…gah (I know the guys aren’t that sympathetic, but I’ve had three children)!
RSA
I also think everyone making fun of Malkin is engaging in payback; it just happens to have magnified irony when applied to the author of In Defense of Internment. Oh, and some commentators on liberal blogs may be idiots. Who would have guessed? We should all turn our attention to defending liberalism in general, obviously, because it’s well-known that anonymous blog commentators represent the heart and soul of liberalism.
Andrew
Darrell accidentally left out the attributions, which are fairly important, because they really let us know the depths to which the Democrat party regularly sinks:
Nancy Pelosi said:
Hillary Clinton said:
Michael Moore and Howard Dean, in unison:
Barack Obama:
Jacques Chirac, as translated b John Kerry:
Jimmy Mack
Look, Dickwad, I don’t like Malkin and I don’t think anyone else here does either. That’s not the point. The point is that I respect her right to free speech and don’t believe it should be drowned out by leftard hate speech. Is that so hard for you shitheads to understand?
Pb
Some of the stupider ones probably were. :)
dslak
Is it because she’s a Filipina, you racist?
Andrew
Shorter Jimmy Mack:
Jimmy Mack
My wife is a Filipina, fuckhead.
dslak
The plot thickens . . .
Jimmy Mack
Let’s cut the garbage here: we all know what this Passenger Bill of Rights is about. It’s about not repeating the awful crime of the mullahs who were oh so unfairly taken off that plane a few months ago. They ought to call it by what it really is The Mullahs Fly Free program.
Pb
No, that program was firmly in place just after 9/11…
ThymeZone
Malkin? The other day it was Broder?
Why would anyone waste their time paying any attention to these fools?
Hey, I know, let’s invite Darrell to write fifty more posts on this subject. I mean, as long as we are making good use of our time and everything.
As far as airlines holding people on planes for hours … and the recent Jet Blue incident, does anyone have some facts about the thing other than the one-sentence superficial nonstory we’ve heard so far? Why wasn’t the plane pulled to the gate and why weren’t the passengers deplaned? Do we have an explanation?
Meanwhile, I’d also like to know why passengers can’t call 911 and say that there’s an emergency, that they need to get out of the plane, and why that would’t bring a response. There’s a rescue team at that airport, what were they doing? Watching TCM and sitting by their fireplace all day? WTF?
LBNL, Jet Blue is not on my No Fly List and I have no intention of every buying a ticket from them until I know that this kind of crap will never happen again on their airline.
Corporations can treat people like shit mainly because people will line up to be treated like shit by corporations, eagerly bending over and taking it in the ass as often as possible.
ThymeZone
“now on my No Fly List”
Fucking non-editable posts and fucking ten-crashes-a-day website.
The Other Andrew
Believing in gravity, the Bill of Rights, evolution, at one point the insurgency, global warming, etc. apparently makes one a “leftard”. This reminds me of the “Bush is a genius!” stuff. I have no doubt that, at any moment, the American public will finally realize that Bush was brilliant all along, just as non-white people will realize that it’s the Republican party that really has their best interests at heart. (So long as they don’t turn on talk radio or Lou Dobbs, anyway.)
RSA
What bullshit. Have you actually read any of the proposals? They’re all about compensation and transparency when airlines bump passengers, have them sit on planes on the ground for hours, lose their luggage, and so forth. I think treating at a “bill” of “rights” is silly, but I haven’t seen anything obviously stupid about what should be included. I think that one reason some people are elevating this to a political issue is that when you’re on an airplane, you’ve put yourself in a situation where it’s hard to object to being mistreated (e.g. made to sit in a plane for eight hours at a time on the tarmac) without being labeled a troublemaker and having the law sicced on you. Some people may not mind this.
Pb
Sure. I mean, it’s a bill, and it would ensure that passengers have certain rights, so it’s just silly to call it a “bill” of “rights”… How about calling it the Compensation and Restitution for Airline Passengers Act of 2007 instead?
jake
Does JM at last have a point? Read on!
Alas! JM has fallen into the “I don’t have a fucking clue about what the First Amendment says” trap. It really is very simple: Only the government* can interfere with a person’s right to free speech**. There is no: Be nice, or take turns clause in the 1st Am.
This means private citizens can tell each other to shut the hell up all day long. It may be rude or bigoted or even illegal (in the case of some death threats) it is not and can never be a violation of First Am. rights. So shut the fuck up.
j
*Or certain government-type agencies.
**Or other forms of expression.
Andrew
This is even more confusing. Why did you marry a Filipina when you’re so racist against them?
RSA
See, that’s the sticking point. Our constitutional Bill of Rights recognizes some (inherent) rights as being unalienable. It doesn’t ensure that we have them; it just identifies the ones we already have that are worth protecting from excesses of the government. (Disclaimer: Not a constitutional scholar.) In contrast, I don’t have a right to be notified “within ten minutes of a delay of known diversions, delays and cancellations”, as one proposal has it. (That would be great, just not a right.) I think the alternative you propose, Compensation and Restitution for Airline Passengers Act, is pretty reasonable.
itsandy
John, the more of you I read, the more I like you. As a Dem, when I read that headline “Congressman proposes airline passenger bill of rights,” I thought to myself, “please don’t let this be a Democrat.” It’s that kind of crap that makes even moderate Republicans say maybe we shouldn’t have the keys to the car.
Pb
RSA,
…which this isn’t, obviously. It isn’t The Bill Of Rights, but rather a (specific) bill outlining certain rights.
Heh. Boy I’m good. But is it as clever as ‘The PATRIOT Act’?
jake
The thing is, “Bill of Rights” has become a cutesy PR term. If you go into a hospital, there are (or should be) Patient BoR posted every where. Many companies have Customer BoR. Why? In many cases it sounds nicer than “Illegal crap we aren’t allowed to do and because we or an organization like ours already got caught doing it the government told everyone to tell you we can’t do it OR ELSE.”
In other cases it is designed to give the consumer a warm fuzzy. In no case does it confer rights in the same way the real BoR does.
tBone
Look, whackjobs, your precious Bill of “Rights” was basically just intended as a series of suggestions, not gospel law (except for the 2nd Amendment, which is sacrosanct). You can whine all you want about your precious “rights,” but the fact is the terrorists want to kill us. I don’t think you’ll be too worried about your “rights” when you’re being shoved into a mass grave. Stupid leftards.
tBone
Why is The Jimmy so angry? And shrill? That’s not the way to attract voters, you know.
RSA
Pb wrote:
You are. Make me look like an idiot by repeating your acronym without realizing what it was. I hate you.
ThymeZone
You correct, jakester. It’s what Lewis Lapham once described as “America as concierge.” Government as a means to provide you with the kind of services you might expect in a hotel.
Things like “victim bill of rights” for example, which has prostituted criminal justice into a concierge for victims and those who want to be treated as victims. It has turned criminal justice on its head.
demimondian
Yesterday you might have noticed a shortage of commentary from the wise demimondian (or the not-so-wise demimondian with whom I’m more familiar). That’s because demi got to spend six hours in planes flying from Seattle to San Francisco and back. For those of you in the home audience, that’s two one hour and forty minute flights. The rest of the time? Yup, on the tarmac.
Now, just to add insult to injury, the airline KNEW about the first delay before they pulled away from the gate, since there was a ground halt at SFO. But, rather than actually let the market act transparently (by allowing customers to, say, switch planes), they delayed the plane *on the ground*, artificially preventing competition.
There is no free market in air transport, and consumers have no redress when airlines exploit their de facto monopolies. Either those single-airport monopolies need to be broken up, or regulations need teeth.
ThymeZone
Not that simple. They are usually at the mercy of moving ATC time slots, and have to be ready to move on short notice. If they miss a slot, it can create even worse chaos. ATC doesn’t care if planes have to queue up and wait for slots, and the airlines have no power over the system’s peculiarities most of the time. But this is not directly related to the kind of incident we are now working, the Jet Blue thing where pax were held on a plane all day apparently because the airline didn’t want to lose the revenue.
Not all holds are the same thing even though the look the same from inside the plane.
Faux News
“My wife is a Filipina, fuckhead”.
Well she certainly has our sympathies here on BJ. At least Darrell is a single, unemployed 40 year old mouthbreather who lives in his parents’ basement.
To think some poor woman has to be subjected to Jimmy Mack all day is really quite sad. You being an obnoxious asshole and all that…
ThymeZone
They make 15-wides with basements? I did not know that.
Ted
Hey Darrell! Want me to grab some comments from Free Republic about any Democrat, black person, gay, or Jew? No? Didn’t think so.
You fucking moron. This all came about in response to crap like airlines forcing people to stay in planes on the tarmac for several hours on a stretch because they didn’t want to lose the fares and couldn’t launch the flight. And crap like removing Sihk Indian passengers because they look “A-rab” when they wouldn’t know the first thing about Islam. Or, for that matter, removing people from muslim countries simply because they, shocker!, appear to be from muslim countries. Hell, I bet some Italians got screwed by this practice.
This is not some “protect the terrorist” plot, you paranoid chairborne warrior.
CaseyL
A few years back, some car company built an ad campaign around a “Bill of Rights” for people who buy cars. It struck me as offensively trivializing, since it elevated consumerism to a human rights issue.
That probably wouldn’t have bothered me as much as it did, if the culture around it (i.e., American culture) hadn’t already pretty much defined consumerism as its raison d’etre, and hadn’t already replaced the concept of “citizens” with “consumers of governmental services.”
Does this new so-called “Bill of RIghts” for airline passengers mean respecting peoples’ Constitutional rights? That is, no more unreasonable searches, no more tossing Islamic passengers off flights because their prayers scare paranoid idiots, and no more confiscating body lotions and haircare products because some dumbass who knows nothing about chemistry thinks you can conceal explosives in a bottle of shampoo?
Or are the airlines, like that car company, making a self-congratulatory fuss over doing things they should be doing honestly and correctly in the first place?
Pb
RSA,
Thanks, but I really can’t take credit for that. I thought you’d figure it out, but somehow this outcome was more fun. :)
smijer
Reckon is she skeptical about the Taxpayers Bill of Rights?
Zifnab
So, you’re saying this would be the CRAP Act?
How about the Protections Encompassing Necessary Inflight Suspecions Act? The Conditions Resulting in Airlines Scheduling Holdups Act? The Uniform Flight Operations Act?
smijer
Hmmm. Sorry if this is a double post… Reckon how MM feels about the TABORs
Ted
Such as Darrell, and to the delight of him and Jimbo Macky. Solid bet neither one of them has ever left this country beyond going to Mexico.
demimondian
Um…bullshit.
The plane wasn’t going to make its ATC slot *no matter what*, both because there had been another (equally unannounced) crew delay pushing the 7:54 departure to 9:25, and because at 9:25 the plane was going to pull back from the gate (which requires no slot) and then do what? Be denied a takeoff slot because of a multi-hour ground hold at SFO.
Pb
Zifnab,
I like the CRASH Act, that’s pretty good.
Ted
I don’t know. The existing acronym is hilarious in its apparent accidental nature.
ThymeZone
Oops, you’re right. The airline has nothing to do with its $20m piece of gear, and fragile schedule, and crew time, that to fuck with you and piss you off.
You are right, that’s what happened. Sorry, I won’t bother troubling you with facts.
Maybe you ought to visit an airline operations center, you might learn something. Well, no, take somebody with you, maybe THEY will learn something. You won’t.
Zifnab
No. Of course not. Because the terrorists want to kill us.
Seriously, though, there are points to be made here. Namely, the corporate industry treats the plebian consumer masses like crap on a number of occations. The legal system – you know, the thing that was designed to handle these disputes – has been entirely co-opted by partisan rhetoric. So rather than letting irrate consumers file class action lawsuits against unscrupulous companies (Tort Reform! They’re attacking capitalism!), or using the court system to demand money back for services that went unprovided (Maybe you should stop bitching and shop somewhere else. No refunds.), the average consumer’s options amount to consume or do not consume. The more monopolistic the system, the worse it gets.
There’s no such thing as corporate accountability, except when one corporation desides to muscle against another. A Bill of Rights doesn’t magically solve this problem, but it does open a new avenue for irrate customers to attack from. Perhaps one more set of laws on the books isn’t the solution, but Malkin refuses to acknowledge the problem (because she’s a corporate shill) and doesn’t move the ball forward on reconciling the difference between corporate greed and consumer satisfaction. So she’s a useless pundit, embracing the status quo for absolutely no good reason. And she’s also a whinny, self-pitying, Paris Hilton FOX News wanna-be. So she deserves all the crap thrown at her, if only because of karmic justice.
srv
Actually, you don’t know WTF you’re talking about, idiot. They were holding white folks hostage on the tarmac for hours way before they started dragging mullahs out. I hope you and Michele get to spend an afternoon on the DFW tarmac in August someday.
demimondian
Shorter TZ: don’t bother me with facts, I know about piloting.
The facts are as I have stated — you can look up the flight logs for United 821 on 2/16/2007 if you want. Your claims about the cost of the plane and the like are red herrings of Darrellicious quality. The airline withheld information, and this caused consumer harm.
ThymeZone
I seriously doubt that you have the facts. You have what they told you.
But if that’s good enough for you, then you’re a Republican, I guess. Wait … you were, weren’t you?
Pb
Ted,
What existing acronym? The one I deliberately made up?
RSA
I nominate Ted as Pb’s new straight man; I resign.
Ted
Yes. After checking again, it appears I’m the second person to look at that and think it was real. :) It does seem the product of government work, after all.
You bastard.
Ted
Position is accepted, under grudging obligation.
ThymeZone
So, to put a wax seal on another useless Demi argument, my assertion here is for others who may be interested in understanding the issues:
learn more about airline operations, dispatching, and ATC interaction with airline departures. When you see how fiendishly complex and dynamic it all is, you’ll understand how unlikely it is that delays such as the one described by Demi are (a) as portrayed to customers at the time, and (b) manipulated for anti-competitive advantage except in rare cases.
When people are tired, hungry, late, and generally pissed, sitting inside a ramped airplane, everything looks much worse and different from the way it really is. To add to that, those people are usually not even getting one percent of the real facts relevant to the situation.
Knowing all that, enjoy Demi’s useless rants. Remind him that if he can invent a better way to handle these situations, airlines would pay him millions. So maybe there’s a career opportunity out there for him?
Who knows, and who cares?
Ted
Fair enough. But when situations like what happened with JetBlue recently, and passengers are forced to stay inside a plane for hours, when they can look out the windows and see available gates, and the airline refuses to even let them out right there so they can freaking walk to a door in the terminal, airlines should STFU when regulations come along to address things like that.
RSA
You are a man of honor, and I owe you one (Pb got two unreturned shots off on me).
Pb
I guess it’s my lucky day… I should probably quit now while I’m ahead. :)
Zifnab
That would be evil commie-socialamofacism, and we’ll have none of it in America. If a company decides to fuck you over in the middle of a flight, maybe you shouldn’t have flown with them. It’s called capitalism, you stupid moonbat.
(Btw, when would you be dealing with a non-moon bat? Would that be, like, a sunbat? I know if I saw a bat out in the sun, I’d be freaked out because it probably would have rabies. I’m just saying.)
Rex
Fuck Michelle Malkin. For all of her shrill caterwauling, that irritating whore can undig her own grave without your help.
The irony is that that piece of shit will use this as yet more proof of ‘the hate of those on the left’. I’m a former card-carrying republican who blames people like her and the demagogues that hold her leash for where we find ourselves today. She is a rotten piece of corn in the shit stain that is the modern republican party.
ThymeZone
I totally agree, I don’t assert that the Jet Blue thing was “just another delay.” It was in the bizarro category. But I would like to get the facts behind the story. Without those, I really can’t judge what happened. My hunch is that they royally fucked up but I don’t know exactly what the fuckup was yet.
ThymeZone
Add: I also don’t think that whatever the facts are behind the JB story are going to dissuade anyone, including me, from wanting regulations to deal with that situation. Therefore, let’s proceed with that Pax Bill of Rights. It may force the airlines and the FAA to revise their procedures. So be it.
tBone
Typical Leftards, having a circle-jerk pat-on-the-back party in their Leftist echo chamber.
Zifnab
Read up
jake
Yes.
This has been another edition of SA2SQ.
Mike
I just felt this bore repeating, it was just the right level for expressing my sentiments as well…thanks Rex!
Darrell
I might be for it if the Passenger Bill of Rights would guarantee me 2 bags of raisins instead of those crappy little pretzels and free movies on ALL flights.
ThymeZone
Was that a joke? There are no pertinent facts in that link. It’s just pax anecdotal blah blah blah and ver sketchy bare details about the incident.
What matters is the crew, ATC and dispatcher conversations and decision-making process behind the scenes. Without knowing those details, we essentially know nothing useful.
ThymeZone
Take a rabbit with you.
dslak
You know, flying economy on Jet Airways, an Indian airline, the service was top-of-the-line, the drinks were at no extra charge, and each seat had a personal screen with beaucoup viewing options (I watched a documentary on Stephen Hawking and another on the history of Chinese royal cuisine, for starters).
My point is just this: Compared to the rest of the world, American airlines really suck. Can we get some kind of Bill of Rights to fix this?
The Other Steve
You’re wrong, John. Michelle clearly hates the Bill of Rights.
Bruce Moomaw
Getting back to what Cole was originally talking about: if economic pressure alone is adequate to keep airlines from locking up their passengers for 9 hours straight on a jet without proper access to either food or a bathroom, why isn’t it doing so now? Something is jamming up the Proper Operation of the Market Mechanism here, and as likely as not it’s the factor Craigie mentioned at the very beginning.
dslak
Nothing is more important in the face of spending hours on a stationary plane than cutting taxes.
Zifnab
Plane food sucks. Welcome to life. Like, even first class plane food sucks. Just bring your own. That’s the only way to bare through it.
Also, feel free to find the guy that decided water bottles are a plane hazard and kick him in the nuts. Hard. Repeatedly. I got held up for an hour over a bottle of Ozarka I’d left in my carry-on. God damn worthless Department of Homeland Security hasn’t done a single thing right since we started it.
One more reason this administration sucks.
RSA
Movies on airplanes generally suck, too; bland romantic comedies and the like. Now if I were in charge of scheduling, here’s a triple feature you’d see: Airplane!, Fearless (1993), and Flight of the Phoenix (1965). I don’t think anyone would be bored, at least.
Perry Como
Kelly Says:
Sans-snark, this misconception bothers me. We don’t have because we enumerate them. Our rights are inherent — at least to the guys that wrote the Constitution. One of the main reasons some of the founding fathers didn’t want to include the Bill of Rights is they were afraid that some people would see that as the BoR listed the only rights that the people had. And any time some mouth breather sputters about “THERE’S NO RIGHT TO PRIVACY!!!1111eleven” it reminds me of that argument.
As for Malkin, she a deplorable human being that indeed does not believe in the Bill of Rights. Just read her book on internment camps. But thanks to the right of free speech, she can spew her hateful venom as much as she wants. And I will gladly stand up and defend her right to do so.
Ted
Or maybe if you were just given the right to get out of the plane when you had just sat in it for several hours on the tarmac. Or if you were permitted to fly in the US while Muslim without being harassed or thrown out on the basis of where were perceived to come from, you insufferable prick.
Perry Como
Man, my grammar sucks. Back to the snark, moonbats.
RSA
Back to one of JC’s original points:
It surprises me that there’s so little competition in quality between U.S. airlines. That is, every once in a while I’ll read a news article explaining that if you consider all the factors that might influence people’s choice of an airline for flying (seating comfort, amenities, flexibility in scheduling, length of flight, etc.) the only thing that seems to make a consistent difference is price. People almost always go for the lowest priced flight, all else being equal (excluding, for example, frequent flyer loyalties). I’d happily pay more, for example, to avoid a hub-and-spoke system that forces me to change planes almost every time I fly, but I don’t have much choice, for most places I go. I understand the economic issues for airlines, to some extent, but what puzzles me is the preferences of flyers.
demimondian
JC’s original point is a classic libertarian error.
How many airports are there within driving distance of Seattle from which I can fly commercially? (Hint, the number is less than two, and there’s some doubt as to whether it’s positive.) The airlines which have gates at SeaTac form an oligopoly, and they preserve their landing slots jealously. (To the point that they work desperately to make sure that no other facility starts landing passenger planes, even though Boeing Field is capable of servicing any airframe in existence.)
Lack of competition == lack of customer responsiveness.
Jenn
Zifnab says: “If a company decides to fuck you over in the middle of a flight, maybe you shouldn’t have flown with them.”
When faced with being mile-highed by the airline I suspect that these passengers would have loved to have exercised their capitalistic might by getting off the airplane and going to another airline. It’s a little late when you’re _in the moment_.
Jimmy Mack
Amen. Finally, something we can all agree on.
Zifnab
Flying is already so god-awful expensive that you really do need to focus on price. Sometimes the cost is $100 or more, and that can mean the difference between coming home from college for an extra weekend.
Take a look at the “luxury” plane options. The Concord? Bankrupt. First class flying? Not if the company isn’t paying. By the time you can afford the luxury of comfort, you’re buying your own plane.
I’m just saying, who here is surprised? Flying is basically a necessity in a big country without trains. Maybe one day America will wake up and create a public transportation infrastructure that doesn’t totally suck, but that day isn’t today.
Zifnab
*Sometimes the cost difference…
Damnit, I’m with TZ. Inability to edit posts sucks.
Darrell
You pretty much nailed it. If it’s a difference between, say, $500 and $450 for the same flight, most people would take the $450 flight, even if it’s with a carrier like JB which has an awful on-time flight record.
Issue with competition is, politics controls to a large extent. The FAA says when and what cities a new airport can be built, and the big airlines lobby heavily to protect their turf. Also, local government owns the runways and airport and has a say in the airport location. What always come to my mind is the outrageous boondocks location they chose for Denver’s airport. A number of politicians no doubt got their pockets lined, and/or their buddies’ pockets lined over that one while travelers suffer.
What I’m not very clear on, is how big airlines have been able to so dominate certain hubs. Did they bid for those hubs to get this semi-monopoly? Did government decide who got what? What are the different govt. agencies which are typically involved in this decision as to what airlines get what percentage of gates in each airport?
For air traffic safety and security reasons, I understand why the federal govt. has to be involved. I just don’t understand why government, federal and local, has to be in control of so many of the different aspects of air travel. Seems that’s what’s hurting competition.
Perry Como
Has Jet Blue been getting worse over the last year or so? I haven’t been traveling nearly as much as I used to (TSA is a very annoying joke), but I when I was flying a lot I tried to fly Jet Blue as much as possible.
Darrell
I should have written
as I don’t have up-to-date info on on-time arrival info. either.
Ted
Shut up, you insufferable price.
Why do we have to keep hearing from idiots who still think the Iraq war was a good idea??
Ted
“price” = “prick”
Just so Darrell isn’t confused.
Perry Como
Any chance on getting a post about the North Korea deal? It would be fun to discuss the foreign policy brilliance displayed by the administration.
Sirkowski
I think that’s exactly what Malkin meant, she don’t care for the Bill of Rights, point.
She just let the truth escape her for an instant.
jake
[Research Geek Alert]:
Some admittedly dated information about airports, airlines and who controls what. At the time this article was written, local government controlled gate access based on public interest concerns. (Except in DC, NY & Chicago. In those cities the Fed. gets involved.) I won’t post a link to the Maryland Aviation Administration website because I doubt anyone but me is that bored.
[/Research Geek Alert]
Grrr
Wee. Another Michelle Malkin thread.
I guess when she isn’t actively trying to destroy people’s lives to the point where they commit suicide by jumping out of windows, she’s just a ‘plucky’ and ‘misunderstood’ go-getter patriot.
Know what? FUCK Malkin and her wingnut posse of flying monkeys….especially that Freeper in jail for making domestic terrorist threats.
I’ve had it with all of them. Grrr.
Perry Como
What about all the wingnuts that don’t send fake anthrax through the mail?
dslak
Yeah, you never hear about the Freepers with enlightened views on matters of cultural pluralism. Oh, look: a pony!
Grrr
Damn you and your convoluted logical traps. I give up.
jake
Yeah! Feces flinging batshit crazy freaks have a wide variety of interests ya know. Like assaulting Holocaust survivors fer instance.
Pb
Successes that haven’t happened yet.
Perry Como
The are known knowns; unknown knowns; known unknowns; and unknown unknowns.
rimshot
Hmmm. So when something’s important, then we need some government. But otherwise, the government is a big loser that can’t even deliver the mail properly. Conservatarians crack me up.
CaseyL
IIRC, the “hub” system was originally meant to do two things.
One, it made long flights more efficient (in terms of scheduling, time, fuel costs, and safety) back when there were few coast-to-coast nonstops. That’s less of a factor now that practically all jets are capable of continent-spanning flight.
Two, it did give the airlines who controlled each hub priority in gate assignments. That allowed many airlines to offer better service if you traveled through “their” hubs. That, too, worked better when there were a lot of airlines, many of whom specialized in particular regional routes. I remember when Eastern pretty much had the eastern seaboard to itself, Continental the Southwest, and Alaska the Northwest. PanAm and TWA’s big selling point, way back when, was that they were about the only carriers that spanned the continent and offered international flights, too.
Deregulation and consolidation ruined the air industry. I used to fly quite a bit before that happened, and I don’t remember air travel being all that much more expensive. When I was 12, my parents moved us from Philadelphia to Miami Beach – and for the next 6 years, until I went away to college, we all routinely went back north every summer, even though my folks never made very much money. And when I was in college, I could still afford to fly all over the place.
We’ve sacrificed service and personal comfort (not to mention dignity), and not gotten much back for it. My pet theory is that commercial airlines are engaged in a huge, ongoing behavioral psychology experiment, to see how much crap we’ll tolerate before we decide to drive or take the train.
Rome Again
I happen to like TCM, is this a problem for you? LOL
One word: YUP!
Rome Again
Wow, Perry… that is fascinating, I had no idea, really!
craigie
Roger that.
tBone
Snark all you want, moonbats. The fact is, there are a lot of known unknowns. No one knows for sure what will end up happening in Iraq. It’s a long time until the heat death of the universe, so Iraq could very well could turn out to be a series of spectacular successes that haven’t happened yet.
For instance, maybe they’ll pass all of the school-building experience they’re getting down through the generations. Their distant descendants could build on that knowledge and design some sort of dome that allows them to survive the sun going nova. That would be pretty successful. And then you whackjobs would look pretty stupid, wouldn’t you?
Steve
John Cole: Please, for the love of God, no more posts on airplane-related issues.
The reason should hopefully be obvious.
Redleg
John,
One of the issues with airlines is their practice of locking passengers into the plane, sometimes for more than 8 hours, while waiting to take off. I don’t know about you, but I think airlines should be prohibited from constraining passengers beyond a reasonable time. And so far, the free market solution hasn’t happened.
There are numerous other issues, some big and some small, that can be dealt with in a “passenger bill of rights” legislation.
The Sanity Inspector
My respect for idle appropriaters of “rights” terminology died with that old KFC commercial: “You gotta right! To chicken done right!”
DougJ
POTD.
Randolph Fritz
We’re an oligopoly; we don’t have to care.
Imagine Ernestine as a stewardess.
Punchy
The story of my life. the reason why christina applegate hasn’t married me yet, why my BMW hasn’t been ordered, and why the Cubs are mired in 4th place every year….
Ted
They get the freedom to do that due to the federal laws which make the pilot and crew complete dictators over the passengers while on the plane. That’s fine, and I completely understand why that makes sense. But if you’re going to have a situation where private corporate employees have temporarily complete control over you, it makes sense to delineate a few rights you are granted in this situation. Such as not being held prisoner on a grounded aircraft for several hours.
Richard 23
Yet more proof of the hate of those on the left. Keep screaming your moonbat racism so everyone knows how far out you really are.
Sirkowski
HAHA! You almost sound honest.
Ted
Huh. I didn’t see any racial remarks in the comment you quoted about Malkin.
And, dude, you don’t want me to grab some quotes from Freeperville comments, do you? Probably not.
Richard Bottoms
Dear conservative war cheerleaders.
Fuck you.
Ted
Aw, hell. Some good stuff from the sewer known as Free Republic:
Now some gay hatred:
And now for some bible-based lunacy:
If hell is the “lake of fire”, and “Satan” already rules it, will he be “worried” about being cast into it? Those crazy adults with their imaginary boogeymen…
Richard 23
Sure, if it keeps you off the streets.
Ted
Already done. I can find you hate comments about every last type of person on this planet other than straight white males on that site. So you can go ahead and make your accusations of general racism on the left, and I’ll point out how hilariously blind you are to the right.
Richard 23
Can you prove he’s not?
So you don’t believe people have rights?
Pulling quotes out of context just proves how dishonest the ‘reality-based’ community really is.
RSA
Hey, some of those joke books that St. Peter leaves for Him in the bathroom are pretty funny.
jake
Good gods, they let these guys walk around alone? My grandparents lived two blocks from WR for most of their lives and we still have relatives in that neighborhood. “Building 18” was at one time a nice hotel for folks visiting family members in WR. It devolved into a place where the rooms were rented by the minute and it doesn’t sound like they did much to the building besides kick out the whores before they moved in the soldiers.
Starting in the early 80’s the neighborhood along the street these injured soldiers are crossing (Georgia Avenue, speed limit as fast as you can go without getting caught) devolved into, how shall I say it? A nightmarish no go zone unless you’re trying to score some drugs and/or get shot. I would say a perfectly able bodied, armed, armor wearing soldier might be OK walking around, but that’s about it. I know the military can’t raze the entire neighborhood or chase off the baddies but how about a stinking shuttle bus, armed escort, something!
Link to what RB mentioned and I’m ranting about.
Richard 23
“Honest” Ted said:
So you agree that “Senator Ass” is a term of endearment, then? Last time I checked Webb is white and appears to be male. I don’t know if he’s straight or not. If you read that section of one of his smut books about a guy taking a child’s p*nis into his mouth, it kind of makes you wonder.
The Other Steve
Certainly. The wingers would not use disparaging words to describe the Democratic politicians.
Ted
I know that kind of stuff makes you all titillated, but believe it or not, some people do leave this country for very far away lands. And then sometimes they write fiction that incorporate some of the bizarre things they’ve seen there in their writings.
Oh, and the comment about ‘queers’ having no rights meant just that; queers have no rights if you ask that particular right-wing thinker.
dslak
If you’re a Freeper, wouldn’t you conclude that the only straight white males who could be Democrats would be the ones who secretly support terrorism and want to be forced to bow towards Mecca?
Richard 23
Sirkowski Says:
You mean, let me understand this ’cause, ya know maybe it’s me, I’m a little fucked up maybe, but I’m funny how, I mean funny like I’m a clown, I amuse you? I make you laugh, I’m here to fuckin’ amuse you? What do you mean funny, funny how? How am I funny?
Say hello to my little friend.
Ted
Republican problem solving skills if I ever saw them.
Hyperion
the problem with airline travel now is the problem with many modern technologies: the associated and irreducible complexity (which TZ first mentioned).
creating “airline passenger rights” legislation will do nothing to address that complexity. neither can the “free market” provide relief.
the cost of air travel has not increased significantly in 25 years (yeah, that’s a slippery statement) compared to other things like autos and house prices. but the number of passenger miles has shot way up.
i will fly non-stop seattle to miami next week for around $450 RT. would i pay $1000 for that flight? not with any frequency. and the airlines cannot afford to discourage me; the only way they can stay in business now is by filling the planes as full as possible.
and i haven’t seen many reports of record airline profits lately. they are hanging on by their fingernails, resorting to shortime strategies like screwing the workers (pension plans etc) and the customers (lousy food and on-time stats) to survive. and exploring mergers, which can’t change anything in the long run. moreover, new plane technology merely bandaids the fundamental problem: this complex method of transit cannot be sustained at the current levels.
with complexity comes reduced fault tolerance. this is a truth that will eventually strangle modernity, not just the airline business.
grumpy realist
The other problem the airlines have been running into is the rising cost of fuel.
When you consider how complex a 767 is and how much servicing is needed (even a Cessna has its engine overhauled every 100 hours of engine time), plus all the additional silly “security” which has been added on, it’s surprising that airlines are still flying at all.
The problem is–an airplane is definitely more than a “bus in the sky” and it can’t be treated as such.
The only way I can see out of this is a) reregulate the airlines and b) increase prices. They really should be at least twice or higher what they are at present to keep the whole system running. This will make airlines back to something of a luxury, which is really what they should be treated as, with long-distance people hauling being done by high-speed trains or people driving. (The only other way I can imagine is going back to zeppelins, which aren’t that high-speed.)
We keep forgetting how big the US is…..
Rome Again
Gee, the last couple of times I flew (and I fly very infrequently) all I got was a bag of nuts. That’s not even food.
Andrew
High speed trains! Unfortunately, they are politically impossible.
Driving more? It’s probably worth subsidizing the airlines because it’s so much safer than driving per passenger mile, to say nothing of reducing congestion.
Ted
And pollution. 150 people driving a thousand miles in separate vehicles, or even half that many vehicles, would still probably put out more carbon than a 737 hop the same distance. I could be wrong, though.
Perry Como
It’s a Haggard party at the Motel 6.
Zing!
RSA
Bad one, Perry. You’ve made me flash on the possibility of sex change operations on airplanes. “Would you like a bag of nuts?” “No, thanks, I’m happy with the equipment I have.”
jake
[Rim shot]
tBone
Rim what?
neil
Jumping in much too late.. but how can you say this is a quote taken out of context? She’s using categorical words to explicitly remove this statement from its context. She didn’t say “I’m skeptical when I hear somebody use the phrase ‘Bill of Rights’ for one of these activist special rights carve-out things” — although you are willing to bend over backwards to assume this is what she meant, since this is what a normal, decent person would have meant.
No, what she said was “I’m skeptical of anything” so I don’t see what the reason to assume she didn’t mean, well, anything. Especially when her writings are full of contempt for freedom of the press, the right to a trial, freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, separation of powers, and, well, most of the good stuff in that famous document that has the Bill of Rights tacked on to it.
numbskull
John,
Your argument about the passengers voting with their wallets smacks of that old time religion of simple market forces. They don’t exist and never did. In fact, this is a perfect example. So AA makes a planeload sit on the tarmac for 9 hours. Oooh! Don’t fly AA! But wait, didn’t United do the same thing a couple of years ago? Oops, don’t fly AA and United. Wait, Delta did the same thing about five years ago. Damn! Now I can’t fly Delta, AA, or United. Hope Air Alaska opens a counter in my town soon!
Or how about your brother. You know, the one who lives in Oke City. Shit, the only major flying out of there is AA. I guess he’s SOL. Better get used to looooonnng drives, huh?
Sounds like passengers actually have VERY LITTLE CHOICE when it comes to choosing carriers with reasonable service. On so many levels, they all suck. And in A LOT of markets, there’s only one major, so there’s positively no choice and you’d better hope that it’s not the one worst airline.
Given that, what can be done? Well, you can tell the passenger pool to suck it up, get smarter, and only buy tickets from those magical airlines that haven’t pissed all over customer service. Hmm. Isn’t actually dealing with reality, but makes people who have certain long-held but erroneous beliefs feel better.
OR, you could try to deal with the reality of 21st century air travel and, I don’t know, try to get some basic customer care guidelines established. Hell, even if the industry did it voluntarily (ha!), that would be a step in the right direction.
dslak
Is that what how Yankees refer to Oklahoma City? In Oklahoma, of course, it’s often just ‘The City,’ but ‘OKC’ has a nice ring to it, too. I’ve just never heard ‘Oke City’ before.
numbskull
I’m 5th generation Oklahoman (and yes, that includes Native American). I realize that we from Green Country are much more suave and urbane than you sodbuster dirt farmers from the western half, but I’m astounded that you’ve never heard the phrase “Oke City”. AFAIK, only newbies use “OKC”. I think it’s some newfangled thang from the 60s.
“The City” – kee-er-riste! Now THAT is a new one on me. “The City” – wadda maroon! Put on airs much?
gus
John’s probably right. I’m only treating this as a Freudian slip.