Approaching an airfield inrange we pickup and transcribe a recorded message which describes current weather and field conditions. Important info like wind direction and velocity, temperature, cloud cover and visibility. Lately these broadcasts read like a book. They get longer over time with useless trivia like “Caution! Bird Activity in the vicinity of the airport”. BTW, what exactly is ‘bird activity’? Can’t they just say BIRDS? Further, why do they need to tell me this and what could I do if I saw one? Swerve?

No secret that on the anniversary of 9/11 that many people are not buying advance seats on flights. In response most carriers are cutting back on these flights to match demand. Spirit Airlines however, in a brillian move, announced all seats *free* that day! This is classy PR and not as costly as you might think. You see, those who ‘buy’ these free tickets will likely also purchase a return ticket back home. (so it is really only a half price fare sale) Spirit, with an estimated layout of 500,000 for this promo, has achieved some serious bang for their buck in media exposure and good will. Will the traditional players take notice and jump all over this marketing idea? Until now they’ve been trying to downplay the gloomy black day. Staying indoors and sulking. Spirit has the right idea with the ‘thumb your nose’ — ‘in your face’ celebration. Cheers!

A long day and this late hour found my crew and I curbside waiting for the Club Dbbl Tree to come and fetch us. We were tired and now also irritated that we were being made to wait. Several calls to the front desk eventually got to the truth of the matter and as it happens the van driver had “picked-up and transported the wrong airline crew”. I have heard all of the usual excuses and fake explanations why the ride isn’t here yet. I thought that this one was a new (somewhat creative variation) but sure enough the van rolls up and out piles a crew with all of their gear, frustrated and embarrassed. The poor driver (a Romanian immagree) has worked himself into an exasperated state. In halting and broken English he trys to vent. Usually when a person trys to unload you just say “oh puuleez — I don’t want to hear about it”. But this guy was somehow entertaining with alot of arm waving and how if he had been “…in his homeland he would fight the guy…” Evidently in the miscommunication there had been some finger pointing direction of blame. As we neared our hotel, I thought we might make light of this and have some fun too. I exclaimed from the back seat, “say! this isn’t the downtown location where we stay ?!!”. The FA picked up on it and added, “this doesn’t look like the place we stayed laaaast time?!!” There was some knee slapping and haaarr harrr and the tension was broken. I explained to him that we have folks get on the wrong flight too. In order to NOT feel like an idiot — someone else has to take the hit.