Whom Would You Choose - Sully or Slater?

A good thing about news online or in hard copy is that you can pick the stories you want to read, and ignore the rest.  You can't do that with the TV (where I also watch the news.)  Even switching channels often doesn't work because they're fixating on the same inane thing.  It can be a balloon boy hoax one time or a flipped out flight attendant another.

Captivity to such TV coverage apart, this hoopla about Steven Slater cussing out a passenger and deploying the emergency chute to walk off his Jet Blue job gets to me in other ways.  The Huffington Post online poll shows almost half the readers regard him as a folk hero.  This may not be a representative sample of Americans as this readership is very liberal.  But Slater also has 100,000+ fans on Facebook, tee shirts sold in his name, and has a media fixture for the past four days.

The deeds are nowhere comparable but I'm reminded somewhat of the hundreds of women who write love letters or send marriage proposals to serial murderers or rapists in prison.  In a free country everyone gets to have apologists, even amongst strangers.  If only these women could be advanced to the head of the victim line instead of the other poor hapless souls targeted by such predators.  In the same way if only Slater fans on their flights could be privileged to have only crew members like him in attendance.

Joseph Lopez who was a flight attendant himself cites his difficulties and challenges as a rationale for Slater's behavior in an August 14 piece in the Washington Post.  But I'd agree a lot more with Rich Lowry in his August 14 opinion in the Salt Lake Tribune.  He lauds the quiet heroism of Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger in landing his US Air plane in the Hudson River, and contrasts that with Slater's self-indulgent excess that "is not in the least bit admirable." 

On my own air trips I'd hate to have someone like Slater aboard.  To add to my July 13 post on airline experiences  I've witnessed my share of surly, brusque or stone-faced flight attendants, especially on American Airlines.  One snapped "what do you want?" to a diffident old lady sitting across the aisle from me when she pressed the attendant light button to request for some water to take her medication after we had boarded.  The same attendant wore a scowl for the most part of the flight - a passenger on my other side wondered if this was because their flight attendant union had just agreed to wage concessions in bankruptcy talks.  On another trip a flight attendant glowered at a young mother who had requested water for her restless infant after boarding, and took 20 minutes to bring it.

In both cases I toyed with the idea of quietly noting the errant attendants' names and sending feedback to the airline after getting home.  But their name tags that they are required to wear on their uniform were missing - this was probably not accidental.  I also observed their far more cordial and gracious colleagues on the same flight and wished there was a way to track and reward good and conscientious staff while penalizing bad conduct.

But in the aftermath of the chute exit drama it seems these workers just needed to behave more shockingly and egregiously to win accolades and fans among a sizable chunk of regular Americans.  I'd instead much prefer airlines to "Sully" their image after wiping their Slate(rs) clean.  And I'd like TV broadcasts to focus more on real news.

Some Perceptions on Travel Outside the US

A friend recently emailed me asking about booking travel from the US to India, and experiences with airlines. I offered my personal (and very limited) perspectives to her two questions, and thought I'd share them here. This is about personal travel by coach with a close eye on the budget. Anything you'd like to add is welcome.

Q: I'm planning a trip to India. Do you know and use any good travel agents, or do you just book online?
 

A: I do know of good travel agents (and supplied that information to our friend.)

However, the online options have improved a lot over recent years and I've found very good deals on http://www.kayak.com/ and http://www.orbitz.com/ in that order. The fares fluctuate and the best ones may be available for just an hour or so before they are snapped up. So if you've time it is best to check multiple times every 4 - 5 hours, and/or at odd times like early morning or late night.

The other thing is that for international travel their systems don't work well in real time. So just like Travelocity has problems even in domestic flights, these sites often display low fares that they later say are no longer available when you proceed to book your travel. You do sometimes get those lower fares when you try subsequently. 

Frequent flier miles sometimes come in very handy.  Daughter Sheena got a business / first class ticket for her forthcoming trip from Austin, TX, to Lima, Peru on American Airlines for relatively few (60K) AAdvantage miles.  This is on dates when paid fares even in coach are very high.

Q: Which airline have you mostly been flying? Are you happy with it? Have you ever taken the Air India nonstop? (i.e., the direct flight from New York or Chicago to Delhi or Mumbai.) I'm curious about it, and also about its quality aspects.

A: Some of my recent trips to India have been on Delta non-stop from JFK (since discontinued), American-Swiss combos via Zurich, Air France via Paris, and Thai Airways. The US airlines typically have the skimpiest service, especially American, while the European (and Thai) airlines have better food and cheerier attendants. Continental is better among the US carriers, though. They took great care of us in Frankfurt when we were stranded for 3 days due to bad snowstorms in the US.
 

In contrast, when we flew American Airlines and missed a connection in Zurich due to a late incoming flight, they wrongly blamed this on the weather and we stayed a day at our own expense without any help from them. They ultimately paid up months later, but that's a long story.

There are mixed reviews about Air India but my experience on all 6-7 trips on it has been very good. A couple of times passengers tended to be unruly or unsophisticated - a Sardarji swaying drunkenly after several free drinks, and some passengers getting up from their seats on landing while the plane was still taxiing on the runway. But those were sources of amusement rather than inconvenience for me / us.
 

To us personally the Air India crew has been very attentive, polite and gracious, emblematic of typical Indian hospitality. On one occasion after we were airborne a flight attendant noticed I had long legs and of her own re-seated me (and Anita) in a more spacious section. At other times the flight attendants have plied me with multiple alcoholic drinks when I requested for one (may be I look like a boozer.)

And those traveling non-stop from the US to on Air India have generally liked it a lot even in coach - plenty of leg room, good food, unlimited drinks, polite crew, etc. Jet Airways invariably receives rave reviews though I've not used it for international travel myself, and they don't offer non-stops to India. In general it's better, faster and less uncertain (due to delays and missed connections at intermediate airports, volcanic ash in Europe, etc.) to travel non-stop from US to India. So I'd recommend it, on Air India or whatever.

Moreover, the crews are individuals so experiences can vary - I've often seen great attendants and got service to match even on my lowest ranked airline, American Airlines.

Another Uniquely American Feature

Last month I picked up my parents returning from India at New York JFK airport. That's when I learned that the luggage cart rental has been increased there from $3 to $5. This apparently happened in February 2009 at both NYC airports.

Welcome to the US. Most fellow passengers of my parents were quite upset, and many avoided using the carts and struggled with their bags. Back in the late '80s and early '90s this charge was $1 to $1.25. I suspect Smarte Carte, the private company that operates and rents these carts, has a pretty cozy relationship with the airport authorities. This company's website as well as JFK's official one studiously omit disclosing these rates.

The parallel between these cart charges and non-universal US health care (at least as it existed till today) is obvious. It also points up the inefficiencies of this private, fee for service arrangement that makes everyone except this private company worse off. While passengers are being ripped off we also may be nearing a high cost death spiral as also explained by Krugman in a health care context. That means the exorbitant cart rates will decrease demand for them so much that the overhead costs will be spread over fewer carts, creating a push for even higher rates.

In all airports outside of the US luggage carts are "free", meaning these are included in normal airport charges that should work out to a few cents per passenger. So almost everyone uses carts and the per unit cost is a small fraction of that here. It's high time the airports (like health care authorities) learned from such better practices outside the US.

Is Some Profiling Okay?

I think much better of President Obama now though I'm not always his fan. I voted for him last November thanks in large part to the person to whom he owes a huge debt of gratitude. I'm referring of course to Sarah Palin. Her post-election antics and recent comments (e.g., "Obama death panels could decide if her parents and her baby, Trig, who has Down’s Syndrome, will live or die") confirm that voters like me chose well.

Following the Henry Gates arrest in his own home I had the same initial reaction about probably stupid police behavior as Obama articulated to his cost. So I sympathize with him and his need amidst the media circus to make amends through a beer fest. The Cambridge police union had a nerve asking for Obama's apology. How does a uniformed law and order force get to have a union anyway? In India such a practice is rightly banned. It is interesting to see the racial divide on who people think was at fault.

My views on this incident and the larger issue of profiling are unlikely to please either camp.

First, I think the policeman James Crowley acted improperly in arresting Gates and was much more at fault. When Gates said he lived in the house Crowley clearly should have realized how an African-American Gates would be upset about his perceived profiling by the police. Gates probably assumed that cops happening to pass by had stopped to challenge him simply because they saw a black man getting into this upscale house. All Crowley had to do was to civilly inform Gates that the police had received a 911 call about a possible break-in so they needed to verify identity. Instead, Crowley mechanically repeated orders in this just-do-as-I-say-since-I'm-a-cop manner that inflamed Gates who was probably unaware of why the police were there. Too bad Crowley's misconduct was rewarded with beer in the White House, though I completely understand Obama's recognizing political realities and defusing an unexpected firestorm.

At the same time I think that some forms of ethnic profiling can be reasonable, useful and appropriate if done right. At our University of Chicago campus which is surrounded by some rough neighborhoods, in almost all muggings, break-ins and other crimes the perpetrators were black. So our campus police on patrol would frequently watch for black youths without book bags to enquire as to where they were heading to ensure they were on bona fide business. Were they wrong to do so? The chance of the accosted youth being up to no good was very low, say, 1 in 200. But for non-blacks that probability would be more like 1 in 20,000. So what's a more efficient use of limited resources? The only thing is, the university police went out of their way to be polite, pleasant and apologetic once the subject of their attention was confirmed to be okay.

Take also the case of South Asians and Middle-Easterners, including myself, after the 9/11 attacks. I know many of my fellow-Indians and especially Muslims were livid when they were pulled aside for detailed searches at airports. I had much more than my fair share of such searches, but I thought differently. How can I blame the poor security personnel? From my looks I could easily be a Middle-Easterner, and even Anita says I can have an intimidating gaze. So even if the absolute probability is minuscule, I'm a 100 or 1000 times more likely to be a fanatical hijacker than your average homegrown American traveler.

During and after my full searches at airports I'd put screeners at ease and thank them for keeping us safe, and mostly got a lot of gratitude and goodwill in return. Some screeners would then confess to being stressed by the indignant reaction of many passengers pulled out for this special treatment. Subsequently, to achieve balance and perhaps political correctness I'd see random passengers including teenage girls being identified for additional searches. There's some merit to this approach, but using it to supplant (rather than supplement) the traditional way including profiling is likely to make us more vulnerable.

When Free Choice is Terrible

Thank God for the Republicans for opposing this. And may be some centrist Democrats, including the recently inducted Sen. Arlen Specter. I thought no sane, objective person could support the proposed Employee Free Choice Act (aka "card-check".) Yet it is favored by Jagdish Bhagwati and even more so by Paul Krugman, both outstanding economists. Apart of course by Obama and most Democratic lawmakers as a matter of political necessity to appease unions that helped in their election.

Despite its noble sounding name this deliberately misnamed Act subverts workers' free choice about whether to unionize or not. Instead of voting by secret ballot, this Act also requires unions to be formed and recognized if half or more of the workers in an establishment sign pledge cards in support of this. So say, Tony Soprano style thugs knock on workers doors, stare across the dining table and hold the pledge card for workers to sign. Those who refuse can be intimidated, and everyone knows who is unwilling, leaving them open to retaliation down the line, or ostracism by fellow workers, or other unpleasant consequences.

So how do Krugman & Co. favor this over a free and fair vote by secret ballot? They essentially say that the means however imperfect justify the end, which is more unionization. This in turn will improve the lot of workers by extacting concessions from employers, and better redistribute wealth, thus narrowing the gap between the classes. If such ends justify the means, how about allowing the poor to extort money from the rich, or burglarize their homes to achieve redistribution?

Thankfully, it looks like card-check won't be able to clear the Senate with a filibuster-proof majority. Though many people take it as a given, I question the value of unions in many situations, or at least the premise that the pros outweigh the cons.

Unions to me are the most needed when through collective bargaining they are a counterweight to (mostly tacit) collusion by employers to keep wages and benefits below what would prevail in a free market. One example is of US hospital chains that were hit with a lawsuit over colluding to keep nurses' salaries artificially low, despite a national shortage of nurses. Another is of players' unions in professional sports (even though players may be super-rich.) They bargain with a handful of sports team owners that collectively decide on salary caps or player pay structure. But such employer collusion is relatively rare, and generally illegal.

Other pluses of unions include workplace safety, health and social benefits that they can win from employers through collective bargaining and the threat of strikes. I'm certainly for such health and safety measures, but for most of them they are better realized through passage of broader laws applying to all, instead of individually won through unions with the most leverage for their limited set of workers. Thus we have OSHA, or the Workmen's Compensation Act, and even the Minimum Wage Act and can go further along this route.

On the downside unions can severely distort free market efficiencies, hurt consumers who are forced to pay higher prices, and reduce the international competitiveness of US goods and services. Unions are at least as much to blame as the management for the woes of the Detroit Big Three automakers. Wal-Mart opposes unionization (hopefully with entirely legal means) at a high cost to its image and political capital because it understands the threat to its competitive position.

Then there are illegal strikes like the 1981 Air Traffic Controllers strike, the 2005 New York city transit strike and fake "sickouts" by pilots and other airline staff. Except for the controllers whom Reagan rightly fired, the workers get away with holding the public to ransom and breaking laws aimed at protecting essential services. These, and even the legal 2008 American Axle strike where a few UAW workers crashed GM production seem like acts of collective extortion rather than collective bargaining.

Still, in a free society and functioning democracy I realize the need to allow the creation and existence of unions, even if (like trial lawyers) they do more harm than good. Only they should be created where workers exercise genuine free choice through vote by secret ballot, not through the charade of a deceptively named law.

American Airlines Bad, Zurich Good

On our way from JFK to Mumbai Anita and I were stranded in our connecting city Zurich for a day. A winter storm in the Northeast US area including New York had ended the previous night. The weather was clear and flights were departing normally when we boarded our 5:25pm American Airlines flight from JFK (New York) to Zurich.

But then there were an hour of cargo loading delays in which time light snow of about half an inch started falling. That led to need for de-icing our plane which was expected to take about 40 minutes as we were 4th in line. Instead, because of equipment failure and other snarl-ups we were on the ground for almost four hours and missed our connecting flight at Zurich.

To our surprise American Airlines miss-classified the entire cause of delay as weather-related. This way their staff escapes responsibility and enables them to cite their rules to avoid taking care of stranded passengers. Their staff at Zurich rebooked us for the same flight the next day without arranging or helping with any accommodation or paying a cent for stay or incidentals.

This was in stark contrast to our experience the previous year with Continental Airlines in Frankfurt where we were stranded for three days for genuine weather related reasons. Continental had put us up in a decent Frankfurt hotel for three days, paid for meals, and took such good care that I had sent them a letter praising their staff.

Back to Zurich, we made friends with a nice couple (New Jersey based, of Indian origin) in the same situation, along with and their remarkably turned out son (born and raised in the US, yet fluent in Marathi) who is a senior at Northwestern University. They contacted friends in Zurich who picked them up and put them up in their picturesque countryside home.

Anita and I also made the best of our halt by checking into a nearby hotel and taking a local train to see Zurich Downtown. It was a great opportunity for our first visit to a Swiss city. Zurich is a much better and enjoyable city than we had expected, combining modernity with rich historical architecture. Though it was a Sunday, the shops were open and there were crowds of revelers because of Christmas time.

Later at night in downtown we came across a devoted Gujerati son taking his visiting parents out for a walk. For dinner he recommended a well known restaurant called HillTL which served very good vegetarian cuisine with a lot of Indian fare. (By remarkable coincidence the next morning these parents were seated just across from us in our flight from Zurich to Mumbai.)

While entering HillTL we greeted a Sikh gent who was coming out. We started chatting and he became so friendly that he accompanied us back into the restaurant, waited as we ate, then gave us a tour of all 3-4 floors of it with a view of its open glass-walled kitchens. He then showed us other parts of Zurich downtown for the next hour or more, and was an excellent guide, filling us in on the background of various shops and landmarks. His name is Paramjit Bharj, and amazingly he's a devout and fully observant Sikh speaking fluent Panjabi even though he hasn't been to India since his birth. He was raised in Uganda and then came to Zurich over 30 years ago when Idi Amin expelled people of non-African origin. He had interesting views and we enjoyed his company.

Posted here are pictures one of a "singing Christmas tree" with live singers making up its branches, then one of Anita in front of this, one of me with Paramjit, and finally of Anita and I together. All in all it turned out well despite the disruption in our travel.

United Airline's Unfriendly Skies

About six years ago United Airlines had the best frequent flier program. I was prepared to pay up to $50 extra to fly United just for this reason. Now a lot of that has changed. I want to caution fellow US travellers so that they don't get burned.

But first here's what I had liked about the old program:

• If there was a seat available on a flight you wanted, you could get it even at short notice for just 25K miles. Easy availability and no sneaky "fees"
• If you booked your "free" (or Mileage Plus award) ticket and your plans changed, you could change bookings on the same itinerary without charges or penalties, so long as seats were available
• You could go to the airport and fly standby on a different date on forward or return legs without any charges and restrictions, so long as seats were available and you were sticking to your original itinerary (same departure and destination airports)
• Your miles did not lapse so long as there was some activity in your account in the preceding 36 months
• If your your account had no activity for close to 36 months, you would get a cautinary notice from United a few months in advance about the impending loss of miles

Now consider the changes in United's program. None of these has been announced except for the one about the period of account inactivity that triggers forfeiture of miles being reduced from 36 months to 18 months:

• Now very few (and sometimes none) seats per flight are available for "saver" award fares of 25K miles. After that some other seats are available for "standard" award fares of 50K miles. And you may get neither even if the plane has plenty of vacant seats because their set "quota" of designated award seats has been allocated
• You can still change your dates without charge on your original itinerary, but only if award ticket seats in that category (like "saver") is available on that flight. Good luck finding that though
• Trying to go standby on a different date is no longer allowed, even if the flight you want to go on is empty
• The no activity period in your account after which you lose miles has been reduced from 36 months to 18 months from the beginning of this year (2008)
• This is really sneaky. They no longer warn you of impending forfeiture of your miles. In fact the monthly and quarterly statements they send you do not even contain a "last activity date" or date when miles lapse, unlike any of the other airlines.

All my daughter Rubina's miles were quietly taken away last month. She had not been traveling on United in the past 18 months because her flight destinations were inconvenient on United's flights, and their prices were significantly higher. Leave alone sending a warning, United deliberately does not mention the mileage expiration date in the monthly statement that they email or mail to members.

I called up customer service to point this out while requesting her miles be restored. They refused, saying this is their new policy. They said customers should log into their Mileage Plus accounts and then track their expiration dates. They offered to sell her back her lapsed miles - at a price amounting to $350 for a "free" saver fare, or $650 for a "free" standard fare. Thanks a lot. I asked United customer service why they don't mention the mileage expiration date or last activity date on their emailed/mailed statements like other major carriers do. No answer.

Other airline programs have negative features as well. Air Tran and Southwest frequent flier benefits are useless unless you accumulate enough miles for a free ticket within a 12 month period, because they all lapse otherwise. Delta and American charge fees of $85 and $50 respectively if you book tickets less than 20 days in advance, with even higher fees for booking within 7 days. Many airlines offer 25K awards only on the routes with least demand. But at least you don't feel they're stealing your miles outright.

I'll still fly United or Air Tran or Southwest, but may go with other airlines with better mileage programs if their fares are less than $25 - $50 higher.