Airlines to Charge for Reclining Seats?

Dumbest ideas

March 07, 2011

NewsCore

NEW YORK – Airlines may begin charging for new services including early boarding, fancier meal options and reclining seats, as they continue to dig around for ways to pile on more fees, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

In recent years, airlines from AMR Corp.'s American Airlines to Spirit Airlines Inc. found new ways to boost profits -- and annoy fliers -- by charging fees for checked bags, selecting a choice seat or other services once included in ticket prices. Airlines started charging for checked bags, snacks, pillows and other items in a big way in 2008. Last year, such fees brought in an estimated $22 billion, or five percent of global industry revenue.

But now they are mulling and testing various new fees for services that never were part of a ticket.

Want a seat that reclines more? A pre-ordered champagne brunch in coach? Insurance against a blizzard that waylays a trip? Access to speedy security lines and early boarding? Soon you might be able to get them all -- for a price.

Carriers could tap into "billions and billions of potential revenue" said Tom Douramakos, CEO of GuestLogix Inc., a Toronto technology supplier that helps airlines sell products and services.

"The airlines are only scratching the surface" with baggage and seat fees, he said. They could become virtual shopping malls, offering captive travelers a variety of buy-while-they-fly items such as theater tickets or a handbag, he says.

Two small, low-fare carriers, Spirit and Allegiant Travel Co., have led the way in the US by charging for almost everything but lavatory access and by marketing travel packages including hotels, rental cars and theme-park tickets along with air travel.

A rich new vein for airline fees is early boarding, which American and United Airlines already sell to their non-elite frequent fliers. As more passengers avoid paying checked luggage fees by hauling their bags on board, overhead bin space is at a premium. That means getting to board ahead of other travelers can be worth a few extra bucks.

Big carriers already have discovered passengers will pay for better seats in coach. Delta Air Lines Inc. recently said it will remove seats from its international planes by summer to create an "Economy Comfort" zone that offers up to four inches (10 centimeters) more legroom and 50 percent more recline than regular coach seats.

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Dear Mr and Mrs Airline Directors and Owners -

Take heed, you are falling into a hole from which you will have a very difficult time extricating yourself.

Making money is fine.  If it costs 50 cents to produce a widget, charge $1.  If gas costs $1.80 a gallon, charge $3.25.  If soda costs 30 cents for a can, charge 90 cents.  But Sirs and Madams, you are greedy selfish bastards who whine like little children and deserve to be spanked and sent to bed.

The next time the terrorists attack, and use planes, and your planes are all kept on the ground for several days, and you feign poverty and bankruptcy, I will argue as passionately as possible to allow you all to fail and to go into bankruptcy.  Not one cent.  Never again.

The audacity of your airlines to charge for reclining seats.  The audacity to charge for drinks or peanuts.   Your airline gets the coke at such a low cost, it would be financially feasible for people who make pennies a day, to have a few cans of soda a week and you charge for it - not a few pennies, but dollars. 

The audacity to charge me to sit like a sardine, in a germ infested tube in the sky that at any moment could hurtle down to earth killing everyone on board - including those passengers who paid for the reclining seats.

You should be paying us to fly your airlines.  And that hole I referenced earlier - the time is coming when you will be unable to charge what you do currently.  Perhaps that is why you are gouging us in more ways than one - you know the future and you are not part of it. 























airlines

Copenhagen - A Comedy of Errors and Jokes.

The 'summit' has turned into a joke - well, in fact it was a joke before it even began, but now with 100 + countries all assembled, all demanding billions from the West (READ:  US) for all the effects of global warming and the threats they have had to endure - they stood with their hands out and when they were not given the trillions they had expected, they grew angry and resentful, hurt, and saddened that no one cared about their plight.  The ministers all had to call back to their respective despots and inform them that their new palaces and kingdoms would have to wait - the West was reconsidering.




Copenhagen climate summit: 'most important paper in the world' is a glorified UN press release




By Gerald Warner
The Telegraph.co.uk
December 18th, 2009


When your attempt at recreating the Congress of Vienna with a third-rate cast of extras turns into a shambles, when the data with which you have tried to terrify the world is daily exposed as ever more phoney, when the blatant greed and self-interest of the participants has become obvious to all beholders, when those pesky polar bears just keep increasing and multiplying – what do you do?

No contest: stop issuing three rainforests of press releases every day, change the heading to James Bond-style “Do not distribute” and “leak” a single copy, in the knowledge that human nature is programmed to interest itself in anything it imagines it is not supposed to see, whereas it would bin the same document unread if it were distributed openly.

After that, get some unbiased, neutral observer, such as the executive director of Greenpeace, to say: “This is the single most important piece of paper in the world today.” Unfortunately, the response of all intelligent people will be to fall about laughing; but it was worth a try – everybody loves a tryer – and the climate alarmists are no longer in a position to pick and choose their tactics.

But boy! Was this crass, or what? The apocalyptic document revealing that even if the Western leaders hand over all the climate Danegeld demanded of them, appropriately at the venue of Copenhagen, the earth will still fry on a 3C temperature rise is the latest transparent scare tactic to extort more cash from taxpayers. The danger of this ploy, of course, is that people might say “If we are going to be chargrilled anyway, what is the point of handing over billions – better to get some serious conspicuous consumption in before the ski slopes turn into saunas.”

This “single most important piece of paper in the world” comes, presumably, from an authoritative and totally neutral source? Yes, of course. It’s from the – er – UN Framework Committee on Climate Change that is – er – running the Danegeld Summit. Some people might be small-minded enough to suggest this paper has as much authority as a “leaked” document from Number 10 revealing that life would be hell under the Tories.

This week has been truly historic. It has marked the beginning of the landslide that is collapsing the whole AGW imposture. The pseudo-science of global warming is a global laughing stock and Copenhagen is a farce. In the warmist camp the Main Man is a railway engineer with huge investments in the carbon industry. That says it all. The world’s boiler being heroically damped down by the Fat Controller. Al Gore, occupant of the only private house that can be seen from space, so huge is its energy consumption, wanted to charge punters $1,200 to be photographed with him at Copenhagen. There is a man who is really worried about the planet’s future.

If there were not $45trillion of Western citizens’ money at stake, this would be the funniest moment in world history. What a bunch of buffoons. Not since Neville Chamberlain tugged a Claridge’s luncheon bill from his pocket and flourished it on the steps of the aircraft that brought him back from Munich has a worthless scrap of paper been so audaciously hyped. There was one good moment at Copenhagen, though: some seriously professional truncheon work by Danish Plod on the smellies. Otherwise, this event is strictly for Hans Christian Andersen.








globalwarming

Oil prices: Greed and Speculators

I would bet if they looked deeper at the spikes over the last few years they would find 3-5 buyers causing much of the concern and promoting fear to make millions.

This speculator should lose his home, his job, everything - and spend 75 years in prison next to Maddoff, for his crime is worse in some respects.





‘Rogue broker’ blamed for oil spike

By Javier Blas and Izabella Kaminska in London
Financial Times
July 2 2009

The startling spike in oil prices to their highest level this year on Tuesday was caused by a rogue broker who placed a massive bet in the Brent oil market, triggering almost $10m (€7m) of losses for his company.

PVM Oil Associates, the world’s largest over-the-counter oil brokerage, said on Thursday it had been the “victim of unauthorised trading”. The privately owned company said that as a result of the unauthorised trades it had been forced to close substantial volumes of futures contracts at a loss.

London-based PVM said it had informed the Financial Services Authority, the UK regulator. But officials at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the US regulator, claimed they had been kept in the dark for several hours in spite of an agreement between the watchdogs last year to exchange such market-sensitive information spontaneously.

Oil traders in London and New York said the “unauthorised trading” explained the exceptional spike in business activity and prices in the early hours of Tuesday that some initially thought must have been caused by a geopolitical event. “Trading volumes rose overnight and prices jumped more than $2 a barrel without apparent justification,” a senior oil trader in New York said.

Prices rose in one hour from $71 to $73.5, the highest level for the year, according to Reuters data. In total, futures contracts for more than 16m barrels of oil changed hands in that hour – equivalent to double the daily production of Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer, and far more than the traditional 500,000 barrels for that time of the day.

Traders said the broker implicated had allegedly accounted for at least half of the unusual activity, with the rest the result of others chasing the rally. Oil prices on Thursday fell to $66.5 a barrel, down almost 10 per cent from Tuesday’s peak.

The Financial Times has identified the PVM broker as Steve Perkins. PVM declined to comment and Mr Perkins could not be reached. Fellow traders said Mr Perkins was considered an experienced broker, well-regarded in the market.

This is the second episode of rogue trading in the oil market this year. In May, an oil trader at Morgan Stanley was banned by the City watchdog after he hid from his bosses potential losses on trades made under the influence of alcohol.

The incidents come as regulators are considering tougher oversight of the commodities markets after policymakers complained that speculators fuelled last year’s surge in oil and agriculture prices.

The involvement of PVM is ironic considering the company’s head, David Hufton, has been an outspoken critic of speculators in the oil market, calling some of the exchanges “electronic oil casinos”. In 2006, he said that “if futures exchanges did not exist, oil prices would be a lot lower”.

The $10m loss is a heavy blow for PVM, which reported profits of just $5.6m in the year to July 2008, according to its accounts.

Additional reporting by Izabella Kaminska and Brooke Masters

oil

Greed and Sales

Worker dies at Long Island Wal-Mart after being trampled in Black Friday stampede

BY JOE GOULD, CLARE TRAPASSO and RICH SCHAPIRO DAILY NEWS WRITERS
Updated Friday, November 28th 2008, 10:46 PM


A Wal-Mart worker died early Friday after an "out-of-control" mob of frenzied shoppers smashed through the Long Island store's front doors and trampled him, police said.

The Black Friday stampede plunged the Valley Stream outlet into chaos, knocking several employees to the ground and sending others scurrying atop vending machines to avoid the horde.

When the madness ended, 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour was dead and four shoppers, including a woman eight months pregnant, were injured.

"He was bum-rushed by 200 people," said Wal-Mart worker Jimmy Overby, 43.

"They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me.

"They took me down, too ... I didn't know if I was going to live through it. I literally had to fight people off my back," Overby said.

Damour, a temporary maintenance worker from Jamaica, Queens, was gasping for air as shoppers continued to surge into the store after its 5 a.m. opening, witnesses said.

Even officers who arrived to perform CPR on the trampled worker were stepped on by wild-eyed shoppers streaming inside, a cop at the scene said.

"They pushed him down and walked all over him," Damour's sobbing sister, Danielle, 41, said. "How could these people do that?

"He was such a young man with a good heart, full of life. He didn't deserve that."

Damour's sister said doctors told the family he died of a heart attack.

His cousin, Ernst Damour, called the circumstances "completely unacceptable."

"His body was a stepping bag with so much disregard for human life," Ernst Damour, 37, said. "There has to be some accountability."

Roughly 2,000 people gathered outside the Wal-Mart's doors in the predawn darkness.

Chanting "push the doors in," the crowd pressed against the glass as the clock ticked down to the 5 a.m. opening.

Sensing catastrophe, nervous employees formed a human chain inside the entrance to slow down the mass of shoppers.

It didn't work.

The mob barreled in and overwhelmed workers.

"They were jumping over the barricades and breaking down the door," said Pat Alexander, 53, of Crown Heights, Brooklyn. "Everyone was screaming. You just had to keep walking on your toes to keep from falling over."

After the throng toppled Damour, his fellow employees had to fight through the crowd to help him, police said.

Witness Kimberly Cribbs said shoppers acted like "savages."

"When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, 'I've been on line since Friday morning!'" Cribbs said. "They kept shopping."

When paramedics arrived, Damour's condition was grave.

"They were pumping his chest, trying to bring him back, and there was nothing," said Dennis Smokes, 36, a Wal-Mart worker.

Damour was taken to Franklin Hospital and pronounced dead at 6:03 a.m.
Hank Mullany, president of Wal-Mart's northeast division, said the company took extraordinary safety precautions.

"We expected a large crowd this morning and added additional internal security, additional third-party security, additional store associates and we worked closely with the Nassau County police," he said in a statement.

"We also erected barricades. Despite all of our precautions, this unfortunate event occurred."
The 28-year-old pregnant woman and three other shoppers were taken to area hospitals with minor injuries, police said.

In a news conference after the incident, Nassau County police spokesman Lt. Michael Fleming described the crowd as "out of control" and the scene as "utter chaos." He said Wal-Mart did not have enough security onhand.

Fleming said criminal charges were possible but that it would be difficult to identify individual shoppers in surveillance videos.

Items on sale at the Wal-Mart store included a $798 Samsung 50-inch Plasma HDTV, a Bissel Compact Upright Vacuum for $28 and Men's Wrangler Tough Jeans for $8.

The Long Island store reopened at 1 p.m. and was packed within minutes.

"I look at these people's faces and I keep thinking one of them could have stepped on him," said one employee. "How could you take a man's life to save $20 on a TV?"

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Here is one answer - close the store, and close Wal-Mart within 20 miles of the place, for that matter - close Target as well. To save some money, acting like barbarians and animals is ok. I would play that video everywhere - on screens across the city, at schools, everywhere - that these animals would kill someone to save some money. We have enemies who wake up and go to bed dreaming of killing Americans, and these pathetic animals do it for them - to save money. Disgusting. I hope their conscience works, and everyone responsible lives a very long, long life.










Walmart

$109 MILLION Dollars

In the years since 2000, the Clinton's have made (think Dr. Evil) over $100 million dollars.

$100 MILLION.

That's a 1 with lots of zeros.

And for those wondering about Obama ... much much much much much much less.
And for those wondering about Bush .... way way way way less.
And for those wondering about Cheney - so much less than less than less.

Add Obama and Bush and Cheney up and you get a Clinton. oh wait, some would say, Bush and Cheney hide it ... yeah well, whatever Bush and Cheney hide doesn't equal the millions funneled to Hillary's campaign via foreign sources to Bill (all legitimately of course), THIS year (and that 100 million doesn't count this year) and more than 10 million will be found to be unaccounted for.

It has been the mantra of the left for some time that Bush is super wealthy - not true.
It has been the mantra of the left for some time that Cheney is super wealthy - not true.

Another measure - as I pointed out in an earlier post - who donates how much and to whom/what. I stated that Blue states were not as free with their donations (but generally did approve of higher taxes), while Red states donated more. Apparently, in 2006, a majority of all donations the Clintons made was to their foundation. That's one way to keep it in the family.


I think 100 million in 6 years qualifies as super wealthy.

Given that when Bill became president, they owned no home, no wealth, no nothing as Governor but that which Hillary had made prior to her time in office. Suddenly, 100 million dollars richer AFTER he is president. 5600% Clintons' wealth skyrockets by 5,600 percent. Posted on Friday, April 04, 2008 7:44 PM PT
By Andrea Mitchell and the NBC News Investigative Unit

Poverty? What the heck do they know about poverty. Only 14500 people in the bracket they are in!
In what proved to be an awkward juxtaposition, the disclosure of the records — which revealed the Clintons to be in the top one-hundredth of 1 percent, or roughly 14,500, of all taxpayers — came on the day that Mrs. Clinton called for the creation of a cabinet-level post to tackle poverty. NY Times.

Speaking to a statewide convention of North Dakota Democrats in Grand Forks on Friday, Mrs. Clinton criticized the Bush administration’s tax cuts, which she said favored the rich, then referred to the tax data she and her husband released earlier in the day.

“Now don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely nothing against rich people,” she said. “

As a matter of fact, my husband, much to my surprise and his, has made a lot of money since he left the White House, by doing what he loves doing most — talking to people. But we didn’t ask for George Bush’s tax cuts. We didn’t want them, and we didn’t need them.”

[NOTE: If you didn't want them, give it back. Ms. Clinton, the tax breaks didn't make you rich and didn't let you keep it all. Bill's suggestion in his book opn GIVING that peopel donate 5% ... a little less than most people already do - the average middle class person donates more than 5% Bill. It is only your wealthy friends who seem to have a hard time parting with money.]


No wonder people want to be president ... $100 million in six years. You can't make that unless you play in the NBA.

Blue Cross

Ever think about why you get charged the little fees on the phone bill or insurance bill or any of the many bills we receive each month. It's like gas prices. Twice a year gas prices go up in California - well, we all know it goes up 360 days and comes down five days, but twice a year our gas changes content and the price change is a few pennies for each change. To change it to the cleaner gas +2 cents. To change it back +2 cents. The exact increase is a little less but just a little.

So here is my thought on this. Assume they started this in 1990, who knows when and that isn't the point. 1990 gas went up 4 cents (2 up the first time and 2 up the second time). In 1991 it went up 4 cents. In 1992 it went up 4 cents. We have 50+ cents built in (we'll go for 10 years or so with this line of argument) for these increases BUT they never reduce the cost even when they change it back. So we pay to change it to A and then we pay to change it to B and then we pay to change it to A, but we already paid that amount once, why do we have to pay for something we already paid for?

I just received my Blue Cross medical/dental bill. I have paid, for example, $350 for two months. I have paid this minus increases in rates, forever. For this amount of money I get insurance. Now Blue Cross is charging me $2 administration fee to handle the check I send. They will waive the fee if I pay online. We can't pay by check unless we want to be dinged. Why? I paid for their insurance and exorbitant as it is, I paid it. They were making due before. Now they want fees. You go for coffee at Starbucks - pay $3.50 for the coffee and then an additional $1.00 for employee costs to make the coffee. Doesn't that seem a little ... much.

I seem to offer my suggestions on many topics from music and film to health care - here is a really good suggestion Mr. Blue Cross et al ... you will be taken over by the government and no one will care while you are being strangled because you have followed a path that leads us right to socialized medicine. STOP now, stop alienating every subscriber, stop alienating every human being in America, stop making it impossible to defend you against the take-over mentality. When it happens, you will be indirectly responsible for the failure of health care that results.