News and notes from around the interweb:
- The most ‘NSFW’ things flight attendants report having seen on flights (HT: Jennifer Billock)
- Aerolineas Argentinas cancelling all Monday flights due to strike
- Lufthansa’s CFO plans to step down. Whenever a CFO plans to leave that’s a flag, at any company.
- Turkish protectionism: Turkish Airlines buys Boeing and Airbus aircraft… but they’re going to buy flight simulators domestically to “reduce foreign dependency and remarkably accelerate the concept of domestic production”
- Why we’re still 2 years away from metro opening to Washington Dulles
- Fewer than 160 people a day ride Amtrak from Iowa’s six stations. An Amtrak spokesperson says people just prefer to drive themselves.
- Singapore Airlines will transfer the following routes from SilkAir to their low cost carrier Scoot. Meanwhile Scoot is eliminating Hawaii service.
Luang Prabang, Vientiane, Coimbatore, Trivandrum, Visakhapatnam, Changsha, Fuzhou, Kunming, Wuhan, Chiang Mai, Kota Kinabalu, Balikpapan, Lombok, Makassar, Manado, Semarang and Yogyakarta.
CFO, not CEO.
Would like to read an article about NSFW things that passengers have seen FA’s do. I dated one, they are FREAKS!
So where’s the story about Lufty’s CEO? Your link goes to a site that throws up dodgy ads (really really dodgy ads) and the article is about Lufty’s CFO, Ulrik Svensson.
In respect to your posting here re the low traffic on Amtrak in Iowa, for the sake of your readers who are taxpayers; therefore, stakeholders in Amtrak, they should be privy to the facts of a complete story on this issue. Instead, over the years, Amtrak has focused its Potomac skills on emulating Pravda by dissembling false news and misleading financial reports to fit its own story.
Prior to Amtrak (1971), at least five railroads served multiple state corridors linking Iowa to Chicago, offering convenient morning arrivals in Chicago for day trippers conducting business or leisure; with departures back to Iowa in the late afternoon/early evening. Today, the issue of low ridership can be attributed to the fact of only two transcontinental trains operating simultaneously on parallel routes offering but one daily train in each direction between Chicago-Los Angeles and Chicago-San Francisco. Such schedules, even when seldom on time, deny any consideration of a day trip to Chicago for business or leisure.
Unlike the highly competitive airlines, Amtrak is comfortable operating as a pure monopoly, unmoved by its Board with their own conflicting priorities towards seizing any opportunity to open or expand a market; content to focus solely upon its money-losing Northeast Corridor. We cannot even imagine an airline acting with such disdain toward its market, as if Northwest Orient refused to realize the profitability of its plum of near solo service to the Dakotas, Montana, and Washington; or, Delta, refusing to compete with Eastern to serve the many Southeastern markets. Instead, suppose they focused merely upon their East Coast Shuttles?
The best thing for ground transportation is the evolving relationship between Brightline and Virgin to operate in Florida and Las Vegas-California. Proving the viability of this business model to provide fast, frequent, modern trains predicated upon the customer experience this new consortium intends to open-up corridor markets, long ignored by Amtrak, that are too far to drive; to close to fly. From there, I believe Virgin Trains USA will compete with Amtrak on current corridor routes; eventually to assume operation of the Northeast Corridor. For Iowa, this cannot happen soon enough, by scheduling service between Des Moines-Chicago.
Until then, the taxpayer can only watch helplessly while New York Senator Schumer secured federal financing for new Acela trainsets for the Northeast Corridor and maneuvers now to secure 100% federal funding to replace the Hudson River tunnels that serve the regional commuter between New Jersey-New York. This senator has also been conniving with Amtrak’s Board Chairman, formerly head of the Port Authority New York New Jersey, to drain federal funds from the National Network, i.e., Iowa, to further subsidize the Northeast Corridor.
The answer is to eliminate the incentive for external political interference so readily acceptable internally at Amtrak by eliminating Amtrak’s federal bestowed monopoly so passenger rail can operate competitively on the same business principles and relationship with federal and state governments as the airlines.
What are your thoughts on the LH CEO?
It’s the LH CFO, not CEO — I will assume this was a typo and not deliberate clickbait
Still would be curious for your thoughts on the LH CEO, as other bloggers seem to dislike him.
It was clickbait. He still hasn’t changed it despite multiple comments. Just a shady move as typical by this guy.