Originally Posted by badflaps

No Moon Pies on the ISS this month. Any chicks up there? I hope they don't run out of.... aw, you know, stuff....

Originally Posted by 80ktsClamp

Protect your kittens, boys and girls. The SWA345 transcript is out.

Document 2 Materials Laboratory 15 - Factual Report 13-062 (with 6 embedded images) Filing Date August 27, 2013 5 page(s) of Image (PDF or TIFF) 0 Photos

Not as juicy as I thought it would be, but it did have some interesting twists that I wasn't expecting.

Originally Posted by buzzpat

And in other news, Jose Canseco just "accidentally" shot himself in the hand cleaning his gun. Does anybody else remember the ball bouncing off his head for a home run?

Carry on.

Originally Posted by Roadkill

I have to disagree here, based on actual experience. The written stuff sounds good, I was even talked into buying some--worst mistake.

Don't believe these things can actually ever be refunded, no matter what the fine print leads you to believe. The written rules say these are refundable if the ticket rules say so, when buying the "Fly for Less"-- (NOT the "Fly for Even Less", always non-refundable). HOWEVER...
- you must work through special non-rev agents on the tickets, not normal Delta reservationists
- I bought one of these after 20 minutes on phone with agent looking at the fare rules to be ABSOLUTELY SURE it was refundable. When I later needed to refund it, the special agent refused to even look at the fare rules, told me flat out it was non-refundable within 5 seconds. When I pressed her about it, trying to ask her to actually LOOK at the fare rules, she said she had already told me the answer, and she then threatened me, stating that she would have my non-rev privileges revoked if I continued to argue and disagree with her.
- I ended up losing the $$ for the entire family's vacation, 5 tickets, around $2400, because I had 3 kids sick unable to fly and had to cancel ahead of time.
- After months and months of working through the system with all my paperwork proof of original refundable fare rules (printed right non the receipts!), I finally was able to get a "refund" like 6 months later... MINUS THE $150 change fees each way per ticket, $300 per person X 5-- that's right, the "refund" was shortened by $1500 because I "changed the ticket" by NOT FLYING IT even though I cancelled early so Delta could sell the seats!!
- You WILL NOT be treated as a paying customer. You WILL NOT be treated under the published rules. You WILL NOT be treated fairly. These are not normal agents, these are folks who only work with employees and don't see you as a paying customer with rights.
- I have never been treated so rudely and unfairly by a company as I was by my own company in this situation, as if I had no expectation of them having to follow the published rules because I could be threatened as an employee. It remains my primary data point on how I can expect to be treated as a Delta customer, unfortunately.
- Someone will get on here and say "I bought them and flew them, great deal no problem!"... fine, as non-refundable tickets they're ok. But it's like saying "I played russian roulette and it worked out totally fine, do it!"

DO NOT PURCHASE a "Fly For Less" ticket if you have any possibility whatsoever of actually having to try to refund it. If you treat it as a throwaway non-refundable (so get the fly for Even Less ones) they're ok, but not really much cheaper than what you might find elsewhere.

Originally Posted by DelDah Capt

There's some good stuff in the Human Performance section of the report regarding the Captain's cockpit style and CRM as well as an interesting discussion of SWA's 'No Fly list' and the OAK Chief Pilot's unofficial file regarding the PIC.

According to the records, 15% of the Capts in OAK had at least one F/O bid avoiding them, which I suppose is probably normal for most airlines, but there will be some paranoid Captains in Oakland after this report wondering if somebody has them on their list.