Yup, he's wayy over the top! I tried to fake it, I held up my Driver's License....and at first he waved me by, but then jumped out and yelled, "STOP! That's not an Airline ID!!" I told him I forgot my ID, and I was in uniform, etc. but he wouldn't allow me in without my "Delta ID"...total jackass.

I know they have been having some issues now that they have thrown some of the non-MCO based other pilots out, but as you said, if we have the required parking pass, that should be enough to get in. That and they should have built a completely separate lot for the TSA! That's where all the parking spaces went.

 

I guess Florida is a throwaway market.. kind of like LAS. (MCO is the number 1 tourist destination in this solar system) But we cannot make money there I guess.. not that that has anything to do with whether there is a base there or not.. just a different perspective. Other than that.. I LOVE the way you think. I'd throw gear for Timbo in a heartbeat if I could drive to work

that jumpseater was a SWA plant.

 

Here's my Air Farce One story:

I was in the NH Air Guard up at Pease AFB back when Geo. Bush 1 was the Pres. As you may remember, he has as summer house in Kennebunkport, Maine, and he used it quite a bit. He would fly AF 1 into Pease, usually preceded by a C141 full of black Chevy Surburbans and two Marine helo's who would drop him on his front lawn at the summer house.

Well, one morning we are out flying, doing our regular mission, ie. fly to upstate NY and do a refueling with some FB111's out of Plattsburg or something, but when we return to Pease, we dial in the ATIS, and it says the field is CLOSED!

WTFark?? It's CAVU...and it's Closed?? We call Ops, they say, Oh Yeah, Bush is coming, the field is closed until after he departs. We say, Closed for WHO?? Vistors? We are BASED at PSM! And we all have TOP Secret clearances, and WE ARE ON THE SAME TEAM!!

They say, Nope, you can't come in here right now. We ask, "When will he arrive/depart for Kennebunkport?" They say, "Well, he was supposed to be here an hour ago...but we don't think he's left Andrews yet."

OK, we are 50 miles out of PSM, and he's not left Andrews yet...and we can't land...at OUR OWN BASE?? We could be parked, and I'll be HOME before he get's anywhere near Pease!

Well, we didn't have 2-3 hours of holding fuel, so we went to Bangor and had lunch, then after the POTUS was safely delivered to Kennebunkport, we were allowed to return...4 hours later.

We saw wayyy too much of him in his 4 years, every summer he'd go up to Kennebunkport at least 2-3 times. A friend of mine took me up in a hellicopter once and we buzzed his beach house, but he wasn't there at the time or we'd probably been shot at.

 

How are you going to work without your Delta ID?

 

He's Timbo. Chuck Norris and the other Tim (Tebow) quiver in his presence.

 

Jesse,


Agreed except for the pulling into the gate PA - I have seen everyone get up and start pulling stuff from the overhead and inevetialby the plane will taxi into the gate with one of the many wand-waivers who failed the class on proportionality, and go from full taxi to dead stop in .00000001 second.

Once the herd senses freedom and all jump up it is too late - the only way to prevent this is a pro-active PA and no one is sleeping at this point.

As far as all the other PAs go it is frigging ridiculous - waaay too many! Oh and at the last Council 16 meeting guys were complaining to the Chief Pilot about delays while waiting for the safety demo video (DALs manifesto) to stop playing. The consensus was that it was too long.

But I guess audible harassment is just part of the Air travel experience:

***In the interest of air safety ........blah, blah, blah......
***Hey listen folks I am an electronic cart with a 120db beeper to annoy the crap out of you.

Sooner or later some airport will pay a consulting firm a 7 figure fee to tell them that a quiet and pleasant experience is preferred to being continually audibly assaulted.

Scoop

And for the Navy guy giving his resume over the PA - Pathetic!

 

For what it is worth, the last few days there have been equipment subs on DTW-MCO-DTW turns using the A330.

 

What is going on with our stock today, over 12 mil shares traded and up 40 cents?

 

You could say the same about South Florida, and you'd be able to cover 3 airports.

Nu

 

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Delta was the "Official Airline of Disney World". We had a whole bunch of L1011's and 767-300's flying FULL, 5 flights a day, from BOS and NYC into MCO. Oh, we also had International flying out of MCO, to LGW and FRA, maybe Paris too, I can't remember as I was a domestic BOS 757puke at the time, but trust me, we OWNED Orlando...and Tampa, and Miami, and Ft. Lauderdale, and Palm Beach. We flew full L1011's and 767's from NYC and BOS to all the Major FL cities, 5 flights a day to each. Oh, and we also flew them from FL up to Montreal, full all summer.

This was before Jet Blew and Air Tran of course, oh, and nobody east of DFW had ever heard of SWA...

Then came Mo'Ron and his Project 7.5 (his CASM metric). He decided we needed to put only the 737-200's (Express) with ZERO first class seats, on those routes, and that basically pushed all our HVC's to American and US Air, who still offered a First Class upgrade for the Business traveler.

At In Command Class, I asked LEO the CEO why we ran away from the Florida market and gave it all to Jet Blue and Air Tran. He said, "Those are low yeild customers, they are families going on vacation, and they shop online for the cheapest tickets, so there's really no money in servicing them."

You may recall, it was Leo's idea to sell our tickets on Priceline, some as cheap as $20 if they were last minute sales. I once was non-reving up to BOS on an Express 737, and there was another pax who, when we got to BOS, didn't get off the airplane. I was about last off, so I heard the F/A's ask him, "Aren't you going to get off?"

He said, "No, I'm flying back to Orlando, so I'll just stay on." He then explained to her that he had bought a round trip ticket on Priceline for about $50, and he was only doing the round trip to put more Sky Miles into his account, which would put him into the Platinum level...and that would give him free upgrades on his future mainline business travel.

Brilliant strategy that Priceline thing there Leo!