Sure agree with this 100%!

how do less people raise fares? That hasn't seemed to work in the past.

Not sure I understand. After crew goes illegal in the middle of a 121 operation,
you can just switch to part 91 and keep going? Could they legally have flown the plane back to LAX? :confused:

Totally agree with you. It was a nightmare in the northeast this past weekend. You should have seen LGA. Passengers sleeping in front of restrooms and shoe shine booths. Total nightmare. My flight along with MANY others pre-cancelled. One passenger asked me what the hell was going on. I calmly stated to them, the airlines are not in the position to pay a $4 mil penalty for weather delays and would not think of keeping you guys stranded on an airplane for 3+ hours. Their perfectly fine letting the airports take care of your're well being. Thank your passenger bill of rights. You earned it! as for the VA crew, looks to me like the captain at least was trying to keep the pax informed at all times (from the cabin and not the cockpit mind you) and to me speaks wonders, I don't fault them at all.

I wonder how many PAX actually lived in the burbs of NY, NJ or even CT? They probably could have gotten home sooner from Newburgh than they would have if they were dropped into JFK at the wrong time. I think theres also a MTA North train not too far away either...

Fly Girls
 

If the IFE was working the whole time, maybe they could show episodes of the following. Should be fun.



Airline Floats Trial Balloon With 'Fly Girls' Reality Show
By SUSAN CAREY -- WSJ
MARCH 16, 2010

Virgin America is putting two long-standing marketing credos to the test: Sex sells—and there's no such thing as bad publicity.

The U.S. carrier, which has been losing money since its launch in 2007, is hoping to get an inexpensive lift from a new reality show, "Fly Girls," featuring five of its female flight attendants who bicker, party, pout, flirt and worry about their love lives while living together in a sumptuous "crash pad."

Collins Avenue Productions, a Los Angeles company that specializes in reality-TV series, pitched the idea to Virgin America after its executives tried the airline, says Porter Gale, vice president of marketing of the San Francisco-based carrier. Virgin let the producers and cameramen fly free during the filming but didn't invest in the project.

For a young airline with a limited marketing budget, the TV series "will have an amplifier effect and we will get exposure, press and buzz," Ms. Gale says.

One brand consultant expressed doubts about an airline hitching its wagon to this sort of reality show. "It's like 'Jersey Shore' goes to flight," says David Srere, co-president and chief executive of brand strategy consultants Siegel+Gale, referring to the MTV reality series that follows eight housemates at the shore and their less-than-highbrow pursuits.

Mr. Srere, who has seen only trailers for "Fly Girls," says, "There's a disconnect between how Virgin American wants to portray itself and how the brand will be shown on TV."

Virgin America spokeswoman Abby Lunardini says the series "is definitely a calculated risk. But our planes and service approach are pretty different from what people might expect on a typical domestic flight. The show allows us to tell that story in a visually compelling and authentic way."

Closely held Virgin America is 25% owned by Virgin Group Ltd., Sir Richard Branson's conglomerate of Virgin-branded companies. Sir Richard has some cameos in the series although he has no day-to-day role at Virgin America. "This show is in the spirit of how Richard Branson does marketing," Ms. Gale says. "He pushes the envelope."

"Fly Girls" will make its debut March 24 on the CW Network, a joint venture between Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corp., and run weekly for eight half-hour episodes. It also will appear on Virgin America's inflight entertainment systems.

The show is somewhat anachronistic. For one thing, none of the leading cast members is male, whereas men account for a quarter of the nation's 100,000 flight attendants and 33% of the nearly 500 at Virgin America.

And as the five women attend throbbing Virgin America launch events in Florida, fundraisers for the rich and famous and pool parties in Beverly Hills, their adventures may seem like a throwback to the 1967 novel "Coffee, Tea or Me? The Uninhibited Memoirs of Two Airline Stewardesses." Flight attendants have come a long way since those days, when they were required to wear girdles, submit to weigh-ins and quit if they married or became pregnant.

The less-than-real aspect of the reality show extends to the Fly Girls' crash pad, a luxurious multilevel house in Marina del Rey, Calif., rather pricey for people who earn about $30,000 a year.

The Association of Flight Attendants union, the nation's largest, said it is "disappointed ["Fly Girls"] appears to portray flight attendants as party girls in search of fun and adventure."

Virgin America's Ms. Gale says all of their flight attendants, who are nonunion, are focused on "safety and making sure it's a positive guest experience."

The five Fly Girls received a stipend from the production company during the four months of filming. All are now back to flying full time.

In the first episode, the women are shown gossiping in the galley, pushing the beverage cart, stuffing carry-on bags into overhead bins and picking out "IFBs," or in-flight boyfriends, cute guys they can chat with. More action takes place on terra firma, where there is drinking and the occasional bleeped-out obscenity. They also wrestle with parental relationships, unrequited love and travel schedules that interfere with family.

Mandy Roberts," the youngest of the Fly Girls, at age 26, says she thinks the series is true to the flight-attendant life style. "It's very spontaneous," she says. "I could be in L.A. or New York the next weekend."

Write to Susan Carey at [email protected]
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Should be interesting to compare their crashpad to the heavens-gate style multi bunk crashpad in the PBS Frontline episode.

Have people learned nothing from the TV reality shows about SWA and the one about the FAs from Frontier?

Undoubtedly. Unlike the SWA reality show which at least wasn't 100% staged and had filmed lots of normal operations, this particular variant is being heavily managed by Virgin America.

Suspiciously attractive (and properly multi-ethnic and representing different age groups) flight attendants are paired up for the entire show, and the camera follows them around outside of their work environment. Hardly a "normal" crew at all.

It's more "MTV Real World" (which has nothing to do with the "real" world) than a documentary by any stretch of the imagination.

Total schlok, in other words. Still, it's free advertising for their brand.

Growth
 

New A/C: 6 this year, 3 early 2011

New Cities: YYZ, MCO

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Virgin....html?x=0&.v=1