Much, much more….
Pork Rinds, chicharrones, are being stopped at the border. The biggest story besides the obvious. I never did figure out why the pork rinds were being stopped. Swine Flu?
In reading and writing, you cannot lay down rules until you have learned to obey them. Much more so in life. Book XI, verse 29.
SWA, South West Airlines:
Several years ago, I had an agent take a stab at getting the SWA inflight magazine to pick up my material. Didn’t fly. They did run a “business” astrology/horoscope column, but that didn’t last long.
I loved SWA from its humble roots through its expansions, and I admire the “out-of-the-box” thinking. I once shook Herb’s hand, he passed out peanuts on the flight, and he was toasted.
Regretfully, my long-standing love affair with the airline is waxing and waning. Partly, I’m just not traveling as much. I used to work a strenuous schedule where I was gone just about every other weekend, if not every weekend. In the past, a single flight on Southwest was one credit. Round trip was two credit, sixteen credits, eight round trip flights was a free ticket. 8 commuter trips to Dallas, Midland-Odessa, El Paso, Lubbock, Amarillo, and that was a free ticket to an expensive destination, at the time, Las Vegas was the most expensive flight. Or Seattle. Used to be the, the Albuquerque and Las Vegas flights cost much more than the Phoenix, West Coast destinations. Might’ve been how I was looking at the ticket prices.
It was a simple system. No figuring miles, no upgrades, one class of seat size, not complicated. I’ve done readings for various flight crews, and from what I’ve seen, there was, at one time, an insanely loyal employee base. Fervent and inspired. Several books have featured the early years of SWA.
With growth and expansion, there comes problems. SWA introduced a new boarding system, that worked well. SWA introduced business class tickets, and while it seems to be working, the added overhead of 1.5 flight credits, and the added problems, associated baggage and all, I have to wonder. What was attractive at first, the sheer simplicity of the “frequent flyer, one trip, one credit” scenario.
If I wanted to toy with miles, double miles, bonus points, triple bonus miles, and so forth? I’d fly American or some other airline, Continental, maybe. Towards that end, I have shopped other airline tickets for the flights I’m on, within ten dollars in price, but other airlines all connect through Dallas. Added complexity. Which I’m trying to avoid.