While the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created on the 25th of November 2002 and officially began operations on the 24th of January 2003, with the appointment of Governor Tom Ridge (R-PA) as the first Secretary of Homeland Security, the Department of Homeland Security didn’t become the agency as we know it today until…
If you read Southwest Airlines’ Nuts About Southwest Blog then you are probably familiar with the regular Flashback Fridays series … well it is Friday and sadly it is time to flashback on the man who brought us these flashbacks. Brian Lusk, Southwest Airlines’ in house historian, who had been with Southwest Airlines for…
I get emails about airlines, airplanes and airports fairly often, but rarely if ever about airline blogging. Today’s reader mail comes from Ross Mitchell who writes, “Are airline bloggers competitive with each other, always trying to beat each other to be the top of the pile? I fly often, enjoy my time in airports and…
Before I dive into this post, discussing another post by consumer advocate and travel expert Chris Elliott this week, I should note that I both like and respect Chris. This is not a dig on Chris or his opinions. We both cover the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) regularly, we both have strong opinions on the…
Yesterday Chris Elliott, a noted consumer advocate and travel blogger … who you should all be reading … wrote a blog post entitled ‘Are airlines bending the truth about weather delays?’, which got me thinking about all my delayed and canceled flights. I’m not going to go into the rules surrounding passenger compensation, or…
The drink cart … something many passengers seem to eagerly wait for, regardless of the length of a flight or the time of day a flight is flying. While there is nothing wrong with a Bloody Mary in the morning or a shot of Jack Daniels in the evening, just like drinking on the ground,…
Bahrain’s national flag carrier, Gulf Air, has been in financial trouble for years, while its much smaller national counterpart Bahrain Air has been struggling since it launched in February 2008. Both airlines struggle against larger, more powerful, mainline airlines and low cost carriers, battling with the Bahraini Government for bail outs, despite Gulf Air pledging…
Valentines Day will bring together a new relationship, the union between American Airlines and US Airways. What a merged American Airlines and US Airways will look like will remain to be seen, and both airlines have a checkered history in buyouts and mergers. When American Airlines took over TWA hostility ran deep, the tension…
Yesterday I lost my companion of 10 years, almost exactly to the day. My trusted friend, jam packed with extra pages, was set to expire today, the 12th of February 2013 … the same day I am boarding flights to Italy and Russia.  When I picked up my dear friend a decade ago it was…
Right now I am crammed into seat 27E, a middle seat, on board Delta Air Lines Flight 2362, a Boeing 757-200 flying from Los Angeles to New York’s JFK, instead of sitting in an Economy Comfort window seat headed to Honolulu … and I am happy about it. Let me tell you why … …
