Stuck in-between the ever present Karrass Negotiation School ads (and does anyone actually go to those seminars?) and fluff pieces on god-knows what, I recently stumbled upon a really disturbing ad for “executive matchmaking” from Selective Search:

First off, Barbie (come on, really?) looks waaaay too perky, then the somewhat insulting soft-sell towards the man (”you’re [...]

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United,Priority AAccess,AA

In yet another race to the bottom, United has now rolled out its answer to American’s Priority AAccess. In the article, they quote Charles Cooper saying:

By favoring some customers more than others—I am not talking about nice club amenities but rather obvious distinctions being made at the gate—all you really accomplish is the raising [...]

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Good god, everyone’s getting on the PayPal bus…now I can buy a ticket on AA with PayPal:

Now, I’m not disagreeing with this move by AA…heck, I think multi-channel payment is a good idea for pretty much everyone…good to see AA’s trying to keep with the times.

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Turns out there’s no policy for comp’d bevs:
—–Original Message—–
From: AAdvantage Customer Service
Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2008 12:44 PM
To: Matthew Tarpy
Subject: Re: Elite Status Program (KMM7013799I15977L0KM)
Dear Mr. Tarpy,
We appreciate your recent email to AAdvantage® Customer Service.
At this time I do not have any information advising a change in the drink and food for sale policy. If [...]

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I was on AA 4080 tonight, and something very, very odd happened. The F/A offered me a free drink (a real drink, not soft drink) and handed me a snack. Not only was I in coach, I hadn’t paid for this…that’s when the surprise happened, the F/A told me that it was now policy for [...]

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God, can AA honestly get any more classist? Now, you can only book certain seats in main cabin (notice how no one calls it economy anymore) if you’re an elite or in Y/B inventory. Now, we all know that for the longest time, you could really only get exit rows ahead of time if you [...]

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AA’s finally got it’s new Priority AAccess program out (and according to some, it’s bad! BAD!, then again, these are the same people who are raving about LV’s new elite give-aways) I’m not so sure. As all have pointed out, all you get now that you didn’t have before is a cutsy into the front [...]

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Flew on AA mainline down to BNA tonight.
Here’s the obscenely lacking first class service we got:

Now what, you say, might I be complaining about…well the fact that it’s a Vodka Tonic because apparently it’s too damn hard to stock gin on an airplane these days.
I need my gin dammit! AA this anti-gin aggression [...]

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At the ORD Admiral’s Club waiting for AA309 to board…I’m winging it to PHX today to meet up with Eric and help him drive back across the country.

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American announced it’s latest regressive fees today, and most of the international upgrade co-pays aren’t terribly surprisingly, but the ball-buster is that it now costs 30,000 miles PLUS $100 to upgrade.
Feh. What’s the point of “free” “mile-based” awards if you need to pay a bucket of cash to get the award as well?

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