So, I'm flying down to North Carolina so I can visit with my parents (a little) for Christmas. I'm actually writing this on the plane, and I'd like to share some observations:
-
Flying on the twenty-third of December during an Orange Alert seems to mean surprisingly short security lines. As such, I got in disgustingly early for when my flight was originally supposed to leave. (It was further delayed an hour while they flew our plane to Boston from Philadelphia.)
-
Exit rows in an American Eagle Embraer ERJ145 rock. At least twice as much legroom as the other seats. I am using my laptop more or less comfortably on an airplane for the first time ever, which is surprising since the whole plane is the size of a postage stamp.
-
I miss having a laptop small enough that I can hibernate it and stick it in the seat-back pocket in front of me. Come to think of it, I miss having a laptop that I can hibernate.
-
When you are building a new satellite terminal for your commuter airline, kind of like American Eagle's B30A-J gates at Logan, to pick an example not at all at random, if you don't want your customers to think you are petty and/or stupid, install more than a single two-gang power outlet, and install them somewhere other than up near the ceiling. While I was sitting and using my laptop (dialed in via GPRS (airlines, you should install WiFi while you're at it, but I realize that's a bit harder)) for an hour or two via the single outlet, two other people came by and charged their phones. There's obviously a desire for this, and accommodating people won't cost you more than about a hundred dollars in recurring costs over the next few years, and will probably affect your ticket sales more than that as people will be happier with your brand and less likely to defect to airlines whose logos are splattered all over terminals with power (of course, now that you failed to put the outlets in when you were building it, it'll cost you a few thousand dollars to put them in, but that's probably still worth it). Sam suggested that airlines might prefer you to buy an Admiral's Club membership, but I'll bet on average that most the people who want to charge their phones and are flying on regional jets probably aren't the sort of people who fly enough for that to make sense.
Sorry, that turned into a rant. Anyway, have yourself a merry season of greed.
Talk about a good reason to stay in the store.
Anyhow, a shop with a concierge???
one of the gift shops at BDL sells little multi-vendor phone chargers that take 4xAA and shove power into your phone; I'm sure they sell the batteries too, somewhere in the same shop. Doesn't help with laptops, but if you don't fly that often, there's a new issue of the economist to read instead...
written with threading in mind, so if I figure out a way to
render them readably, I can add threads.
Mark: I'm guessing that there is a large class of people that
fly a few times a year, to visit distant friends or family, who can't justify a club membership but still do make decisions about what airline to fly, and can affect the market.
plane with enough leg room to actually use your laptop? I
never understood how all these people actually managed to
get work done on a plane until I managed to be on a flight
with sufficient leg room at the same time as I was
sufficiently awake to use it. I got all sorts of IETF
stuff done.