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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Father’s Day, a lot like Mother’s Day, is really cool around the MLB. If you watched any of the ball games on Sunday, I’m sure you saw the players, coaches, umpires, trainers and groundskeepers wearing blue wristbands and blue ribbon uniform decals. We also used special “Baseball Blue Ribbon Father’s Day” lineup cards. A lot of those items (wristbands, decals and cards) were auctioned off soon to raise money for the Prostate Cancer Foundation. In 2008, the Father’s Day promotions raised nearly $2.5 million for the Foundation. The whole day is great. For Mother’s Day they taped a bunch of us sending a Happy Mother’s Day message to our moms, which was nice because we were out of town in Philadelphia. They did the same for Father’s Day so we all got to send our best on TV to our dads.
Unfortunately I was not able to do a Father’s Day trip, but I know a lot of people do that. If I was home and had an off-day, I’d probably take my dad to play golf and then we’d meet the whole family for dinner somewhere like Stoney River. Anyone take a special father/daughter or father/son trip somewhere? I do have a big trip planned with my dad and a bunch of the guys in our family for this offseason though. We’ll hop on a flight and head off, just the boys, for a long golf trip. It’ll be a delayed Father’s Day celebration I guess.
Happy belated Father’s Day to all the dads out there. Hope everyone had a great day and I hope to see a lot of you out for Delta Day at Turner Field tomorrow, June 24th vs. the Yankees.
Tripon
Posted: June 25, 2009 at 05:19 AM | 36 comment(s)
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1. Phil Coorey. Posted: June 25, 2009 at 08:43 AM (#3232259)No Delta flights that day?
Nope. But thanks for asking!
It's like the opposite, only the same.
He just wants to make sure you understand that Delta doesn't hate mothers.
Have you ever flown Delta? They hate mothers, fathers, everyone else who has ever bought a ticket for one of their flights, and themselves. Delta is powered by hate.
I have and it sucked. Domestically, I fly Continental--I get miles!--and Jet Blue because they fly into Oakland. Anybody have any experience with Qantas? I have a 22 hour flight in my future and I'm already dreading it.
Unlikely.
22 hours? ouch. I was on 2 13+ hour flight a few weeks ago (NYC to Tokyo and back) and it was unpleasant. I flew Continental and it was nothing they did wrong really, just being stuck on a plane for that long was a little much. I couldn't imagine being on those flights for another 8 hours.
I think now we know who's been writing Francoeur's blog.
If it's any consolation, I still prefer Delta to Northwest (although Delta now owns Northwest).
I also tend to have odd experiences with airlines (My luggage almost always goes missing when I fly through the US, but I've never had a single bad experience in all the times I've flown through Heathrow, even though most people view that airport as one of the circles of Hell), so I know that my experience with Delta is probably not representative of the company as a whole.
Or at least I hope it isn't.
Heh. I'm a reluctant DL frequent flyer (with ATL as my home airport, there isn't much choice) and actually now that I have elite status with AirTran I'm probably going to shift a lot of my travel to them as it's easier to get upgraded, but I call 'em like I see 'em.
I would probably hate Delta if I had to use Atlanta to connect, rather than getting to go home as soon as I get there. I'm frequently on planes with people who miss connections due to weather delays (not an uncommon occurrence in the summer) and have to spend the night there and take a new connection in the morning; that would be awful, but that's never happened to me. On the other hand, you should know better than to take the last flight out and have a connection in the summertime - chances are you'll miss your connection. That's not just DL, it's UA and AA in ORD and DFW as well.
I'm flying to Sydney from NYC and 22 hours seems long even for that. I'm hoping it's closer to 20. It's the one time when I kind of hoped to have a connection. I'm not sure if my sanity is going to survive this flight. Hopefully, the Lego Star Wars trilogy game for PSP and a Thomas Pynchon novel will see me through. And an aisle seat so I can get up and move around. Qantas doesn't let you choose your seat which is already strike one against them in my book.
Do you have a newsletter I can sign up for, or a club I can join, preferably one with a laminated membership card I can carry around in my wallet?
Yeah. That has little to do with the airlines. Those guys don't control the weather or full ground stops. If you're flying into the southeastern US during the late spring and summer your schedule is at the whim of the gods of thunder and lightning.
Also, I brought both Ambien and Xanax so I was knocked the #### out. Can't recommend that enough.
Do they have sockets to plug in electrical devices?
Concur. There's no need to be conscious for any flight longer than six hours.
Crap. I'm in the peasant section. Ambien it is!
Yeah. That has little to do with the airlines. Those guys don't control the weather or full ground stops. If you're flying into the southeastern US during the late spring and summer your schedule is at the whim of the gods of thunder and lightning.
So I'm supposed to be aware of the high probability of storms, but the airlines need not consider it? And, when storms do screw things up, I should be yelled at? It isn't that Delta is an inefficient and incompetent airline, it's that they're inefficient, incompetent and horribly rude. Of course, you are correct that that hardly distinguishes them in the muck that is the US airline industry.*
* flight and ground crews excepted - I've never had anything to complain about from takeoff to landing, save the small seats.
They let me request an aisle, but with no guarantees.
I assure you the airlines consider it. But they're not going to drop profitable routes because of a possibility of delay. I people don't want to deal with delays they should stop flying so much, return to the pre-90's model where "summer vacation" trips were families in a car and air travel was a semi-luxury or a business requirement. So long as people continue to book flights for vacations airlines - all of them - will cram every possible takeoff and landing into the windows the FAA gives them. That will continue to leave zero room for the inevitable but unpredictable weather delay, but until the greater market starts to refuse to pay those costs the airlines have no reasons to not pass them down the line.
And, when storms do screw things up, I should be yelled at?
Of course not. I fly Delta almost weekly and I've never been yelled at. Not once. I can't remember the last time I got a dirty look either. It helps that I approach the desk with a friendly smile myself, I understand that the personell there are doing the best they can between FAA bottlenecks, airport control randomly re-assigning gates and the none-to-rare ####### traveller with an overgrown sense of entitlement. It especially helps during the occasional weather-related cluster.
I've been routinely treated badly by Delta folks while not with other US airlines. I don't imagine my behavior has been that different. But in all our stories, it's basically sample size. I'd guess none of the US airlines are all that different in operation or behavior.
British Airways and Air Canada are both pretty good for international flights. On domestic travel, however, Air Canada is pretty unpleasant, and roughly equivalent with most US domestic carriers (or at least the domestic carriers I've used).
Generally speaking, I think most people would say that all domestic carriers, anywhere in the world, suck.
Against the Day? If your experience is anything like mine, the 22 hours will fly by but you will still only have read about three percent of the book. It took me three solid weeks to read that book even though I hardly put it down.
I have never had a bad experience flying Alaska Airlines. Southwest is also quite good. Delta, Northwest and United are interchangeably bad, although I've never had any trouble with their customer service people, who are generally overworked and doing the best they can.
That's the one. I keep reading the first 40 pages and then life gets in the way. If nothing else, I'm looking forward to having a 22 hour block of uninterrupted time to get into that sucker.
International flights are a different breed of carrier and flyer. BA and Air Canada are good, but unless you have sky miles to upgrade to first class you should never fly to Europe on anyone other than Lufthansa. The best service I've ever had, over the course of four legs.
Domestic flights are cattle cars. If you approach the experience thinking of yourself as anything other than a piece of meaty luggage to be squared into whatever space they have available at any given time, you've overestimated your worth to the airline. That sucks as a flyer, but until the demand model lessens for flights in the US - come to me high speed rail! - it's not going to change any time soon.
Electric word, life. It means forever and that's a mighty long time.
Not my work, but here ya go.
Unlikely.
Primey!
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