Airlines that charge fees lost more money than airlines that didn't - Boing BoingThe US airlines that created the largest, most redonkulous and abusive fees this year lost the most money last quarter. Airlines with low or no fees lost the least.
Accountants have rigged the system. They create a stream to track the ancillary revenue from fees and they look like heroes when they can report they earned the airline millions of dollars of "new" revenue. But ask them if they can track the revenue we lose because passengers booked away or chose not to fly and they look at you like you have nine heads...
To celebrate the victory of fees over profit, several airlines used their first-quarter reporting to add still more ancillary revenue initiatives:
+ Delta Air Lines, which lost $693 million in the first quarter and suffered a 15 percent decline in revenue, will now charge you $50 if you check a second bag on an international flight.
+ Alaska Airlines will charge a first-bag fee of $15 on domestic flights.
+ US Airways is raising its checked-bag fees by $5 each if you don't prepay on the Web.
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TripSay Brings Travel Recommendations From People Like You
Every travel destination has its fans – people that say, “You should go!” What if the person that says you should go just loves to sit in a pool and drink all day? (not that that’s a bad thing!)
But, let’s say it’s not your thing. Where can you find travel recommendations from people like you? Sure you could ask your friends, yet their travel experiences will be somewhat limited. What about having a site that matches your travel tastes with other people with similar interests?
tripsay_logoThat’s the niche the Finland-based TripSay is going after. I’d say they’re doing a pretty darn good job of it. I found this site using StumbleUpon, since I seldom travel or look at travel sites. The design intrigued me. It’s clean, kind of Web 2.0 with nice controls and a super intuitive interface.
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Okay, so New York is supposed to be the city of big commerce, literary culture, and high art - no room here for woo-woo spirituality, the odor of patchouli, or anyone who capitalizes words like Light or Truth. Well, actually not. This Sunday, October 11th I'll be conducting a walking tour of occult New York -- and hopefully giving participants a new way of seeing the city: As a once-upon-a-time laboratory for alternative spiritual ideas, which it helped to export to the rest of the world back before there was a New Age. Here are a few of the historic sights - familiar and obscure - we'll be viewing...
• The Lamasery (8th Ave and 47th Street). This is the five-story building that in the 1870s housed the famed salon of the Theosophical Society, whose earliest members included inventor Thomas Edison, Major-General Abner Doubleday, and the mysterious Russian noblewoman (and one-time New Yorker) Madame Blavatsky. This understated apartment building is where Civil War Colonel Henry Steel Olcott claimed to encounter Hidden Masters of wisdom and from which the nascent Theosophical Society launched a new vogue in occult ideas.
• The New York New Church (East 35th street). This beautifully restored Renaissance-revival Swedenborgian church was a wellspring of mystical ideas in America in the mid-nineteenth century, its pulpit presided over by Spiritualist-Swedenborgian minister George Bush - ancestor to the Bush presidential clan. Congregants included Henry James, Sr., and Al-Anon founder Lois Wilson
Read more : Mitch Horowitz on Occult New York - Boing Boing
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