LKN704

AA has loaded CLT-DUB to resume next year in mid-February - the earliest it has ever resumed. Definitely a route that will likely go year-round once the A321XLRs arrive.

How does your child know what being high looks like? How does your child know they don't have some sort of mental disability? Did a school administrator/teacher tell you that half of the kids in your kid's class were high? Just trying to understanding the logic behind your claims... I'm glad we are at the stage of society where "My kid says half the class can't focus or pay attention at all so those kids all must be high! Blame drug legalization!" Next week we are going to hear about how half the kids in class wore tie dye one day so they must all be LGBT+...must be an inevitable response to gay marriage.

I hate to break it to you but kids were smoking weed in my junior high school in New York in the early 2000s and in my brother's middle school in Mooresville...irrespective of drug policy in either jurisdiction.

Lol, right. If CLT actually cared about this sort of thing they would have built the recent extensions according to LEED certification standards and would undergo LEED's existing buildings O&M program.

I've said this before here but I just want someone to help me understand the hype. I've gone a couple of times to their new store in DC when it first opened...they were sending out pretty good mailers offering discounts like $20 off a $75 purchase. Produce looked the same as Safeway - they might have had a few more "exotic" options (I remember seeing organic star fruit) but that's really the only difference I saw. They had a ton of prepared food and a hot bar that looked nice, but I don't really buy prepared food outside of hummus and the occasional rotisserie chicken. Employees seemed nice, but I don't want supermarket employees saying hi to me or asking if I need help...frankly the less people I have to talk to throughout my day the better. I hated how basically every other general merchandise item was their own brand. I remember they had one brand of canned whole tomatoes, and then a bunch of different varieties of the Wegman's brand. Even the tiny "Soviet" Safeway near my house that is less than 10,000 square feet and the size of a Walgreens has a wider selection of general merchandise. To each their own, I guess...I have a friend from Western NY whose sister got engaged in a Wegmans...the whole family would probably murder me if they saw this post.

I've been in Helsinki for the past two weeks or so for work. Great city that I cannot recommend or emphasize enough with profusely friendly locals. Not a whole lot to do tourism wise (I knocked out everything I wanted to do in three days) but there are some fabulous contemporary art museums, galleries, and design shops. It might be one of my favorites in Europe...there's this homey vibe I have never experienced anywhere else, not even in other Nordic capitals...I hated Stockholm, for example. Anyways, I know you cannot compare transit use/funding/planning in Europe with that of the United States, but Helsinki's commuter rail network is literally the most impressive thing I have ever seen in terms of frequency. I stood on a bridge over the railroad tracks leading to Helsinki Central in the middle of the day (non rush hour) and I counted almost 30 trains entering/leaving the station in less than 5 minutes. In the 10 seconds or so that it took me to take this photo was the only time when the tracks were empty. Another thing I found interesting is they have a U.S.-style late 20th century Metro system in that the Metro is similar to BART, MARTA, etc. in that it isn't designed for trips within the city but rather for trips between the city center and outer ring suburbs...trams are used for trips within the city...but they aren't that necessary. I purchased a multi-day unlimited pass thinking I would be taking transit all the time but I've only ridden transit maybe 10 times or so.

I believe the flights are essentially public charters that are open for scheduled passenger bookings. Viva Aerobus operated into Charlotte pre-pandemic on a similar schedule (once weekly on Sunday) on behalf of Vacation Express. I'm willing to bet a similar arrangement is in place again.

A potential Mt. Mourne station would likely be in a completely different fare zone that would incorporate some type of penalty fare/surcharge to account for Iredell County's non participation in the project. BART does this with trips to/from/within San Mateo County as it isn't a member of the BART Transit District. Granted the usefulness of this is likely minimal as those who would normally board at Mt. Mourne could just drive to Davidson and avoid the fare.

Gossip about the Red Line must be spreading amongst NIMBY hens in Iredell County. My mother just texted me this earlier this evening:

The average income and net worth of people who shop at "luxury" aspirational brands located in shopping malls is exponentially lower than one would expect. People who are actually wealthy either buy minimal brands off the rack and pay to have it tailored (often with a personal tailor) in the case of clothing or fly off to New York, Milan, Paris or Los Angeles to go to a small store you have never heard of that is open "by appointment only."

To better demonstrate this, I created this map on the Great Circle Mapper: Roughly 30 cities lost either air service completely or exited the US/AA system with the wind down/closure of the PIT hub. All of these cities were served entirely with turboprop aircraft at the time of their termination. Once these cities were gone, it made little sense to keep the hub open to chase low yielding connecting traffic that could be served over PHL, CLT, (and to some extent) DCA. CLT doesn't have a similar issue.

I'm sorry, but at this stage the notion that AA would abandon its assets at CLT in a situation similar to PIT is absurd. The Pittsburgh hub was located in an economically depressed area that was over-saturated with unnecessary hubs - see Cleveland and Cincinnati. All three hubs dated from an era when hubs were determined only by geography, rather than local demand. PIT was heavily dependent on turboprop flights to smaller, economically depressed markets. Airlines eventually came to terms that a lot of these smaller stations weren't economically viable (Oil City or Altoona anyone?) and the ones that were viable to serve (say Erie) could easily be served from stronger hubs that weren't in the same geographic region. Once you began to cut those smaller stations (a lot were to EAS markets), it made little sense to continue to feed passengers flying from say Albany to San Diego when you had two other hubs (CLT, PHL) that were in larger, more economically prosperous regions that could easily pick up the traffic. US was going to eventually terminate their Pittsburgh hub operations regardless of whether 9/11 occurred - it simply sped up the process. Mainline flight departures at Pittsburgh actually began to decline several years before 9/11 in the mid 1990s. It's true that Pittsburgh's operating costs were high, but the hub was so well designed that most carriers reclaimed the costs in terms of efficiencies. US/AA can sit here and publicly say that the primary reason for Pittsburgh's closure was its high operating cost, but at the end of the day that simply isn't true.

That's how it works in the United States and Canada. Crews at some foreign carriers overseas typically start/end their work assignment at an airline operations center/HQ/office building located on or adjacent to airport property and then take a shuttle bus directly to the aircraft.

Forget the crowded gate areas. Forget the nasty bathrooms. Forget the fact that you are about to board a cramped AA "Oasis" plane. The worst part about walking through B/C is easily the lack of spatial awareness people have - it's as if some folks have never been out in public before. Also, what is that man leaning on in the right hand side of the photo - a casket?

Ironically even though they took a buzzsaw to their LAX network (dropping over 15 destinations since the pandemic), AA still has more gates than any other carrier at LAX. It's not really a slot situation at JFK either - for years AA had slots at JFK that were unused and AA management publicly admitted that they were forced to give up slots at JFK simply because they were unaware that they possessed them - in short, even when AA had the slots at JFK, they didn't know how to use them effectively. The reality is that markets like LAX and NYC are filled with folks who actually care about the product, and that clientele is simply not AA's target market. As AA management has said publicly time and time again, the schedule is the product, and the company is not prepared to compete in markets where they might have to compete on product. International opportunities are out, markets like El Paso (a city that AA management continuously brings up) are now the cities where AA sees pathways to profitability and marketshare. Things like seatback video entertainment really don't matter to a lot of people, but it does matter when competing in a high yielding market like NYC/WAS/LAX. I can't think of any reason why anyone who lives in NYC would actively choose to fly AA when Delta, JetBlue, and United offer a better product and schedule. It's not for nothing that United is spending billions and billions of dollars to add seatback entertainment to its domestic fleet.