Made it safe and sound – and only about 30 minutes late – to San Jose. It’s amazing how unpleasant the American flying experience is now having flown JetBlue recently. There’s about a 2 or 3 inch difference in legroom – and American’s still better than United on that score – and that’s absolutely crucial if you’re over six feet.
But the bigger difference is the DirecTV service. Instead of being able to watch the second Wild Card football game – not that I’m a huge football fan – it was canned CBS sitcoms. Instead of having a choice of movies – (I, Robot or Dodgeball, last I flew) – there was one, First Daughter. And I couldn’t even work on my presentation for tomorrow, because when the person in front of me leaned back (all the way, of course), she almost crushed the screen on my laptop.
One has to wonder what American employees think of the new, lost cost airlines. Last time I flew US Airways, the person seated next to me got an invective on how that airlines problems were principally due to customers who “didn’t want to pay for good service.” Right.
JetBlue and its brethren are not going to put them all out of business, simply because they usually concentrate on serving only routes they know will do well and they’re not exactly perfect themselves. But in spite of the fact that I have a few hundred thousand miles on American I’m planning on flying them as little as possible in favor of more comfortable – and lower cost – alternatives.
