For jd
It seemed you might be interested …
The Tomb of St John, the Apostle
Apostle Paul walked on this path
He lived here for 3 ½ years
Apostle Paul walked on this path
He lived here for 3 ½ years
Apostle Paul walked on this path
He lived here for 3 ½ years
Thank you, DT. Much appreciated.
Off topic……
So here it is, Saturday night, and given that the YouTube algorithm wasn’t giving me anything interesting, I began searching through Netflix for something to watch.
And there it was: Fire in Paradise. The story of the fire that took Gerard’s home. This film is labeled as a “short”, which I guess means that 40 minutes is short.
I remember Gerard’s short, and very desperate post about his evacuation from his home (along with Olive). This film shows just how quickly a terrifying event can overcome a town. “Terrifying” is the best adjective I can muster, but it still doesn’t adequately convey what Paradise went through.
Anyway, if you have a Netflix account, I recommend the 40 minutes. There is a very brief, and almost glancing touch on political matters, but overall the story is well told.
When I first came across this tonight, I thought it was another documentary I’d seen on the fire….Rebuilding Paradise. As it’s name suggests, and as I remember, Rebuilding Paradise focuses more on the immediate aftermath of the fire…..how do you feed, clothe, and shelter the people of a town after it has been wiped off the map? I saw Rebuilding Paradise on a plane during the Covid years and that it was included on the selections on the plane is probably due to it being directed by Ron Howard. Anyway, I wrote Gerard about it at the time, recommending that he not see it (he replied that he was aware of the movie and had no intention of seeing it). Here’s my 2021 letter to him…..
P.S. After the recent Malibu fires, that same YouTube algorithm pointed me to this from Mike Rowe: Who’s Accountable For The LA Wildfires?. This episode will take you a bit more than an hour, but I found it to be both fascinating and infurating the whole way through.
Thanks AZ. I don’t have a netflix but I think my wife does, so I’ll try to check out the vidz.
Just wondering if you are giving out the name of your former airline az?
No, I’d rather not. I’ve made it clear that I frequently flew to Sydney, and from that you can narrow my former employer to one of the Big Three.
Amazingly enough, at this very moment I can’t think of a single airlines name. lol
Is Western one?
I haven’t flown since1980 and that was from AK to seatac.
You really need to get out more.
Western hasn’t been an airline since they merged with Delta in 1987.
When discussing airline size*, most refer to the “Big Four”, meaning American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines, and United Airlines. I referred to the Big Three because Southwest doesn’t have much of an international presence.
“Airline size” can be measured by a number of different metrics…..number of planes, number of flights, number of passengers, revenue, etc. Within the industry, the most meaningful metrics Available Seat Miles…the number of seats times the miles flown, and Revenue Passenger Miles…the product of the
I didn’t start following this until halfway through my career, but for me, one of the most important airline metrics is Market Cap. The players on Wall Street know who has a good-to-great business model and who is just slugging along.
Oops….I didn’t finish my sentence. RPMs are the number of paying passengers times the miles flown.
Pan Am no longer exists? I thought they were one of the original “international” airlines. The huge commercial seaplanes of the 30’s and 40’s. (yankee clipper)
That’s correct, Pan Am no longer exists. Since you began by asking about Western Airlines, Eastern Airlines no longer exists either. TWA? They’re long gone too.
This is a very broad brush of a very old story, but Pan Am and TWA didn’t really react well to the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. It is crazy to think about it now, but prior to this Act, there was a government agency called the Civil Aeronautics Board which had control over routes, fares and the entry of new competitors into the airline markets. If Airline A wanted to start flying between one city and another (known in the industry as a “citypair”), then they had to apply to the CAB for this route authority. Once blessed by the .gov, the CAB told the airline and it’s customers how much a ticket would cost on that citypair.
When the Act came into being, the wild spirits of a free(-ish) market were unleashed and Pan Am and TWA just couldn’t keep up. They both slowly withered until they were nothing and the routes, planes and intellectual properties were sold off in bankruptcies.
Pan Am’s last shining moment was to enter into competition with Eastern with what was then known as the “Pan Am Shuttle”. This was hourly service between Washington, DC (DCA), New York (LGA) and Boston Logan (BOS). The idea was that someone could just walk up to the airport ticket counter, buy a ticket and get on a flight leaving within the next hour. It was the airline equivalent of a train ticket between these cities. The Pan Am Shuttle was one of Pan Am’s last real assets, and it ended up being purchased by Delta which rebranded it as the Delta Shuttle, which exists to this day.
I’ve always chafed a bit at the term “deregulation” when it comes to the airlines. The Act did close the CAB and the airlines now have the burden of deciding where to fly and how much the market will bear for these services. But the government still funds a program called the <a href=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_Air_Service”> Essential Air Service</a>, which puts scheduled air service into very small cities and towns around the country. Some of the airlines enjoying EAS funding will operate on citypairs on very, very few passengers. This is still a regulated part of the airline system….just regulated differently than before. I’ve always thought that the term “semi-regulated” was a better description.
Sorry folks…my link to the EAS is somehow formatted badly. Tried to fix it, but nothing’s working.
Now see, I found that an enjoyable read, and an inspiration to know more.
You should write more.
By the time people are “our age” we have learned, or observed, a lot of stuff that we probably take for granted but which might be inneresting to others.
You never know til you throw it at the wall and see what sticks.