On Thursday morning of this last week Carol, back in her hotel room in NY, NY got a call at 5 am from American Airlines saying her flight back to SB had been cancelled. She got right back on the horn to reschedule and lucked out, getting the last seat on a plane out of NY that would get her to Dallas in time for her flight out of there.
I saw in the paper Thursday morning that American as well as Delta had cancelled a huge number of flights, affecting the lives of about 45,000 people, for the purposes of maintenance. Seems as if this might have been better arranged, but the FAA ordered it having found, so I heard, that Southwest Airways—not doubt to keep their low fares low—had been cutting back on the maintenance issue. So as usual, everybody had to pay for the screw up of one, since bureaucracies exist for the systematic enforcement of injustice.
I guess they were just doing their job. Seems as if from what I read that the fleet of planes for all airlines is becoming quite old. There seems to have been no immediate danger, just you know when your car gets to 60000 miles they give it a big check up—because it is getting along in miles. The same with the planes. I guess the airlines are struggling. A number are in the process of emerging from bankruptcy, one of the conditions of which (I mean getting out of bankruptcy) was the workers—should they wish to have any jobs at all—had to take cuts of up to 33% in wages.
During her layover in Dallas, Carol and a friend who lives there met up and went to lunch at a place called “Steaks and Shakes,” and guess what they specialize in steaks and shakes.
Speaking of which: food, I mean, and its side effects, a recent study shows that persons with excessive trunk weight are three times more likely to suffer senile dementia than those without said weight. I know women don’t like getting weight on hips and thighs, but better to get it there than the trunk, which is where men, with our infamous guts, tend to get it.