Throughout the week, our team shares articles they’ve stumbled upon that may interest our readers, even if they might not otherwise merit a full post. Here are some of the posts we found interesting this week: United’s CEO is a card counter, JetBlue sued over surveillance pricing, and how easy is it to get banned from an airline?
Hah: United Airlines’ CEO Is Banned From Casinos For Card Counting
United’s CEO, Scott Kirby (whom we brought up last week for comments about potentially acquiring assets), has a more interesting backstory than people may realize. In his pre-CEO life, before he was ever part of the airline industry (not to mention the CEO of a major airline), he was an avid gambler who’d taught himself to count cards. This skill got him kicked out of a number of casinos, some of which he’s still banned from today. The Bellagio, for example, won’t let him play blackjack even now, ~15 years later. Is there any taboo behavior that doubles as a “flex” more than being so good at card counting you’re banned from Black Jack at the Bellagio?
JetBlue Faces Class-Action Lawsuit After Deleted X Post
The drama all started when someone noticed a sudden price hike just as they were looking into a flight for a funeral. They took to X to complain about the price hike, and a representative suggested they clear their browser cache and reload the flight search in a new incognito window. This could suggest a practice called “surveillance pricing,” where prices are not simply set by supply and demand but are variable based on a customer’s observed online behavior, with higher prices charged to customers who seem likely to pay more. JetBlue, of course, claims that it is not using tactics like these to price tickets variably. Was the representative just trying to offer a “turn it off and on again” kind of solution without any credible insight into whether the background technology is using user data for variable pricing? Either seems plausible to me.
How Little It Can Take to Get Banned From American Airlines
This is a really upsetting story about a seemingly innocuous interaction that somehow resulted in a business class passenger getting banned (without his knowledge, no less) from flying American Airlines. According to the man’s account of the “incident” (though, if true, it barely counts as an incident), a flight attendant told him to return his seat to the upright position before take off, but before he got to it himself, the flight attendant reached under his resting arm to attempt to press the buttons for him. This was startling, and he found himself moving the flight attendant’s arm and telling her he would adjust the seat himself. He had no idea this situation had resulted in any kind of penalty until years later, when he attempted to board an American Airlines flight and was denied boarding, without explanation. He believed the seat positioning incident may have been what got him banned, so he sued American Airlines over what he saw as a wrongful bar from their business. It may be worth noting that, eventually, the passenger dropped the suit. We don’t know why, of course. Even so, it’s troubling to imagine that it’s apparently so easy to ban a passenger from an airline that they might not even know it’s happened or why.
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Why in the world are you guys making posts that are not even published in a timely fashion? It looks completely trashy and staged. This seems to be happening.more and more on this site and appears to just be content scheduling as opposed to keeping up with things and actually running a trustworthy site. I hope you guys are able to get it together soon. ❤️
Came here to say exactly that. I have learned so much from this blog, but from hour long podcasts, to several spin offs (question of the week being the latest one) to limit the podcast length, and the long, winding, posts about (sometimes) nothingburger, I am spending less and less time engaging with the content of this blog. And I sure am not alone (while I am sure I am in the minority). Posts like this a the final nail in the coffin.
I know most commenters wouldn’t (and they shouldn’t) care about my individual feedback, but a comment section on the blog post is a quicker way to deliver feedback to this team than an email to the mailbox id.
Don’t devalue the reputation of this blog like all the loyalty programs are doing these days.
It says in the name “Saturday Selection.” In other words, a round up of other sites’ posts from the week. They’ve run it for years. If you literally can’t find value in the dozens of posts they run weekly, I’m sorry the blog isn’t of value to you.
Justin, I’m genuinely puzzled as to what you’re objecting to here. What specifically seems trashy, staged, or untimely either in this piece or on the site generally of late…?
You are late to the party. The original article, which has since been edited, referred to the possibility of Spirit Airlines shutting down in near future. And it was published after the airline had actually shut down a few hours ago.
Thanks for replying.
Assuming that’s all correct (and I have no reason to doubt you), I still fail to see the problem…?
So the initial draft hadn’t caught up with actual events by the time it was published. Then shortly after publication, it was edited to fix that discrepancy. And that’s trashy and staged? I suppose they could have added a postscript like, “article edited in light of Spirit’s cessation of operations by time of publication” or similar. But opting not to say that doesn’t seem noteworthy.
I’m far more concerned with how other blogs are always “talking their book” vs trying to deliver content in the best interest of their readers. As evidenced by their recent critical stance on their very first sponsors (Bilt), FM tries hard not to do that, and generally succeeds admirably IMO.
This isn’t me. Someone is pretending to be me.
This isn’t me. Someone is pretending to be me.
Ugh. Thanks Justin.
I should have guessed. Really bad behavior to impersonate a known figure in the field.
Hi “Justin” (aka Conrad, Stephanie, et al),
We’re fine with you trolling us; we’re fine with you doing it under various aliases, but we’re going to draw the line when you use the name of an actual commenter and post as though you’re that person. We’ll be changing all of your comments to Justin and removing the Vacula.
Please don’t do this again. Thanks in advance.