At 2:30am on Thanksgiving morning, my alarm clock rent the silence of Chez CWG with its obnoxious beeping.  It felt like I’d been asleep for about 17 seconds, which wasn’t too far off the mark considering I went to bed only four hours earlier.  Why was your favorite Princess deigning to rise before noon on a holiday?  Simple.  I had a plane to catch, friends!  Spending Thanksgiving with my parents on the west coast of Florida was on the agenda, but first I had to make it to the airport and SURVIVE the flight.

I bought my ticket on the spur-of-the moment–a few days before Thanksgiving.  Husban-dito cheerfully reminded me of a few of the more colorful commercial aviation disasters (Tenerife comes readily to mind) and told me to have a great trip.  I visited the doctor to stock up on some anti-motion sickness patches ($45 for 4?!  What kind of RX plan do I have?!?!?)  and I was really to go. 

Spirit Airlines was kind enough to seat me (automatically) in ROW THIRTEEN.  13! 13! 13!  Hello!!! I’m deathly afraid of flying.  What kind of sick joke is that?  But Mother Nature had an even more evil trick up her sleeve.  I flew 1,000 miles to southwestern Florida only to be greeted by GRAY SKIES and chilly weather.  Um, hello?  I braved a scare plane and this is my reward?  Up until the day I arrived, temperatures had been hovering around 85.  My dad mumbled something about ‘El Nino’ and buttoned his jacket.

All too soon I found myself BACK on another airplane flying home. Hope your holiday was fun and that you didn’t eat too much turkey. 

PS. My seatmates were delighted that my anti-motion sickness patches worked.  I didn’t barf on anyone and even took a few pictures!  Yay!

Se supone que viajes en Spirit Airlines. Cancelan tu vuelo y te montan en otra aerolínea.

Todo bien, excepto que el vuelo de la otra aerolínea resulta ser el 1549 de US Air.

El avión se cae, todo el mundo sale vivo. Final felíz, ¿no? Agárrense…

http://www.fox61.com/pages/landing_news/?Spirit-Airlines-Tries-To-Collect-Cancell=1&blockID=189253&feedID=341

Hello… so what are we up to? We’re cleaning the house real good.. one, it needs it and two, i like to come back from a trip with the house in decent order… heehee. With this we’re cleaning so much. Today, my husband took the kids car seats out of the car and I cleaned them! How long have those raisins been there? UGH! The seat covers are ALL perty now and I even re-checked the belt adjustments. For both kids the seats were getting too tight so I knew we needed to adjust them to their growing size! YEAH! I dont know about you but I like getting these things off my check list.

I am starting to think about packing, like the weather in all the places we’re going and how to pack minimally gong up! I am making sure I have all the Time/Date/Places all figured out before we go. What are we doing where and what do we need etc? It’s best to do as much as I can before we go so when we go, we just fall in place. Oh if it were a perfect world! But I make sure we’ve left room for changes and traffic and weather! Things out of our control and we KNOW it will happen. I believe God challenges us to truely reveal our walk with HIM! I love it (God’s ways, not being challenged)! Because it surely challenges me and in most cases I say, “you;’re right God, when he says ‘LET IT GO!” heeheee

I have prayer requests I am emailing but realized it may be easiest to post here:

I trust you and your prayer teams will pray as you are led to do so, and any prayers are GREATLY appreciated!

• We have items in the storage unit to sell (table, chairs, 1966 malibu parts, wet/dry vac, ladder, etc)
• We need a projector to use during our travels in the states for our presentation , it can be returned to the owner after we leave Nov 7. Although we’ve been praying for one to use here in the field to show the Jesus film and other evangelical videos
• We need to buy tickets to return next year – so we’d need $800 for the four of us to come to the states in 2009 to keep our passports current and legal.
• We need to pay for luggage & pre-assigned seats to COME to the US or to RETURN to GUA on Spirit Air.

Eight bags is what we need round trip for a total is $190

They now charge for seat reservations *sigh* For the trips up and back, the total is $60

• We need to raise gas money for our tour. We have estimated $500 for gas total.
• Above all… just PRAYER… we cannot be here or there without it!!! In addition, please pray for our preparation, the print materials, the presentation, the limited packing and our home here while we’re gone, the ability to pay rent before we leave, pray for our travels (security with kids, carry ons and car seats), for use to bathe in GOD and give HIM the GLORY in it all!Again, Thank you!

   

  

Another one bites the dust … Frontier Airlines just announced today that they are jumping on the bag fee bandwagon. And then there are 5 … The updated list of airlines not charging for the first checked bag:

Good Guys: AirTran, Alaska, Continental, Delta, Frontier, Hawaiian, JetBlue, Midwest, and Virgin America

Bad Guys: American, Continental, Hawaiian, Midwest, Northwest, Spirit, United, and US Airways

A little while back, I posted about the “good guy” airlines who weren’t charging a fee for the first checked bag when flying domestically. I mentioned that those airlines would be watching closely to see whether they would gain any additional market share by being more customer friendly. Sadly, we’ve had some defections:

Continental Airlines has now jumped ship along with Hawaiian adding fees and Midwest Airlines charging for the first bag. Here’s the new list:

Good Guys: AirTran, Alaska, Continental, Delta, Frontier, Hawaiian, JetBlue, Midwest, and Virgin America

Bad Guys: American, Continental, Hawaiian, Midwest, Northwest, Spirit, United, and US Airways

BOTTOM LINE: Support Delta (or one of the smaller guys) now or expect Delta to fold to competitive pressure and for all of us to pay later.

So at times like these it seems like we need more of an incentive to travel. If you’re traveling for work, you need extra perks to make up for the rising gas prices and shaky economy. Well I love to travel and I think I may have found something to give you a bit more of a push to take that well deserved vacation before the year is out. Right now, when you stay at any Cambria Suites property, you can earn triple airline rewards from any of the 12 airline partners with Choice Hotels. The special offer is valid for any stays from now until December 31st, 2008 so book your trip now while you still have time, you’ll be glad you did!

Each Cambria Suites property is an all-suite hotel and 100% non-smoking so that all of the guests can enjoy the environment and ambiance that the new brand offers. The people at Choice Hotels have worked to ensure that each room in every Cambria Suties hotel is functional and stylish to cater to every traveler, whether its the visitor attending an important business meeting, or its the family enjoying a relaxing weekend away from home. Every Cambria Suites property offers the latest in technology, including a 52-inch television in the open, airy two-story lobby and each suite includes two flat-screen LCD televisions, a CD/DVD player, and MP3 jacks, not to mention an indoor pool and a fitness center.

For more information and to book your reservations to take advantage of this special offer, visit the Cambria Suites Luxury Hotel website today and just present your frequent flyer number upon check-in. Not a bad find for a hopeful Shaolin Guru in Arizona huh? Enjoy your trip!

As airfare consumers, against the backdrop of an already degrading air travel experience (TSA lines, packed planes, etc.), we are now being asked to help shoulder the burden of $130/barrel oil as the airlines struggle to stay alive.

So what can we do to help stem even more fees coming our way in the future? One simple idea: support those airlines whose “First Bag Free” baggage policies are more customer-friendly than their blockhead competitors and their caveman approach to passing on fees. (Hey airlines, check out Amazon Prime as a way to get people to prepay their future shipping costs.)

As it relates to bag fees, you should know that US airlines are really now divided into two camps: the “Good Guys” and the “Bad Guys” based upon their checked baggage fee policies. The Good Guys don’t charge you to check your first bag while the Bad Guys soak you to the tune of up to $80 round-trip for the pleasure of carrying your luggage.

Good Guys: AirTran, Alaska, Continental, Delta, Frontier, Hawaiian, JetBlue, Midwest, and Virgin America

Bad Guys: American, Northwest, Spirit, United, and US Airways

Having been an airline bean counter myself, I promise you that the Good Guys are waiting to see if they can gain market share by not charging passengers as much as the Bad Guys.

Therefore, support the Good Guys now because if you don’t, they’ll just jump on the Bad Guy bandwagon later and we’ll all be paying more to send our socks to St. Louis.

Spirit Air, an airline company that I’m pretty sure I’ll be ignoring from here on, has a new marketing campaign: “M.I.L.F.” Ostensibly, it stands for “More Islands, Low Fares.” But ask anybody under the age of 40, and “M.I.L.F.” has another meaning: Mom I’d Like [to] F–k. See the picture to get a better view of what I’m talking about. The reclining woman below appears for less than a second before morphing into generic islands.

But when people discovered this pathetic excuse for an ad and complained about it, Spirit Air’s response was to outright lie about it! From ABC:

[Spirit Air Director of Communications] Arbelaez said that Spirit’s senior vice president of pricing is a British citizen who was unfamiliar with the MILF terminology and that the airline is not trying to offend customers.

Riiiiight.

Okay, here’s the thing. It’s one thing to have disgusting, sexist, cheap, and tawdry advertising for your company or product. The point of this post is not to condemn that sort of advertising outright, though it should be condemned. The point here is to call Spirit Air out for having the audacity to actually lie about their efforts here. For some inexplicable reason, they are claiming that this clear, deliberately-sexist advertisement was entirely accidental.

Bullshit. Sorry, Spirit Air, you can’t have it both ways. Engage in the objectification of women for your advertising purposes, and be condemned rightly for it–but don’t try and insult the intelligence of the rest of us in the process.

To contact Spirit Air and tell them to ‘go MILF themselves’:

Spirit Airlines
2800 Executive Way
Miramar, FL 33025
ATTN: Corporate Consumer Affairs

Update: Commenter Charlie points out that the new ad campaign is “Barely Legal.”  Complete with a classy emphasis on 18 year old models cent fares.

Wow, that’s classy.   For a good sense of what Spirit Air is trying to associate themselves with, type “barely legal 18″ into Google and see what happens…