In this context, read “Goofus” as “the Continental terminal” and “Gallant” as “the Southwest terminal.”
GOOFUS assumes travelers are content with off-brand prefab food, a standard-issue airport bar with Sysco burgers, and a single Starbuck’s.
GALLANT at least provides a Sbarro and a McDonald’s, and God help us if we’re viewing that as “the nice option.”
GOOFUS hides outlets under furniture.
GALLANT has biz-traveler friendly desk-counters with outlets in the waiting area for laptop warriors to plug in and work while waiting for their flight.
GOOFUS has dodgy wifi prone to signal drops at the slightest provocation.
GALLANT’s connectivity is rock solid.
Unfortunately, GALLANT requires me to stop in Dallas, so GOOFUS it is. Basically, the answer is that there’s no way to go to and from Kansas City that doesn’t suck in some way.
I recently paid 1200 for a direct flight to fucking Wichita, on continental tiny jet. The only alternative was three stops and 7 hours. I come to find out that most of the mini jets are made in Wichita. While I was there, the Democrats in their infinite wisdom were trying to ban corporate jet travel, which would pretty much kill manufacturing in Kansas. They soon backed off that nonsense when the Kansas lawmakers had their say. Reactionary gorillas plodding along for ratings.
I didn’t hear anything about banning, but I have heard some justified grumbling about bailout-recipient companies burning money on corporate jet travel. Flying private almost never makes economic sense; it’s a corporate luxury that nobody cares about if your firm is making enough money. Burning $10K to fly from Detroit to DC to beg for money, though, made everyone notice just exactly how fucking out of touch the Big Three CEOs were. It was absurdly irresponsible.
So I agree that banning would be stupid, but I also agree that companies that get bailout money should be accountable for its expenditure — just like if you invest in a troubled firm, you get to help control how that money is spent; I doubt Edgar’s bailout fund would be happy about wasting money on private jet travel vs. commercial tickets an order of magnitude cheaper.
Edgar would not have a bailout fund. Simply put Edgar would adhere to the laws of finance or suffer the consequences. Actually Edgar does this daily, some days better than others.
Some corporate flying is necessary due to international locales. However, flying to Washington on a private jet when asking for cash is pretty asinine. The threat of cutting corp. jets for companys under bailouts, just like the threat for cutting boondoggle meetings is killing hotel, restaurants and airlines, will squash the use of corporate jets would kill manufacturing in Wichita, USA. While these emotional moves feel good and “keep the Pitchforks” from the CEOS they are not something the Legislators should open their stupid mouths about, especially when said legislators are taking private jets to Europe for no reason at all, and causing the armed forces to use “private contractors” to speed supplies to war theaters for troop surges. It is just bad policy IMO to constantly play to the mob, especially when part of that mob will get killed financially.
I concede that there are corner cases where private planes are a good idea, but I submit that, from an investment perspective, those cases are a tiny minority of the flight hours booked by the Gulfstreams of the world.
I can also grasp that cutting wasteful spending like that could have consequences we might not want — which is why sometimes a bailout is a good idea, if only to allow for a softer landing.
Mob rules are bad ones, I agree.