Fact 1: Compared to the average person who is not a
management consultant, I know an overwhelming number of people who are or
used to be management consultants.
Fact 2: Management consultants travel a lot for work, so
they’re on a lot of flights, which means they either achieve status on airlines
or make meaningful progress towards getting status.
Fact 3: Management consultants think it’s an exciting topic
of conversation to other people to describe the various methods and tricks they
used with their employers and airline companies to achieve as high a status as
possible on as many airlines as possible. (Example: “I demanded McKinsey buy me
a Delta ticket for my Tokyo project because I was close to status, then I got
the Delta redeemable points global planetary unified alliance card, which got
me status thanks to an extra mileage bonus you get for using that card only at
movie theaters, which worked out perfectly since I was on the beach and had a
lot of time to watch movies – a lot of people are stupid and get the Delta
SkyMiles card but even though you get more miles from groceries and gas they
expire more quickly which revokes status and you can’t cancel it as fast which
means you might pay annual fees and I don’t buy gas, fortunately I am the
world’s greatest travel genius and have solved the entire system.”)
Fact 4: Every time I experience Fact 3, I want to shove a
freshly sharpened fork into my face.
As far as life burdens go, you might say that’s pretty light
and I am being a whiny baby. I have no response to that, but instead, I’ll
redirect the subject to something I do genuinely enjoy about flying and wish
people would talk about to me more often – the airline magazine.
Not to be confused with a SkyMall or Duty Free catalog,
airline carriers’ in-house magazine publications delight me to no end. I always
read through the entire thing on a flight, and if I’m flying a lot in a short
period of time, I’m massively disappointed when I see I’ve already been through
that issue.
Sidebar: When I lived in Washington, DC, I frequently rode
Amtrak, and also thoroughly enjoyed the Amtrak magazine, which is a different
animal from the airline magazine. At the beginning of the Amtrak magazine, there’s
almost always an article about the importance of trains in our nation’s
history, and how we should all continue to support the railroads. Haha! Amtrak,
you so funny! For a period of time there were all these pages on a giant
celebration for National Train Appreciation Day, with an appearance by special guest Randy Jackson from American Idol. I had trouble deciding whether it was
more hysterical that the best celebrity they could get was Randy Jackson, or
that Randy Jackson only appeared for 10 minutes.
End of sidebar.
Now, my favorite parts of the airline magazine:
The Top Doctor in America – I would pay over $100 to have a
30-minute chat with someone who chose an out-of-state doctor from these ads. If
there is someone who was on a plane thinking, “Damn, I need full mouth
rejuvenation but I won’t settle for anything less than the nation’s best doctor
– whoa! Wait, here’s a list of the best doctors! Okay, and this guy is in
Houston, that’s only a 2.5 hour flight for me, I’m gonna jot down this phone number
and call once I land!” then I absolutely, absolutely need to meet that person
immediately.
I also have a fascination with how much the doctor in the
picture pays relative to the other guys who just have their names listed on the
right. Invariably, the guy in the picture always seems to look like a greasy
douchebag, which I think is devaluing the ad for the guys on the right. Unless
the reasoning is that they all look like greasy douchebags, so including
pictures of everyone would only exacerbate the problem. Or maybe the point is
that these aren’t supposed to function as ads at all, it’s just like 6 friends
from medical school who, back in their medical school days, always dreamed
about being rich enough to blow money on one of these ads, and now they all carry
a copy of this page in their wallet and show it to women at bars, but then get
rejected because no woman wants to hook up with the doctor who couldn’t even
afford the primo full picture placement.
I’ve also never seen a woman listed in one of these ads. I
think the obviously logical assumption there would have to be that no female
doctors are among the best doctors in America. Women are getting smarter every
day, though, so I have hope that one day a female doctor can break through and
become one of the best doctors in America. That’s going to be a landmark event
– it would be really awesome if it happened in my lifetime!
Airport Terminal Diagram – Is it some kind of federal
airline magazine law that multiple pages of every magazine have to be devoted
to this? I tried my best to think of how this has proved useful to anyone,
here’s the best I could come up with.
“Okay, we only have a 30 minute connection window in Denver.
Do you think we’re going to make it?”
“It’s gonna be tight, it depends on how far away the gates
are.”
“True, what gate are we coming into?”
“I don’t know.”
“Damn, okay. This connecting ticket says our next flight
leaves from Gate B67.”
“Okay, I’m looking at the Denver terminal map right now. I
see that Gates B65, B66, B68 and B69 are all pretty close to Gate B67.”
“Ah, good find – I see that too now. Gate B64 is actually
also not too far away, so there’s a lot of good options.”
“Okay, let’s hope we come into Gate B66.”
“Yeah, hopefully not B1! Look at how far that is!”
“Well, it’s sort of hard to tell without a scale. Maybe it’s
pretty close.”
“Yeah, maybe. Fingers crossed!”
Best Steakhouses in America – how has the Internet or Yelp’s
mobile app not made this obsolete yet? If this ad still exists in 2015, we may
be in trouble as a country.
I also am a huge fan of this recurring ad for a dress shirt. The tie is killer.
12 page section on city that maybe shouldn’t be spending
city funds on 12-page magazine inserts (Ex: Morgantown, WV, Roanoke, VA, Huntsville,
AL, Peoria, IL, etc.) – My favorite
parts of these: (1) all the great world-class science research that is
happening at the local university, coupled with a picture of a woman looking
into a microscope or a guy pouring something from a beaker into a flask; (2)
the “emerging foodie scene” which says something like “everyone knows this town
has great barbeque, but now people are into farm-to-table concepts!”; (3)
whenever a city that historically had a lot of slavery glosses that over by
using the word “historic” a lot of times; (4) the picture of city hall; (5) the
picture of some random flowers because they ran out of pictures to put in
because they bought 12 freaking pages.
It’s Just Lunch – Matchmaking services for the busy
professional who is also scared to date! Hey dude, don’t worry, it’s just
lunch! She’s not ever going to hook up with you, it’s literally just lunch! I’m
extremely curious, over the lifetime of the business, what the total cost of
airline ads has been to the It’s Just Lunch matchmaking company. If you said it
was well into seven figures I wouldn’t blink an eye - I think this ad has been
in every airline magazine ever printed. In particular, I’m a huge fan of their
probably-trademarked dating Q&A format, where no one knows who is asking
the questions. The headline nowadays reads “An Insider Look at Dating in the
Modern World.” I love insider information!
Here too, I wonder how they decide which woman gets the
full-page picture. The crass assumption would be that they pick the matchmaker
who is the most attractive. Don’t be so crass.
Route Map for large airlines: What information do I glean
from this? How can anyone discern anything other than “United flies a lot of
places,”? I have this image in my mind of United Airlines executives sitting in
a giant conference room with a 30x20 foot route map printed on the wall.
“Dude, look at this route map, it’s so sick bro!”
“It’s almost entirely blue lines! Damn son, we even fly to
Parkersburg!”
“Think we can’t get you to Rouyn-Noranda in Quebec? WRONG,
try again! We have a partner airline that hooks that up!”
“Man, you know, I think more people need to know how f*cking
awesome this is.”
“Hold it, hold it – IDEA GENERATION UNFOLDING - Let’s put it
in the airline magazine! Heads gon’ explode, yo!”
“Wait YOU HOLD IT - I’m about to take that awesome idea and elevate
that sh*t to the next level, kid – WE MAKE IT A THREE-PAGE GLOSSY INSERT!!!!”
“OH SH*T IT’S OVER!! IT’S OVER!! IT’S OVER!!!!!!!!!!!”
[white guy high-five]
