You Bastards

Here's some news for all you travelers out there. Don't trust the airlines. Ok, so maybe that's not news to anyone. I think we've all been burned by lost luggage, intimate anal cavity searches at FAA security check points, over priced sandwiches at terminal quick marts, and of course the endless delays. My latest experience is a new one though.......

September of this year Lindsay and I planned a great holiday for the two of us to commence shortly after Christmas and run through the new year. The plan was to go from Lund to Copenhagen to Amsterdam to Antwerp (maybe Brugge) and then to Frankfurt for her to fly home from, after which I'd spend a week in Germany making my way back up north to Sweden. 90% of the trip can be done by train.....it's the 10% in the air that kills a fella.

I found some great tickets out of Copenhagen to Amsterdam. Sterling Airlines, $90/ticket. We jumped on the deal and I booked them straight away. Little did I know that I should have simply went to an ATM, pulled out the equivalent amount of cash, and set fire to it.

Apparently the airline that we booked the tickets through, Sterling Airlines, decided to become insolvent on October 29th. What do I mean by insolvent....well, basically it means they put up an IOU on their web page (in several languages) and wished everyone good luck on traveling with another airline because all their flights were grounded and no one was getting any money back....apparently it had something to do with oil prices. I guess the concept using futures contracts to hedge price risk of operating expenses escaped their finance department's brain trust. Now, normally something like this would send me into a tailspin at which point I'd probably get arrested at the tarmac trying to steal a set of tires from one of their grounded planes to then sell on ebay to an airline with money (if such a thing exists) to recoup my lose. Instead, Linds and I simply booked another ticket (at twice the cost) with a different carrier and we used a credit card to do so. See, the fatal flaw in my deal was that I used a debit card (as I don't have a credit card) to complete the transaction. Once you use that the deal is done. Lesson learned.

Now, you may be thinking to yourself....ok, you got burned on two plane tickets...what's the odds that's going to happen to me? With Sterling's announcement they became the 64th airline to go belly up in 2008. The whole airline industry is a total sham....carriers that you think are reputable run their operations in the red and they all use current revenues (ticket sales) that are for future liabilities (future flights) to finance current operations. Therefore, the companies are in a perpetual cycle of using cash now for something they have to deliver in the future....while losing money the whole time. Think about that the next time you hit the friendly skies.