American Airlines vs. US Air Potential Merger

The name of this blog is "Things people Tell Me" as in here say, opinions...I pass them along as interesting. As a former reporter, now docent in a B-17 Museum, I meet tons of super-interesting people, engage them in conversation, ask questions and their lives spill out. Here is one of them.
   I don't normally hear of conversations involving words that contain, profit and loss, or pension over-rides, loss, prevention, risk management, and other more sophisticated financial terms reserved for high-end Wharton School educational classes.
   This afternoon, I did from two US Air flight attendants.
" Don't get us started they said," and they were angry about losing their pensions. Flying for years, and loving it, they interspersed their vindictive against the industry with the hatred of how quickly the commercial airlines dump the pensions of long-term, long-time employees who have grown with the same airlines for decades.
   The reason? One attendant said, the profit margin of a
"really good airlines" was maybe 3%, tops. When JETA fuel jumps 400% as it has recently, airlines can't jump fares because you and I won't fly, so they swallow it and dump pensions and other items just to stay in the air.
   Merging with American Airlines will happen, only just to keep their name around - they are already insolvent.
   The other attendant said that some four-holer left-seat pilots (big jet left-seat pilots) will stand to lose close to a million bucks in PENSIONS.
   I ASKED, " WHAT EXACTLY do pilots do after losing their pensions after flying all those years?" Flying for foreign carriers after the age of 60, until they drop over, or
" anything they can, until the end," she told me.
   One, she knows, dropped out and is serving coffee in a cafe in Evergreen Colorado, nestled high up about 10,000 feet in the Rockys. He has a small cabin just up the Creek, and motors down the road to his job at the cafe every day meeting his customers, serving coffee and donuts. He'll do that, she said, for the rest of his life.
   He was a jet captain for a major airlines for 26 years before he lost his pension.
###

Pistols, Handguns, and all things about carrying them

In Alaska, there are three handgun training centers operated by governmental facilities, usually the state police, or the local city government: Fairbanks, Anchorage, and like the guy from Texas, can't remember the third.
    The NRA sponsors instructors who come from one of those centers to travel the lower 48 to TRAIN local police department handgun instructors on how to safely handle pistols for patrol officers in the street.
    By accident, as usual for me, I met the guy, last night in the B-17 Museum while on duty as a docent. What an interesting conversation.
    Alaska, you may know, is one of the states, like Arizona with an open carry lack of laws, that is to say, " you got a gun - go right a head and carry it. No permits, no licenses, no by-your-leave. If you feel so inclined to feel the need, or threatened - do it. The only proviso is you must NOT be a convicted felon, just like in Arizona. IF they catch you, convicted felons, with a pistol, bad things happen.
   However, as logic and day follows the night, the bad guys don't listen to the law, anyway. So honest Alaskans like Arizonans can carry pistols open or hidden at their pleasure.
   I asked the question of him, my Alaskan friend: Since your laws have been dropped, has gun violence gone up, or down? Down, he said. All police in Alaska report that it is quieter. " It's strange...we've become a more polite state," he quipped.
###