New Show Features Commercial Aviation's Good, Bad, Ugly
So we were sitting around, trying to figure a way to get into
this story. We came up with a couple of fairly bad ideas:
Reality Television Gets High
Nope... too reminiscent of drug use.
Up In The Air: Reality Television
Nope... too indecisive.
Up Up And Away With Reality TV
Yuck. That one turned our stomachs. Anyone have a
Bromo-Seltzer?
The bottom line is, reality television takes to the sky ways
Monday night with the premier of the A&E Network's Airline.
Network honchos think that travelers will readily identify with a
series about flying commercial -- from the crew's point of
view.
"When you go to cocktail parties, there is always somebody
talking about the long delay on their last flight. Everyone in the
room wants to share their travel stories — the love-hate
relationship we have with air travel," said Nancy Dubuc, vice
president of documentary programming at A&E. "It's that common
connection."
You guessed it. This isn't all going to be pretty. For that
reason, US carriers turned down the concept, which has been
featured on British television for six years. All carriers, that
is, except one.
"What possessed me?"
said Southwest Airlines president and CEO Colleen Barrett when
asked to explain her decision. "When I was first approached I said,
'You've got to be kidding me.'"
But the more she got to looking at the idea, the more Barrett
realized this could actually be a boon to Southwest. She called up
the folks at EasyJet, the British carrier featured in the overseas
version of Airline.
"The EasyJet people told me they felt (the show) literally put
them on the map," Barrett said. "I started thinking ... it's
basically 18 hours of free publicity. You can't buy that kind of
PR."
Barrett admits, it was a "gamble" to go with the show. Indeed,
showing an unhappy, overweight customer being told that double-wide
butt is going to require two seats, wasn't, in Barrett's opinion, a
very flattering segment.
"There's not another carrier out there that doesn't have the
same policy," Barrett said. "But that's real life. We have a pretty
darn good reputation as far as customer service satisfaction, so I
thought we could handle it."
Well, thank goodness A&E didn't cover the two pilots who got
naked... er... for some reason... in the cockpit. That would have
ruined family hour!