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!

FMI: www.aande.com