A bet with an airline


I suppose every time you check a bag or even just show up at the airport it is a bet as to whether everything will make it to the destination or not, but that’s not the bet I made. Six months ago I was talking with a pretty senior guy from Continental over quite a few drinks (at least for me). One thing led to another and we ended up with a bet: Can Continental deliver six major improvements for customers in a six month window. Well, the six months expired yesterday and the final two announcements came out today. They actually did it, which is pretty amazing, as are the actual benefits in question. I’ve posted about several of the announcements here previously, so I won’t go into details on those, but there are a couple new ones worth getting in to.

Overall these improvements are pretty impressive, especially in light of the various cuts that airlines have been instituting over the past few month. And Continental certainly has instituted some new charges, increased others, cut routes and capacity and shared a certain amount of bad news. But relatively speaking they seem to be doing pretty well by their customers.

And thanks to a technicality it looks like I won the bet. The six months expired yesterday and the last two announcements didn’t come out until today. Of course, they really did deliver on the big six and I’ll overlook the final announcements coming a day late, and I look forward to settling up the bet, since it involves a bar tab, and those are always fun to build up.

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Seth Miller

I'm Seth, also known as the Wandering Aramean. I was bit by the travel bug 30 years ago and there's no sign of a cure. I fly ~200,000 miles annually; these are my stories. You can connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.