Mexicana flight attendants pose for sexy calendar
In bid to make money after being laid off by Mexicana Airlines, 10 flight attendants launched a sexy aviation-themed calendar in a bid to call attention to their own plight and that of their airline. The calendar is a best seller but the airline future is in doubt after it missed a December deadline to start up service once again.
The 2011 calendar features glossy shots of the flight attendants, clad in bikinis and striking various racy poses.
10-year Mexicana veteran Coral Perez spearheaded the move.
“It occurred to me because we all needed money, and I thought that with so many pretty girls (among Mexicana’s staff) there were bound to be some who’d be interested,” she said.
Each women forked out money from her own pockets to help cover the production costs of 100,000 pesos (about $8,000).
“The goal was to try to help ourselves because we lost everything overnight,” said one of the women, 26-year-old Maribel Zavala.
The calendar was a hit in Mexico, and the first run of 1,000 was sold out even before Thursday’s launch. A second edition of 3,000 calendars — which retail for 149 pesos, or about $12, apiece — is in the works.
DHS speeding up traveler IDs at the border
At our borders, the Homeland Security Department (DHS) plans to increase the speed of traveler identity verifications of those entering the U.S. by land. Changes are uncertain but rely on new passports with RFID chips and license-plate readers.
The so-called Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative stipulates that citizens from the United States, Canada, Bermuda and Mexico arriving at U.S. land ports must present passports or other approved documents to enter the country. But DHS’ Customs and Border Protection has failed to provide CBP officers with detailed steps they must take to confirm the identities of travelers without papers, and thus is not fully enforcing the rule.
“Until the new travel document requirement is fully enforced, the agency continues to incur risk that persons falsely claiming to be citizens of the United States, Canada and Bermuda may be admitted to the United States,” IG officials wrote in a report released Monday.
The RFID tools, which are deployed in traffic lanes, rapidly display traveler information to officers and instantly trigger law enforcement database searches, allowing documents to be checked as vehicles approach the inspection area.
The new license plate readers have an accuracy rate of 95 percent, a 10 percent improvement over those they replaced, Malin said, which will save officers from manually correcting almost 10 million erroneous license plate queries per year.
Gate agents are the face of the airlines
Gate agents juggle lots of tasks every day for airlines, but the biggest hurdle is dealing with passengers. This is one of the first places that airlines have a human face to face with their customers.
Agents work six to 12 flights in a typical shift, each one requiring myriad tasks that range from routine seat assignments and boarding calls to last-minute decisions about which desperate standby passengers make it onto a flight. They make sure catering gets done, send passenger data to dispatchers and scan boarding passes.
“It’s a lot going on in a short amount of time,” said 25-year veteran gate agent David Gordon, 51. “The clock is always ticking.”
Passengers often beseech agents as if they were some Higher Power that can make everything right. Klamon said he found it interesting how many passengers “feel they’re entitled to an upgrade.”
“Clearly for Delta in Atlanta, everybody’s always trying to game the system,” he said.
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
