By MARTIN KAUFMANN
Managing Editor/The Golf LifeSt. Andrews is freezing green fees for its seven courses in 2009.
Before you get too excited about that, bear in mind that you’ll still be paying $259 to play the Old Course and $239 to play the new Castle Course. The weak dollar is crimping a lot of travelers’ schedules, including mine.
It’s obviously still a big investment for American travelers to go to the home of golf, but the folks at golf tour operator PerryGolf suggest that there might be a trickle-down effect, with other destination resorts possibly following suit and holding the line on prices. Time will tell whether that happens.
Your opinion: Are you canceling or delaying any planned golf trips overseas because of the cost or concerns about the economy?
Tell us on our discussion boards.
Going to a Gogo: A couple of recent AirTran flights were equipped with complimentary XM radio. That got me to wondering: If airlines can offer satellite radio, when are they going to join the rest of civilization in the 21st century and begin offering passengers Internet service.
So it was welcome news that some commercial carriers will start offering wireless Internet through Aircell Network’s Gogo service. American Airlines will introduce it soon on three routes: New York-San Francisco, New York-Los Angeles and New York-Miami. The airline’s website says Gogo has been installed on some of its planes. Virgin America is also expected to introduce the service soon.
According to the
Gogo Web site, the service works with all smartphones, other handheld devices and laptops. It allows you to perform all of the usual Internet functions, but does not allow phone calls or conversations over the Internet.
Gogo reportedly will cost $12.95 for flights lasting longer than three hours.
Plane truths: Speaking of our beaten-down airline industry, you might want to check out a couple of columns from
The Wall Street Journal’s great young columnist, Holman Jenkins. Even if you have only a passing interest in the business world, Jenkins’ columns every Wednesday in the Journal are must-reads. Like the very best columnists, Jenkins has an almost visceral disdain for conventional wisdom.
Jenkins recently
weighed in on airlines’ chronic profit problems, despite the incongruous reality that they provide a “hugely valuable product without a close substitute.” He makes a persuasive case that some form of cooperation – call if code-sharing or, dare we say, price-fixing – makes sense in an industry with such unique dynamics, which include exorbitant fixed costs and the need to adhere to tight schedules.
Even more boldly, Jenkins suggested in
another column that the airline industry would operate far more efficiently and safely if it were to do the seemingly unthinkable: eliminate the pilots and the boys in the radar towers, and go to a thoroughly automated GPS navigation system. Eliminate humans, the thinking goes, and you eliminate human errors and inefficiencies, resulting in even safer skies and markedly fewer flight delays. This is a big idea, and one that’s apparently not as far-fetched as it sounds.
Well, OK, I’m sure it sounds far-fetched to the pilots union and the air-traffic controllers.
• • •
Martin Kaufmann is the managing editor of The Golf Life. To reach him e-mail
mkaufmann@golfweek.com.
Posted: 7/14/2008
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