{"id":5397,"date":"2004-03-18T13:28:55","date_gmt":"2004-03-18T20:28:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2004\/03\/18\/ted-dy.html"},"modified":"2004-03-18T13:28:55","modified_gmt":"2004-03-18T20:28:55","slug":"ted_dy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/03\/18\/ted_dy.html","title":{"rendered":"Ted-dy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Flew <a href=\"http:\/\/flyted.com\">Ted <\/a>yesterday from Denver to Ontario (Calif.).  That&#8217;s the new economy airline run by United.  Overall, a fine flying experience, not much different from most flights, but, where different, modestly better.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Orange and blue are the colors, a slight &#8220;trendy&#8221; variation from United&#8217;s red and blue.  Color coordination is important for Ted.\n<li>They actually sheathed the brushed-metal pillars in the A concourse at DIA with orange.  Lots of decor.  Lots of signs.  Definitely going for a distinctive look.\n<li>Very full flight, indicating the low prices they&#8217;ve gone in swinging with.  Lots of kids flying.  The A concourse seating areas are not quite up to those crowds.  Be interesting to see if the crowds die back when the prices creep up, or if they come up with other schemes to handle it.\n<li>The Ted workers seemed a scosh friendlier and more helpful than average.  The guy at the podium, in mentioning that this was a beverage-service-only flight, actualy offered instructions on where there were places to grab some food to-go there on the concourse, and what sort of time frame folks had to do so.\n<li>Big into providing information, benig helpful.\n<li>The only things that were really &#8220;United&#8221; were the ticketing, the communications with ATC from the cockpit, and the <i>Hemispheres <\/i>magazine in the seat back.\n<li>The safety video was new and snazzy, lots of Matrix-like moving and swooshing.  Actually kind of fun to watch.\n<li>Also in the seat-backs, a plastic card with info on the beverage service and the audio channels.  Very convenient, much more than rooting around in the magazine for them.\n<li>Signature seems to be lemonade.  Offered prominently with the drinks, and then offered later instead of coffee.\n<li>Friendly in voice and appearance, sometimes too much so, verging onto cutesy and twee.  Fact is, we know that corporations <i>aren&#8217;t <\/i>our friends &#8212; at best, they are courteous business associates.  Trying to come across as friends can start to seem insincere after a while. It&#8217;s a delicate tightrope, but Ted is walking it with a modicum of success so far.<\/ul>\n<p>So I&#8217;d book with Ted without hesitation in the future.  Especially if the fares were good.  <\/p>\n<p>But, as Margie noted, fare competition seems to be where it&#8217;s at these days.  There&#8217;s little brand loyalty, and not much that can be done that makes the flying experience on one airline at one general price grade that much different from another.  You&#8217;re more likely to get brand <i>dis<\/i>loyalty (&#8220;I&#8217;ll never fly on X again as long as I live!&#8221;).  Being a friendlier but more expensive airline isn&#8217;t necessarily going to buy you much in the way of customers &#8212; maybe.  <\/p>\n<p>Other noteworthy item:  Kitten is just tall enough that she can see out the airplane windows &#8212; and old enough that she wants too.  &#8220;We&#8217;re flying now!&#8221; she shouted excitedly as we took off.  Neat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Flew Ted yesterday from Denver to Ontario (Calif.). That&#8217;s the new economy airline run by United. Overall, a fine flying experience, not much different from most flights, but, where different,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9616,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/05\/26\/reservations.html","url_meta":{"origin":5397,"position":0},"title":"Reservations","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 26-May-06 8:54am","format":false,"excerpt":"Margie making park reservations, while some lady poaches our seats. UPDATE: We got to DIA nice and early, and hung around in Concourse A. What we really ought to have...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Travel - WDW 06&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Travel - WDW 06","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/travel\/travel-wdw-06"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/\/images\/edc1fdb671.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1046,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/10\/21\/two_can_keep_a.html","url_meta":{"origin":5397,"position":1},"title":"Two can keep a secret &#8230;","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 21-Oct-01 7:35pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Rumor has it that the \"slip across the bridge from the Terminal to Concourse A to get to a really short security line\" trick is no longer effective, due to...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Homeland Security&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Homeland Security","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/homeland-security"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3091,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/08\/11\/glub_glub_glub.html","url_meta":{"origin":5397,"position":2},"title":"Glub, glub, glub","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 11-Aug-02 1:21pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The trip home was relatively uneventful. Lots of folks crowding the terminal in LAX, even at 5:30ish a.m. And on the Denver end, long, long lines to the Concourse A...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Home Improvement&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Home Improvement","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/home-improvement"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":48090,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/11\/14\/ted-cruz-is-a-dolt-obamacare-for-the-internet-edition-part-2.html","url_meta":{"origin":5397,"position":3},"title":"Ted Cruz Is A Dolt (Obamacare for the Internet Edition, Part 2)","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 14-Nov-14 10:08am","format":false,"excerpt":"Ted Cruz, Texas Senator, Tea Party Icon, and Not An Internet Expert, has doubled down on his tweet the other day about Net Neutrality being \"Obamacare for the Internet\" with an Op-Ed in the Washington Post, wherein he manages to demonstrated he's even more ignorant (or diinsabout the Internet and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Big Business&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Ted-Cruz.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Ted-Cruz.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Ted-Cruz.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Ted-Cruz.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":30278,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/09\/15\/tweets-from-2012-09-15-2.html","url_meta":{"origin":5397,"position":4},"title":"Tweets from 2012-09-15","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 15-Sep-12 10:45pm","format":false,"excerpt":"2 of 5 stars to Polly and the Pirates, Volume 2 by Ted Naifeh Link # At the airport. Managed to avoid disintegration booths. Music from \"Hustle\" keeps running through my head. #DEN # Hate flying on Saturday, but on the bright side there were plenty of good parking places.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~Tweets&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~Tweets","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/tweets"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":131889,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/10\/29\/the-ur-ted-talk.html","url_meta":{"origin":5397,"position":5},"title":"The ur-TED Talk","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 29-Oct-16 9:36am","format":false,"excerpt":"I've watched a lot of TED Talk videos over the years. Many of them have been quite interesting and informative. But ... yeah ... there are a lot of ... similarities. View on Google+","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}