3 Idle Thoughts For Friday

In honor of Terry Maxon’s retirement, I figured I would take a shot at coming up with 3 idle thoughts.

In case you’re wondering what the heck I’m talking about, Terry Maxon was one of my favorite aviation journalists since I began blogging.  He covered aviation for the Dallas Morning News for roughly a total of 20 years.  He retired last week.

One of the things Terry did each Friday was post on his “Airline Biz Blog” 3 random thoughts (“idle thoughts”, as it was).  Sometimes they were travel related, sometimes not.  I recall one about his air conditioning going out in the middle of the hot Dallas summers that kept me chuckling.  But, my favorite was when he compared airline executives to livestock without completely making it into an insult.  I’m betting even the airline execs got some chuckles out of it.

For his final column, he released 30 idle thoughts and I did my best to pick my favorite 3.

To be clear, I’m not Terry Maxon.  I enjoy discussing the aviation industry and learning more about it.  It’s fascinating to me.  But, Terry spent 20 years of his life following aviation.  The sum total of what I know about aviation might fill one of Terry’s shoes.  That being said, I figured it would be fun to try to pay respect to him by coming up with 3 idle thoughts.  On a Friday.  No idea if I’ll do this again, but here goes:

1.  Journalism as a whole has changed dramatically in my lifetime.  Heck, it’s changed in the life of my 4-year old son.  People consider me a journalist at times (yes, I know that’s a stretch).  I just have a ton of fun writing about travel.  And, the information is so much more accessible now than it was, making it easier for me to learn and pass on what I’ve learned.
2. I remember American Airlines CIO Maya Liebman being asked in an interview to comment a few months ago on United Airlines having to ground their entire fleet due to computer issues.  Her reply was respectful of her competition, something along the lines of, “That could happen to anyone.”  It did, to AA today.  Tomorrow can only be better.
3. I can’t imagine the Internet can survive another Republican presidential debate without burning to the ground.

Happy travels, wherever the weekend takes you!