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Airline Greenlighted For Season 2
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Posted by: EchoBravo

Hadn't seen this before now. Figured I'd share.
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Reality TV's 'Airline' takes off on second season

Thursday March 11, 5:54 PM EST
By Jon Herskovitz

DALLAS, March 11 (Reuters) - A second season of the reality TV show featuring drunk passengers, missing luggage and people too large to squeeze between the armrests of an economy seat is scheduled for take-off, TV executives said on Thursday.

Cable TV's A&E Network will show a second season of the series called "Airline," which features the exploits of passengers and personnel at low-fare carrier Southwest Airlines (LUV). The network said ratings have proven strong for the show, which seems to feature each week a passenger so drunk that they are not allowed to board a plane.

Production will start soon on the new season, which will consist of at least 18, 30-minute episodes. The series will add tales of travel on Southwest at Baltimore-Washington International Airport and continue coverage at Chicago Midway Airport and Los Angeles International.

"'Airline' has proven to be a show that uses real life in the best ways. It's funny, it's dramatic," said Robert DeBitetto a senior vice president of programming at A&E.

The drama includes weather-related service cancellations and the humor includes showing the proper policy to handle a male passenger who wants to board a flight wearing a kilt with nothing underneath.

"This is the only reality show that goes into the workplace," said Beth Hardin, a spokeswoman for Southwest.

A&E and Southwest said the upcoming season will take a closer look at the passengers and their plights and how the airline tries to help them. Southwest executives said the show has not led to a noticeable increase or decrease in people using the airline.

"Airline" took to the air in January. The series is based on a British TV show of the same name that pulled in solid ratings during its six-year run on the ITV Network.

In recent months, Southwest has become the leading domestic carrier in the United States in terms of the number of passengers it flies. It is also the only major U.S. airline that has remained profitable since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

A&E is a joint venture of the Hearst Corporation, Walt Disney Co.-owned (DIS), ABC and General Electric Co.-owned (GE) NBC.

Posted by: steuert

"The series is based on a British TV show of the same name that pulled in solid ratings during its six-year run on the ITV Network."

Reuters sure has this wrong! The British show is, of course, called "Airport," not "Airline," and chronicles the goings-on at Heathrow involving many different international airlines as well as the police and medical personnel assigned to duty at the airport. They covered everything from mid-air crises involving foreign airplanes, to escaped poisonous animals, to false passports, counterfeiting rings, and car theft in the garages.

By contrast, the A&E show concentrates exclusively on the seedy operations of Southwest. They pretty much exhausted all possible interesting topics, such as lost luggage, drunk passengers, smelly/sick/too-fat passengers, and overbooked flights, in the first half-dozen episodes, and are now reduced to covering employee retirement parties and the endless and repititous bitching of customers who seem outraged when they get the bare-bones service they paid for when they chose the cheapest airline around.

Unless the producers can dig up some more interesting material than has been presented in the last few episodes, I will be surprised if the series lasts much longer. Maybe they will replace it with a mini-series called "Bus Line," detailing the hardships of passengers riding inter-city Greyhound routes and the fun times when the drivers get together for a few beers after they've parked at the terminal after a tiring run through rush-hour traffic.

Posted by: swizzlest

Actually, they're not wrong. Not at all. There was a show in the UK about EasyJet. I believe it did run for about 6 seasons.

Posted by: EchoBravo

quote:
Originally posted by swizzlest:
There was a show in the UK about EasyJet.

That was my understanding as well. If any of you have seen them both, I'd be interested in hearing how the two shows compare.

Steuert is right, too. I'm a huge commercial aviation nut, but I'm also totally bored with Airline. I was hoping other carriers would see the show and allow taping of their operations, too. I think it's the "Should've gone Greyhound" crowd* that makes Airline sometimes depressing.

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*Frequent fliers insist pax suck on the majors, too. I don't disagree, but maybe we'd at least get some new stories thrown into the weekly too drunk/too fat/showed up late rotisserie.

Posted by: rhuntington3

I like Airport because it doesn't have the Drunk of the Week every time. Airline gets a little old when it does that but its good to see a renewal come through for it.

For those that have it, Airport is currently running on the Discovery Wings channel on Tuesday nights. Check it out!

Posted by: djbrown

quote:
Originally posted by rhuntington3
I like Airport because it doesn't have the Drunk of the Week every time. Airline gets a little old when it does that but its good to see a renewal come through for it.

For those that have it, Airport is currently running on the Discovery Wings channel on Tuesday nights. Check it out!

Ack! This is the first I've heard of "Airport", and I get Discovery Wings. I see where they are airing Season 6 right now. Assume these don't have to be viewed in order to make sense and I can jump into viewing them right now?

Posted by: steuert

I stand corrected about the UK program covering "Easyjet," which I guess is the British equivalent of Southwest. Evidently, this program (thankfully) never made it to the US.

"Assume these don't have to be viewed in order to make sense and I can jump into viewing them right now?"

You are correct. Most of the current "Airport" broadcasts seem to be reruns so you won't have missed anything, and each episode is pretty much self-contained.

Posted by: Fustanella

quote:
Originally posted by EchoBravo
proper policy to handle a male passenger who wants to board a flight wearing a kilt with nothing underneath.

That would be: let the passenger fly. :rolleyes:

It's not as if his buttocks would touch anything save the inside of the kilt - and I've seen people fly in shorts that are far less covering. Or is there some TSA security mandate for undies that I missed the memo on?

Next time I fly, I'll wear my combat boots, urban-camo Utilikilt and my police-style t-shirt with CIA in big letters on the back. Let them look that up in their procedures...

ObKiltJokePunchLine: "Nope, it's all in perfect working order." :)

Posted by: jerobi

Renewal? Excellent. Thanks for the heads up!

Posted by: Brown57

quote:
Originally posted by EchoBravo
That was my understanding as well. If any of you have seen them both, I'd be interested in hearing how the two shows compare.

The US "Airline" isn't shown here, and I only watch "Airport" with any regularity, but the following is an appreciative review I found of the original UK "Airline". BTW, EasyJet is widely known as SleazyJet in the UK :D

Bingbong. Easyjet are proud to show that their clients are bastards

The lure of this programme is: let's watch Mr. uppity insist that he can still board the plane that is currently at 2,000 feet and climbing. or we can watch miss sly student, trying to use her uni id card instead of her passport which she left on a pub table somewhere after a drunken binge. more mishaps, more mayhem and more unreasonable passengers than you could shake a stick at is what makes this fly-on-the-wall docu-soap tick.

bbc have airport, itv have airline, and if you aren't concentrating you can be watching one thinking you're watching the other.

it's not always easy to differentiate between the forgetful, the late, the irate or the lost passengers, but the staff are a different matter. and it's this point alone that lifts the itv version above it's rival.

airline is based on the day to day runnings of the easyjet company, owned by the greek bloke stavros. this is the airline that prides itself on offering cheap, no frills flights from their bases at luton and liverpool airports. (this means the good old packed lunch and thermos on your part, as they don't provide food on board the plane. probably the best bonus actually, having sampled some unrecognisable meals on many an aircraft. it also doesn't send out their airline tickets, they have to be collected on your arrival at the airport. and you have to book direct with them, not via travel agents. this is how they keep their costs down).

the staff are the stars, first and foremost. you have the beautiful, young and extremely brave katrina, who has been suffering from cancer.

so far in the series we have followed her through her wedding plans and a recurrence of her illness which sees her hospitalized only hours before her wedding. she'd been desperate to hang onto her gorgeous long blonde locks, but after the service that she had insisted on going ahead, she had to come to terms with losing it all.

The hardest bit to watch when it comes to Katrina are the general public's attitude towards her just after she became well known. Some meant to be kind, but told her that she looked much better with the long hair in her ID photo than with the close cropped style, and some are so unkind as to be completely foul. Especially the man who when annoyed at the service from Easyjet, told her he was glad she'd got cancer. Luckily for him, this bit wasn't actually broadcast...

Katrina has now left the show and she will be sorely missed.

Another memorable member is Jane, the manager at check-ins. Her hair styles and colours changed on a regular basis, as well as her moods. Despite being a consummate professional, her guard would occasionally slip when confronted by idiot of Olympias proportions, and considering how funny it is to watch her gradually losing it, you are thankful that they are always out there, waiting to test her customer service skills.

She's brilliant in dealing with the elderly in particular, and became very upset when an old person was taken ill, fussing round them, making sure that nothing was too much trouble for them. Thankfully the elderly gentleman made a full recovery, and Jane was informed as per her request. A lot of airline companies I know could do with at least 10 Janes working for them.

On a business level you get to see the ubiquitous petty rules that companies love to set in place, the problems they can suffer at the capricious hands of mother nature, the policies they have when dealing with procedural problems (informative and handy if you're thinking of travelling with them) and just how they get round all the niggling little problems that can generally disrupt and make your personal life hell when trying to fly from A to B.

The staff at Liverpool Airport have a slightly different feel to them, their northern attitude, rooted in direct and plain speaking, makes the coverage of dealing with customer complaints marginally more interesting. The interaction between the airline rep and the customer tend to be more confrontational and abrupt, and I've seen more stand-up rows at their desks than in Luton. The name calling from passengers can get really fit at times.

I'm sure that the presence of a camera filming the disputes makes Easyjets customers more determined to not lose face and back down in their arguments, which is great for tv viewing, but ultimately doesn't help them win their case.

Having been on the receiving end of abuse from the general public in a few jobs, I know what it is that people have to do in order to get effective help. And behaving like a baby who's just lobbed the rattle from the pram ain't one of them.

- Complain in a way that you yourself wouldn't mind being complained to, IE. calmly, politely and justifying the complaint in a reasonable manner.

- If you know that it's your fault that you're late for a flight, be a good customer, take it on the chin and accept your responsibility for the situation. People will feel more inclined to try and help if they think that you will genuinely appreciate their efforts, rather than just assuming that this is the way you talk to subserviently beings who only exist to take your abuse.

- Know what you are and aren't legally entitled to. Check over any small print and ask to see rules in writing that you're in dispute over. It's a good point to argue from if you are seen to be being fair.

But then, if you listened to me, this would be a crappy, boring show to watch.

http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/tv/tv_progr..._review/270590/