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Afternoon Links: Surge Pricing for Pilots, Surgical Ear Piercing, and D.C.’s Perfect School

By Jim Swift

Fly the friendly skies! Some airlines are better than others, but all airlines have some great flight attendants. American Airlines has Bette Nash, who, at 81, has been in the industry for 60 years. Turns out, she’s also a bit of a celebrity! The Washington Post has a fun feature on her:

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Stories? She has many. There was the flight from Washington to Miami with nine stops in between. Or the time her plane hit turbulence so bad that the toilet in the lavatory separated from the floor. In the early days, pillbox hats, girdles and garter belts were required. Once, her garter belt snapped midflight. Nash didn’t panic — no — she casually bent down, scooped it up and continued with the beverage service. There were the days when she served lobster and carved meats to passengers. Oh, and the time she flew with Jacqueline and John F. Kennedy Jr.

Speaking of American Airlines, it looks as though a computer glitch is going to cost them big time over the holidays. ABC 7’s Sam Sweeney reports:

American Airlines says computer glitch allowed all pilots to take vacation over Christmas week. Now union says thousands of flights are in jeopardy of cancellation. Americans says they’re offering 1.5x pay for pilots to fill in and expect to resolve the issue.

Surge pricing, but for airlines. Merry Christmas, pilots!

Move over needle and ice cube, hospitals are here! And charging nearly $2,000 for an ear piercing for a 5-year-old:

During a pre-operative visit, the surgeon offered to throw in a surprising perk. Should we pierce her ears while she’s under? O’Neill’s first thought was that her daughter seemed a bit young to have her ears pierced. Her second: Why was a surgeon offering to do this? Wasn’t that something done free at the mall with the purchase of a starter set of earrings? “That’s so funny,” O’Neill recalled saying. “I didn’t think you did ear piercings.” The surgeon, Peggy Kelley, told her it could be a nice thing for a child, O’Neill said. All she had to do is bring earrings on the day of the operation. O’Neill agreed, assuming it would be free.

It wasn’t. And the hospital won’t budge. I’ve yet to see the hospital bill from when my wife had our twins, but now I’m worried!

Smothering on the rise. You remember the, perhaps, dated term “smothering” don’t you? Well, a chart at The Economist shows that “Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago.” Except, of course, in France.

Everybody gets a diploma! Washington’s NPR outfit WAMU has this interesting look at Ballou High School in Washington, D.C. where, last year, every graduating senior got into college. (If you’re not familiar with D.C. Public Schools, like most large cities, they have their share of problems.) Ordinarily, 100 percent college acceptance rates are a good thing. Here, however, there is reason for concern:

[D]ocuments showed that half of the graduates missed more than three months of school last year, unexcused. One in five students was absent more than present — missing more than 90 days of school.

That’s pretty crazy. Naturally, the school district was in on it. And how they #ownit is even crazier. Here’s Jane Spence from DCPS excusing away the unexcused absences:

“It is expected that our students will be here every day, but we also know that students learn material in lots of different ways. So we’ve started to recognize that students can have mastered material even if they’re not sitting in a physical space.”

Read the whole thing.

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