Episode 592: Neal and Toby recap SpaceX’s ninth Starship flight that reached new heights as it reached space, but came crashing down to Earth. Then Southwest’s new bag fee becomes official with a price starting at $35. Plus, NPR fights back against Trump’s threat to cease federal funding to the national broadcaster. Meanwhile, Toby looks into the health trend of creatine, which has everybody wanting to lift stronger and live longer. Finally, the Trump Administration is ratcheting up the rules on student visas and consumer confidence got a little boost. Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. LinkedIn will even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign so you can try it yourself. Go to LinkedIn.com/MBD Terms and conditions apply. Only on LinkedIn Ads. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.swap.fm/l/mbd-note Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow 00:00 - The Luckiest Casino 02:45 - Starship Launch 07:20 - Southwest Bag Fees 12:00 - NPR Lawsuit 18:10 - Toby's Trends: Creatine 22:00 - Headlines Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What happened in SpaceX's latest Starship launch?
That is a crazy amount of money. You look at maybe some of its peers, Spirit, Frontier, I don't know if Southwest would actually consider itself peers with that, but kind of not the big three airlines. Spirit made $774 million in baggage fees. Frontier made $861 million. The big three each made over a billion dollars in airline. And Southwest brought in $83 million.
Those are just from the people who exceeded the two-bag fly-free policy. So That was just too much money that they thought they were leaving on the table. And now it is a new era in the Southwest.
And one challenge that comes with checking or charging for check bags is that people will now put way more stuff in their carry on. They'll bring more carry ons. Southwest needs to be prepared for this because. Die ganze M.O. ist, dass wir Flugzeuge an die Tür schalten, schneller als jeder andere. Ein Flugzeug geht in diese Tür, die Leute kommen weg, die Leute kommen sofort weg.
Aber wenn du mehr Fahrzeuge hast und mehr Leute zahlen für Checkpäcke im Kiosk im Lobby, das braucht viel mehr Zeit. Like right now, Customers spend about 60 seconds on average. Untertitelung des ZDF für funk, 2017 you know, as you're getting onto the plane, which also adds more time. So they have to beef up technology.
They have to beef up their staff presence at the gate in order to, you know, continue their, you know, pretty good track record of turning around flights because their on-time rate is over 80% right now. That's basically on par with Delta and United. As the industry standard, they have the lowest rate of cancellations among main US rivals.
So if they keep that up, I think they can position themselves as, you know, Wir können diese operative Exzellenz behalten, auch wenn wir diese Änderungen machen.
Der letzte Punkt, über den wir nicht gesprochen haben, ist der Fakt, dass Business-Select- oder High-Loyalty-Status-Mitglieder immer noch diese kostenlosen Taschen bekommen. Das könnte also in das Kreditkarten-Business einsteigen, was für viele Flugzeuge ein großer Geldmacher ist. Delta hat rund 7,5 Billionen Dollar von ihren Kreditkarten gekostet, die sie im Verhandlung mit American Express haben.
So maybe Southwest is saying, hey, let's beef up our credit card program. More people are going to want to join our rewards, our loyalty, use our credit card in order to get those bags fly free policy. So if you were looking for maybe a more positive spin on this, potentially it could lead to a greater increase of its credit card business.
And just to be clear, if you booked a Southwest flight before today, you can still have your free checked baggage. It's just tickets being bought starting today. You will have to pay $35 and $45. Let's go fly somewhere, Neil. Alright, NPR, National Public Radio, is known for its host-hushed tones, but it got plenty combative yesterday as it fights to keep federal funding flowing.
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