Totally. She’s the Dallas Cowgirl, but I think he wants to be.
On getting the bigger plane:
Does anyone think that some airline exec scared up a bigger plane on short notice to get their airline on the Amazing Race for marketing purposes? I can’t recall if it was TAM or GOL, or if the later flight was on the same or different airline.
It’s kind of scary that the ‘manpon’ seems to believe his wife indeed ordered a bigger plane.
Yeah, I definitely thought they saw the racers and their film crews showing up and ordered a bigger plane.
Which kinda sucks. I’d hate to think airlines are going to start helping the racers. Didn’t a plane wait for Rob & Amber or something? I just about tore hair out.
It WAS All-Stars, but it was Uchenna and Joyce that they actually extended the skybridge back out for.
ETA: It was actually in Season 7, Uchenna and Joyce’s original season.
Yes, a little. But not nearly as much as Blake and Paige from Season 2.
OMG, yes! I thought they were going to get all Flowers in the Attic on us.
You very funny.
Now, I thought of it simply as a sensible business decision by the airlines. They obviously had both planes there. Suppose the originally planned airplane would only accommodate 8 more people (two teams) but they learned from the racers that there were going to be 40 people (10 teams) looking to buy tickets on that flight? Here’s the choice: A) stick to the original airplane and sell 8 ticket, with the other 32 likely buying tickets from your competitors - OR- B) sub in the larger airplane and collect the extra moolah yourself?
Okay, the larger plane will burn some more fuel, but I’m sure the 32 extra fares more than covers it.
Good point, but the airline does have to keep to its schedule and they don’t know for sure 40 people are going to show up on time. Or maybe they do. I dunno. Don’t make me think! 
It would be in the racers’ best interest to be the only team or two to make the best flight. It would suck if at every airport we saw, “sure, we’re getting a larger plane and we’ll wait for the whole bunch of you.”
I’m sure that won’t happen.
I had a discussion about this long ago, don’t remember if I ever posted about it here. So, sorry if this is a repeat:
There is a relatively easy way for the TAR production company to manipulate at least some of the air travel occasions.
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They know roughly how long it will take for teams to complete the tasks up to an air travel event. (They have each leg ‘run’ by a couple of sets of employees during the planning of the race.)
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They know when the teams will be starting out, that is, 12 hours after they arrive at a pit stop.
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Add ‘leg time’ to the starting times should give a reasonable estimate for the EARLIEST time teams will start reaching the airport.
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Knowing that time plus where the teams will be heading, they can figure out which flights will be the ‘best’ options for the racer.
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They have a significant numbe of production people to get from location to location. A ‘spare’ camera/sound man or two. Production assistants. Phil’s makeup girl. Whatever. So all they need to do is buy whatever numbers of plane tickets will be needed for those people, spread appropriately among the ‘best flights’ to achieve the desired results.
They keep track of the progress of the teams and then buy OR cancel reservations to suit the way the leg plays out.
For example, suppose a single team is ridiculously far ahead of all the others. So you buy a LOT of tickets on the ‘best’ flight, hopefully exhausting the supply of seats. Suddenly that team’s lead is cut by hours…
Or uppose all the teams are arriving in one clump, and there are ample seats for all of them on the ‘second best’ flight. Hmmm. How about you cancel the tickets you bought for the ‘best flight’ – and now a team or two or three will be able to get a lead on the others, heightening interest in the battle for reservations.
Etc, etc.
They won’t always be able to influence the result, of course, and likely a lot of the time there’s no need, the teams will spread themselves out through mishaps and stupidities.
And I’m not saying they would set out to screw/help any particular team.
But I can certainly see them tweaking events to keep it competitive and exciting for the viewers. How boring would it be if one team got a 24 hour lead going into the finale? This would just be another tactic not much different from the often artificial ‘open hours’ they use to keep the racers appropriately bunched up.
This might work, but I don’t know if it’s “allowed.” Quiz show rules and all that. I think we might have discussed this before but I can’t find it anywhere – probably from somewhere around Season 7 and Uchenna & Joyce and the whole jetway fiasco, but I’m not sure. I mean, you could say it’s “finessing” the production schedule, which it definitely would be, but some might see it as unduly affecting the outcome. (Although, I can’t explain why the “Hours of Operations” bunching wouldn’t be as well – maybe they have a good explanation for that one? Like labor laws affecting the production crew or something?) I also wonder about the budgetary concerns with buying and then cancelling all those flights for all those people, but I imagine Bruckheimer can afford it.
Also … wonder how one goes about getting the job as Phil’s makeup girl? I’m willing to Jell-O wrestle to get that job.