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From: js2j@mhuxt.UUCP (sonntag)
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: Re: $1288 ashtrays
Message-ID: <1052@mhuxt.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 12-Aug-85 16:14:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: mhuxt.1052
Posted: Mon Aug 12 16:14:48 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 17-Aug-85 06:29:41 EDT
References: <6400034@hp-pcd.UUCP> <717@vortex.UUCP> <2608@amdcad.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 26

> Recently there was a lot of noise in the popular press about how the
> Air Force was paying $7200 for coffee pots on airplanes. These responsible
> journalists somehow failed to uncover or report the fact that Delta
> Airlines, buying from a commercial vendor like Lockheed, pays around $4000
> for an item with similar functionality. Having seen a small part of the
> mountains of paperwork the government needs to buy anything, I think
> the markup from $4000 to $7200 is easily explained, if not surprisingly
> low.
> ...But I must conclude that
> coffee pots on airplanes are much more complicated than the kind that
> K-mart sells and that's why they cost so much more. We don't need to invoke
> bottomless greed to explain it. Even if we think our government is
> blind to ripoffs, Delta Airlines can not survive without keeping tight
> controls on costs. Yet they too pay outrageous prices for coffee pots.
>  Phil Ngai (408) 749-5720

     Of course, Delta has to serve coffee to a few hundred passengers out of
their coffee pots.  I guess the military has some transport jets which can
carry similar numbers of passengers but seriously doubt if the $7200 number
is referring to such a coffee pot.  (if it was, don't you think some defense
dept. spokesman would have explained?)
-- 
Jeff Sonntag
ihnp4!mhuxt!js2j
    "My SO is red hot.
     Your SO aint doodely squat."