Killing the airlines

Palo Verde

I'm not going to try to track down all the stories over the last couple years...well, not quite true. I made a search for a few minutes, I'm lazy ass, but not completely lame ass, but am finding it harder and harder to find what I'm after in Google™.

The point is, with what you can and can't carry on board flights to and from the UK, US and even Canada, the politics of these fucking governments is gonna kill airline travel and probably put some airlines out of business.

The US is now demanding, IIRC, 72 hour notice of who will be on what flights to the US. Like no one ever has to make a last minute decision overseas or rush home for an emergency. Shit, a doctor in Malaysia once told me to catch the next plane home I could because he feared a cancerous tumor which could best be treated in the US.

Nope. It turned out to be something completely different; even though it was no bed of roses to say the least.

Then there are the 750,000 people on the infamous "no fly" list. That thing detained Ted Kennedy for Christ Sake, not to mention other Congress critters and business travelers and it includes me, a harmless lil ol' blogger; probably because I look up things like Palo Verde. Don't worry it'll become clear.

I can carry knives (most times), rat tail combs, liquids, I've (accidentally) carried a long, wooden letter opener which was far more lethal than any pocket knife. nail files, electronics, finger nail clippers (usually) and all sorts of other banned items on flights which aren't going to or from the UK, US and Canada.

Meanwhile you can take your cellular phone on any flight even though it could be used to detonate a bomb. But banning cellular phones would cause such a political stink it just won't happen.

Business travelers need their blackberries. Kids need their iPods. I need my Genuine Swiss Army knife™ (the only relatively expensive thing I take a chance of having to replace). And who in hell wants to buy several things they'll need after they reach their destination? Not to mention they have to toss them to return home.

All this shit is just to keep a terrorist from getting into the country and taking a pipe bomb into, oh lets say, the US's largest Nuclear Power Generating Plant in Palo Verde, AZ.

I was gonna say this is pure politics. But pure politics is calling HRC an uptight bitch, for example. Nah, its what I prefer to refer to as "impure" politics. Its scare tactics, makes no one safer, disrupts regular travelers to distraction.

Trust me on this. Teleconferencing and videoconferencing are gonna be growth industries. Not so much aircraft production.