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Flight Delays

2008-02-23

Category: philosophies

On the national news last night, one of the stories covered the flight delays around the country caused by the heavy snows hitting airports in the northeast. The story discussed how the inability to fly into the dangerous winter weather at those north eastern airports slowed things down in the airports of origin. The reporters also interviewed many delayed passengers. It surprised me how many of the passengers blamed the airlines for the problem.

I know that airlines are not the most efficient way to get across country in a few hours. Actually, no, they are the most efficient way to cross the thousands of miles from our western shore to our eastern shore despite the regular delays and confusion. Though I can see blaming the airlines for lost or damaged luggage, I can't really see blaming them for not flying into weather where the laws of physics say that almost everyone on boards will die in a fiery crash.

So here is my advice for those who are having so much trouble with the airlines adherence to federal safety laws. Go hitch up the team to the Conestoga wagon and hit that dusty trail. You should be able to get cross country in a couple of months. Since it is winter you will want to be sure of your path and provisions before you leave. I recommend that you take Donner Pass; it should be fine this time of year.

The last time I had to fly anywhere there were delays. From what I could tell, much of what was slowing me down came from moronic passengers. Do you really need to take ten minutes to get that oversized, over stuffed "carry-on" bad into and out of the overhead compartment? Perhaps if you had just bought the extra ticket for your kid rather than stuffing him or her into a duffle bag, the rest of us could get onto and off of the airplane in a reasonable amount of time. If you are really worried that the airline will lose your luggage, you can have an overnight shipping company guarantee that it will be where you are headed by ten o'clock the next morning.

If every one of the thousands of planes trying to keep a schedule has half a dozen or more mouth-breathers who cannot figure out how to travel in a considerate fashion the problems are just going to get worse. It is important that our Air Marshals start shooting passengers who think they are "entitled" to anything. We already know that criminals are stupid; we need to make the rest of the morons illegal too,


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