OT: Kind of, regarding airline food 184

Andy

Airline stocks are doing okay and if this is the only "event" it won't have much if any effect on air travel (unlike 9/11)...airlines are at record - high load factors (in the US highest since 1945), especially on trans - atlantic routes. It's been hard to find tickets at any price on some routes...

No, airline security "across the pond" is very thorough and MUCH better than the ham - handed efforts we've had in the US. Remember the Brits have been battling IRA terrorism, the Germans had domestic terrorism, the Spanish ETA, the French and Russians too. The Italians had a mbuttacre at Rome airport. In 1970 the PLO hijacked a bunch of European airlines' planes and blew them up in the desert...

My first trip abroad was to the UK in 1975. On the return TWA flight from Heathrow the security guard very politely but *very* thoroughly inspected everything and gave me a body pat - down. This was at the height of IRA terrorism...Americans would blanch at what the Brits had to go through in those days, e.g. no backpacks or bags in some public places, etc.

Back in the 70's you'd fly into some European airports and see armored troop carriers "ready for action" on the apron -- and this included at Zurich.

Out here at O'Hare British Airways has been screening cabin and hold baggage with advanced explosive - screening machines for many years, the US is just catching up since 9/11.

On the nooze they interviewed.a woman who had just returned from touring Israel. She said, "Why should I be upset by all this screening? People should fly to Israel to get a *real* taste of what screening is..."

Europeans and others are used to all this...

I'd rather be "inconvenienced" than dead...YMMV :-)

You on the bong when you post, Andy...???

The airline industry is pulling out of some of it's bankruptcy woes and some airlines are even making profits again...

-- Best Greg