Re: airplane baggage

[mech <mech@m3ch.net>]

At 1:41 AM +0100 4/23/06, Stephen Goodman wrote:
>In this case I would say the safety aspect was there before someone 
>decided to make more money than they used to for excess weight.

It sounds like you're assuming that no-one on the list actually flies 
enough to notice a difference.  And, if we do, that this "safety 
concern" is only recently a safety concern and nobody ever thought 
about how to balance luggage prior to a month ago.  Um, yeah...

Speaking personally, I'd say I've spent the majority of my working 
time for this millennium living on a damn plane (gack!).  Before I 
cashed out all my stock options and "retired" in mid-2005, I'd 
already made both Gold on American and 100k on United, amongst 
others.  Those two alone are worth ~125,000 miles in the air, from 
only January to May 2005.

I've flown a lot (oh, BTW, did I mention I'm writing this from Kyoto 
right now, and my home airport is O'hare?).  I can tell you that 
there was never such a big "safety concern" to the US domestic 
carriers in at least six years prior to March of this year.  Now, 
it's changing.  Whether the carriers have found a sudden new interest 
in safety, or whether they're merely looking for another spiff to 
offset rising fuel prices, I dunno.  I know which explanation I'm 
leaning toward, but you can draw your own conclusion....

        --m.

-- 
_______
"I want to reach my hand into the dark and *feel* what reaches back..."