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Charter Flight Websites / Services?
X86Daddy asks: "TSA's latest announcement banning all fluids (toothpaste even) from carry-on luggage is the icing on a very sour cake. Many passengers are growing tired of the invasive security screenings, the increasing prices, lost and stolen luggage, and the decreasing quality of service with commercial flights in the United States. However, given the geographical size of this country and the lack of rail options, flight remains the only practical method of travel for most destinations. Can anyone suggest alternative flight services? Are there websites that connect Cessna or other small scale air charter services with interested passengers? I've found CharterX and CharterHub but they seem more geared toward executives looking for jets. Does anyone have experience traveling this way? Is the price point a lot higher, making this a dumb idea (just resign myself to buying toiletries at every destination and prepare for the mandatory anal probes in '07)?"
Geez.
... you could just, you know, not put your toiletries in your carry-on and not buy them at each destinations. Am I the only one who doesn't typically have toothpaste in his carry-on ? The only case I could see is when you're gone for only two days and want to avoid waiting for the other luggage but even then...
You can thank Congress for that.
If you've been paying attention the past few years, the FAA and the major airlines seem hellbent on removing general aviation from the US altogether (closing non-airline airports, insisting on implementing per request fees for ATC, trying to ground all aircraft built before the last few decades. And don't get me started on the stupidity of every major city wanting a Washington D.C. style Air Defense Identificaton Zone). I suspect having nothing flying anywhere near the ground except governemnt controled drones would suit them just fine.
Join Tor today!
... I know that B.A. Baracus is happy.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
... I'm european :)
...the "not being blown to chunks at 30,000 feet"...
Inconceivable that you would rather "take your chances" than leave your toothpaste behind.
Doesn't the Government work for us? (Rhetorical question). It was interesting to hear our Attorney General at the press conference- the ernest docent, trying to convince us they were doing their very best to keep us informed and that all of this was for our safety. It's ridiculous.
I wonder if who's going to test suckling womens brests?
I don't know which side you're on with the reactionary comment but to me this is a clear trend towards reducing personal freedoms through bureaucratic hoops. Personally, I don't want to fly as much as I used to because I don't want to wait in line for 2 hours or give them my fingerprints to get in the quick line. I want to bring my own freakin toothpaste when I travel. Freedom to move around the country is a pretty basic right which is being eroded by stealth.
I was on a flight to Kuwait deploying with my unit. We were waiting to fly out of Ft. Campbell and these guys are running around telling us we have to pack our Gerbers, Folding knives, and lighters in our stow bags and that they cannot be on your person or in your carry on.
All of our guns though - no problem. We didn't even take out the bolts.
I understand that a military flight vs a civilian flight is totally different, but c'mon. You let me bring my GUN on the plane?
hi mom!
In order to be fair, this ultimatum should be only *after* we have stopped our meddling in the Middle East. All troops should first be unilaterally withdrawn and all aid to Israel should cease.
Disengagement combined with a harsh hand in case of further attacks is the only way that we can preserve our society and the sacred liberties upon which this country was founded.
-b.
Getting your own pilot's license is a bit of work but easily do-able on your average geek's salary. Then go in on a Cessna with a few friends or join a flying rental club and you've got something that can do the shorter hops easily. It won't be cheaper, but it's not as insanely expensive as most think, and no one will search you or even ask you where you're going (unless you fly through class B or C airspace, and then only in general terms).
Alternately, in a couple years the Very Light Jet (VLJ) market is supposed to take off and offer the kind of services you suggest on a level that an upper-middle-class American can afford, but not yet. Watch Eclipse, Honda, and the others roll out their aircraft and look for the small carriers to use'em.
E pluribus unum
Had they (terrorists/freedom fighters) succeeded would this article be here complaining about we cant bring on toothpaste, or would we be talking about the 10-20 planes and thousands of people who died today?
-- "of course thats just my opinion, I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
Many passengers are growing tired of the invasive security screenings
Asking people to remove their shoes and preventing them from bringing liquids on board is that invasive? There are the rare extreme cases of people being unfairly searched, but that's a handful of people out of hundreds of thousands that fly each day.
the increasing prices
This made me laugh. All of the major carriers just significantly lowered their prices in response to United Airlines doing so.
lost and stolen luggage
Put an address tag on it and a solid lock. I know many people who travel and a few have had issues with their luggage, but if they had proper identifying info on it, they got it... just a few days late.
and the decreasing quality of service with commercial flights in the United States
Some of the carriers are actually improving their quality of service. Look at Midwest Express as an example... extra wide seats on every flight and you get 1 or 2 hot cookies. Used to be that you only got the cookie on flights out of Milwaukee, but now you get them on inbound flights too. I've flown other carriers and I've never had a problem getting a drink, pillow, snack, etc. What exactly are you referring to?
As for your main question, if you're complaining about costs for a commercial flight, you're out of your mind if you think you can afford even sharing the cost of a chartered plane. Remember that many of the major air carriers get government assistance because they can't turn a profit even with their "high prices". If you remove that subsidy, you'll be paying a lot more even if you can find enough people to fill a 747.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
My brother-in-law and his family live up here in Vancouver. When his father-in-law comes up to visit from the Bay Area he just flies his own plane. No security, no lines, and he can even smoke a cigar.
Source:
eBay Motors> Other Vehicles & Trailers> Aircraft> Airplanes - Single-Engine
There is a difference between "Give me Liberty, or give me Death" and "Give me Liberty AND Death". As much as US soldiers lay their lives on the line to protect our freedoms, we may just have to put our toiletries in our checked luggage, and no longer will you be able to sneak in mixed drinks in soda bottles. Yes, I know, I too will miss the days of re-enacting that commercial where the woman washes her hair on the plane to her orgasmic sounding delight, but just like the soldiers, we civilians have to do our part, too. Personally, I think most people (at least in the US) won't mind a few additional restrictions to reduce the risk of terrorist actions in flight.
In a mature society, "civil servant" is semantically equal to "civil master." --Lazarus Long
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Yeah, because invading Afghanistan worked so well for getting rid of Al Queda . . . .
Does somebody give you an extra ration of crack every time you sucessfully articulate what they want you to believe?
Or, even better for this topic:
So the article says they will make an exception for "prescription medicine with a name that matches the passenger's ticket". Because we know that no terrorist would be able to forge those labels, right?
On the flip side, the U.S. Department of Transportation is completely ignoring the railway as an answer to our nation's transportation problems.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
You said one thing right:
In order to be fair, this ultimatum should be only *after* we have stopped our meddling in the Middle East. All troops should first be unilaterally withdrawn and all aid to Israel should cease.
I think you'd find that if the US did that, all of the attacks would stop.
Just a suggestion. Or take the bus.
No one said anything about invasion. We're talking about revenge - hundredfold payback if Islamofascists choose to murder innocent Americans. Methinks you're the one smoking the rock.
-b.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Funny enough, I think Slashdot is one of the best places to complain. It's a huge audience of people who think about civil rights and liberties and are used to democratic freedom. Moreover they tend to be people who "do it themselves" (at least when it comes to technology). They might even be say "hey, this guy's got a point" and maybe enough Slashdotters would get together and make a web site or write letters to congressmen or protest somewhere.
You're insisting that everyone should be an individual and make choices themselves which will change things. In today's mass-culture, techno-capitalist society this has little or no effect. You have to TEAM UP!
I was in the USAF many moons ago, and after a long deployment in late winter in a very cold, icy, wet, miserable place, living in tents with kerosene stoves, wooden floors and sidewalks and nothing, nothing, nothing to do and nothing that was completely dry and unfrozen,
the fricken military customs agent made us stand (not sit-ground was wet) OUTSIDE at 3-8 AM (all 5 hours) while he (green looey) and two sgts went thru every damn duffel and ditty bag for the whole fricken' ground support squadron.
We've been out on bivouac you damn idiot, there wasn't any contraband out there for us to smuggle back to the states- not even poison ivy cuz it's TOO DAMN COLD!!!!!
Sorry. Been there, done that. I'm ok now.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
So...in the case of the home-grown British rail bombers, who should they have attacked? Themselves?
Pack your toiletries in your checked bag. Better yet, stay home and whine.
...Because if there's one thing better than folks whose government dislikes us but whose population is ambivalent, it's a country with a desperate, starving population with nothing to lose and whose brothers, sisters, parents and babies we've killed.
Seriously, the only way to stop this stuff in the long term is cooperation and a sharing of cultures. The amount of energy at the disposal of each person on Earth is becoming more massive each year, and we're never going to catch everyone. We need to begin the process of stopping them from wanting to attack us. That means marginalizing the radical elements of both their culture and ours (people such as yourself), and eliminating those people's support among their peers (that's us, modding you down).
E pluribus unum
You don't own the damned airplane-- if you don't like it, you don't have to fly. Did you ever consider, you know, maybe putting your toothpaste in your checked baggage rather than carry-on? What do you need toothpaste on a flight for anyway? And what makes you so special that we need to protect your right to carry a bottle of toothpaste on a privately owned airplane at the risk of 100+ deaths in a bombing?
The theory is that this new class of jet will be what is needed to enable relatively economical air taxi services that fly from point to point (and likely from smaller airports) rather than flowing your through the current hub-based carriers
This morning as I was reading the news about this, and this insightful blog post, I started wondering whether this sort of overreaction is just the thing to give the fledgling air taxi industry a kickstart.
Forget about toothpaste. What about, like, packing a lunch -- bottled water, yogurt, some energy bars? Its not like you get anything to eat on the plane anymore, and if you load up on fluids so you don't dehydrate (an issue in the dry, thin cabin air), well, they don't let you go potty on the approach to Washington National.
So I guess the flight experience will be like the Ramadan fast -- no fluids, no food -- for X hours, only X may be unpredictable and open ended given flight delays. A multi-hour no-fluid no-food fast is doable for multi-hours, but we are talking about in an environment where you don't want to be dehydrated because 1) dry-thin air, 2) the cramped seats where you are vulnerable to deep-vein thrombosis, 3) you are packed in with strangers sharing their nasal viruses. So it will be like Ramadan combined with the Hadj.
So the coffin corner is you can't pack lunch, and they won't serve you lunch, so you can sit there and be hungry and thirsty.
I am sure they're all just laughing their heads off at this very moment.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Who do we complain to about this? And how quickly will such a complaint turn into a spot on the no fly lists?
I mean, honestly, this is just insane.
I'm trying to put together a coherent thought or two about this, but I just can't wrap my brain around the scale of the disconnect between what they claim they're trying to achieve and the means they're employing. Either they're lying to us about their goals, or they have absolutely no sense of perspective, or they're viciously incompetent. Or some combination of the three. I just can't come up with any other explanations.
I'd certainly hope so - the idea is to stop the attacks, not to waste innocent lives on either side. However, if there is another attack after the disengagement, the countries responsible for harboring and/or supporting Islamic fascist organizations deserve to be sternly and severely spanked.
-b.
Had they (terrorists/freedom fighters) succeeded would this article be here complaining about we cant bring on toothpaste, or would we be talking about the 10-20 planes and thousands of people who died today?
Thousands of people did die today... Due to car accidents, cancer, and poverty. If we're just trying to stop deaths, we should focus on making safer cars, researching cancer, and helping those less fortunate than ourselves.
I suspect, however, that all of this terrorism hype isn't about stopping deaths. We don't even know for sure that there was going to be a terrorist attack. The US and UK governments are far from being trustworthy. The US government has contemplated "simulated" terrorist attacks to change public opinion.
No pesky TSA screenings or customs, and you can even keep a little pot in your carry-ons. Or should I say drag-alongs.
Anyone who has been flying very often for very long knows:
- Flights have gotten dramatically cheaper in the past few years. With the discount carriers (Southwest) and competition from the big carriers, round-trips under $150 are not uncommon.
- Flying is easier than ever. Security has gotten more annoying, but everything else is better.
- Gone are the days when you had to go to the counter (or tip a skycap) to check in (even if you don't have checked baggage). - - Gone are the days when you had to wait for your tickets in the mail (or go to the airport or a travel agent).
- Gone are the days when you had to spend countless minutes (sometimes hours) in line or on the phone just to book a flight. Today, you can book online easily and get your boarding pass from an easy-check-in kiosk.
- There are more flights to more places from more places at more times. Non-stop is the norm if you are in a decently large city.
So, I guess the only real complaints are:
- Services have been reduced. No more free meals, for one - often no hot meals at all. But, hey, airplane food was never good, and at least you don't have to pay for headphones anymore. And, if it lowers my fares more, I'm all for cutting the frils.
- Security takes longer. It's always been a joke, it still is, and I suspect that it always will be. Guess what, though? It's standardized now, so you know what to expect, and the inspectors are paid better, so they usually aren't asleep on the job. In a well-managed airport (e.g. Denver), the lines are short or nonexistant during off hours, reasonable during normal times, and acceptable during peak hours.
So, air travel is available to more people than ever before, and it's easier than ever in most regards. I think that you can put your toothpaste in your checked luggage.
>Put an address tag on it and a solid lock. I know many people who travel and a few have had issues with their luggage,
/will/ cut the locks off of any luggage they want to search.
>but if they had proper identifying info on it, they got it... just a few days late.
TSA
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
So, if a thug is aiming a gun at you and your family, and you have a bigger gun, do you hug him and "cooperate" with him, or do you shoot his face off?
-b.
"We have a strong, technologically advanced military. It's time that we used it to put the fear of God into our enemies. " :)
We HAD one, then came the post-Gulf War drawdown (woo hoo! we gonna git da Peace Dividend!) after which the Chuck Spinney-predicted Bow Wave ("tsunami" is more like it) coupled with Rumsfelds insistance on not using the 9/11 mandate to rebuild the armed forces left us strung out and overstretched.
The US military has exhausted the Reagan-era equipment we have relied on for the past two decades, and "transformation" ain't happening. We don't have the resources to "carpet bomb" much of anything. Most of SAC and TAC went to AMARC or the smelter.
Now we are shitcanning 40,000 airmen to pay for jets we cannot afford because leadership refuses to buy in quantities that allow economies of scale. Good luck if we actually have to fight someone that is both competent and has an air force...
Not that I'm bitter.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
There should be an ultimatum: if there is another terrorist attack or attacks causing major loss of life, any country found to be harboring and/or funding Islamic terrorists will be attacked. Not invaded. Attacked. Their cities will be summarily carpet-bombed...
It's a reasonably good strategic response to a rational state-like entity whose strength is in their infrastructure, especially in a situation like, say, Afghanistan, where there's close cooperation between the state and the terroists. It loses a considerable amount of its strategic value against non-state actors whose life depends on in the appeal of their ideology, and where the state and the terrorists may have at best an uneasy state of coexistence.
In many cases, what we want from states which are in the uneasy-coexistence state (or better) is greater cooperation in pursuing and apprehending terrorists, and in suppressing radical Islamist elements. That greater cooperation has to come both from the authorities and population. Carpet-bombing a city is unlikely to produce the cooperation. Nor is it particularly improbable it could create sympathy for radical Islamist claims.
Tweet, tweet.
"On the flip side, the U.S. Department of Transportation is completely ignoring the railway as an answer to our nation's transportation problems."
They're not ignoring it. The public doesn't want it! How many years before that fact sinks in.
Oh and the madrid bombings showed that trains aren't any safer (even less).
NOT FLAIMBAIT! Mod the parent up!
This is a legit point! Slashdot does seem to be the hangout spot for the paranoid. AND Often in the USA today, people shrug their responsiblities... They want the government to care for them from cradle to grave. When that care involves saving a few folks and causeing minor irritability to the rest of us, they complain. BUT, let the government do nothing, and they would have bitched all they way to some lawyer about how nobody in the FBI, etc did ANYTHING to stop it.
You CAN NOT have your cake and eat it too... Personally, my wife a I travel a few times a year and this restriction will NOT affect us in anyway except the wait behind the dipsh&ts that ignore the new reality or expect an exception to be made for their tiny bottles of shampoos.
Heck, the way the question is asked, it could be a terrorist looking for a new spot to jump a hop to a major airport and not have to deal with hard security...
Get over it & Grow up these ARE REAL THREATS! And the next one that gets missed and ignored will piss everone off that it was a conspiracy to LET it happen to further agendas. Catch 22...
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
Geez!!! You're the guy all the neocons love --- you accept all their BS and then some. I bet you're just itching to have the draft brought back so more poor souls can die for Halliburton. You might consider learning a little about this history of this country - and to be an informed citizen start with reading: Nomi Prins - "Jacked" and "Other People's Money" --- Major General Smedley Butler - "War is a Racket" - Dave Sirota - "Hostile Takeover"
I have a father-in-law that's Ret. USAF and multiple family members that were in some branch of service. Holidays on leave or weekend trips seem to have at least one moment of all of us gathered around a table playing cards, drinking beer, and having a military stupidity one-up contest.
It is unfortunately very hard to win due to the many, many quality entrants.
hi mom!
The other problem is that the equipment that we're buying (like Stealth Bombers) is too expensive, complicated, and fragile. True, it's very difficult to shoot a stealth bomber down, but more damage can be inflicted by a flight of 30 B-52s flying at 50,000 feet, even if we do lose one or two. In war, we have to accept some loss of life - part of being a soldier is the willingness to lose your life for your country.
-b.
I can't agree with that because you'd probably end up killing hundreds of innocent people for every terrorist that you manage to kill. I think the worldwide opinion would drastically change if the US was attacked even after having pulled out of foreign countries, although we still couldn't be sure about whether any attack was a false flag attack.
Or, in the words of Air Force General Curtis E. LeMay:
"Nuke 'em 'till they glow!"
I'm not really sure he actually said that.
Your dissimulations are laughably false - I suspect you of being a shill.
For example: "Put an address on it and a solid lock".
The purpose of luggage is NOT to get it back to the address you started from - it's to get the luggage to the place you're going at the same time you get there.
Here's a more reasonable, and in the long run, cheaper solution:
Just go ahead and put two US soldiers on every plane - one at the front, and one at the back. Then a plainsclothes Air Marshall. All armed. No arrests - just shoot anyone who gets violent or makes threats. If they survive the first round, shoot'em till dead. Even if they're drunk and it's air rage. Even if the threat isn't credible. Two or three like this, we'll have the safest planes in the sky. You won't even have to do more than what was done before 9/11 in the way of passenger screening.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
Hell, no. I dislike the oil industry and friends even more than I do the radical Islamists. It gives money to the wrong people and rapes the environment. Personally, I think part of the disengagement that I talked about before would be to stop buying Middle Eastern oil as much as possible and invest massively in alternative energy sources (i.e., yes, nuclear power) in the US. Make the purchase of electric cars and plug-in hybrids 100% tax deductable. Electrify our railroads. Give awards for the design of energy-efficient buildings - those that use passive means to heat and cool themselves. Encourage businesses, via tax breaks, to locate in towns rather than on highway strips. We can wean ourselves from the Middle Eastern tit, for reasons of national security as well as for environmental reasons.
Cheers,
-b.
I like the general theme of your idea, but it wouldn't work. The US government would continue doing what it's doing now: lying the the US populace in order to start wars so that they can keep the military/industrial complex chugging along, making money. There's -zero- reason to be in Iraq just like there was -zero- reason to be in most of the wars (conflicts) since WW2. The government just lies, covers up, and potentially creates their own "terrorist attack" (9/11/2001) in order to rally the sheeple behind them and keep re-electing them.
Watch "Why We Fight". It's an excellent film documenting the history of the US military/military industry since Eisenhower. It's in no way a documentary like Fahrenheit 9/11 or Loose Change or any of those. Just the facts about what happened, and when you are reminded of all of these facts in context, it all makes perfect sense.
did you price a new VLJ? starts at 1.2$mil, nice for a company that needs a private jet, way too expensive for anyone "middle class"
Fuel is ~$4 a gallon - no clue whatsoever on mileage. Seeing the place from the air is neat (and you can fly low-ish and see all the places, instead of getting stuffed waaay up over the clouds too soon. Sounds like a fun hobby! Of course, I'm just a little summer intern right now, but maybe later......
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
This is why we need good foreign intelligence. Human intelligence, since with encryption and steganography, SIGINT can do very little against a determined enemy. Of course, this will never happen with the current administration, since they seem to be best at blowing the cover of the CIA agents that should be working hard to gather information on our enemies.
-b.
The guy isn't asking a serious question, he's taking any opportunity possible to whine. A perfect example:
This has zero basis in fact. You don't have to buy toiletries at every destination, it's perfectly acceptable to keep them in your luggage. What you cannot do, at least for the time being, only days after a terror alert, is carry your toiletries on the plane in your hand luggage. Hands up everybody who's ever felt it necessary to brush their teeth on the plane!?
Seriously, the only way to stop this stuff in the long term is cooperation and a sharing of cultures.
Great idea, the only problem is that both sides (ie the Anglo-American Axis and the Pan-Islamic fundamentalists) want everyone else in the world to adopt their respective cultural values and to cooperate, unilateraly in a very one-sided, one-way, master-slave arrangement.
I remember as a kid growing up in the UK we had a joke that the Soviets are raised from childhood indoctrinated in the belief that the Americans have three nostrils and eat babies whereas the Ameridans were raised from childhood brainwashed into believing that the Soviets have three nostrils and eat babies.
Of course everyone in Europe knew as a scientifically proven *fact* that both Americans *AND* Soviets have three nostrils and feed primarily on babies.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
I agree with you on the negative trend with air travel, but ultimately we have to remember that air travel is a very expensive, cumbersome and fragile way to travel. When you introduce terrorists trying to screw it up it just makes it tougher from a practical and economic stand point. To me, it is obvious that we have to be looking at alternative infrastructure in the way of trains, not just as a backup for terrorist disruptions but if oil prices keep rising. Over the last 100 years we have dismantled trains and poured money into highways and air and neither of these are as robust or cost effective, especially if mass transit is a priority. There's a reason why all other nations have kept or expanded their rail service: it's reliability and long term cost efficiency.
Are you glad to see me or is that a tube of toothpaste in your pocket that you're gonna use to blow the plane??
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
You're bound to cooperate if you're both close enough to each other that it doesn't matter what the power of your weapon is. Example: if you have a pistol and I have a bomb and we're both 5 yards from one another. In a situation like that, any wrong move will mean the end of both parties (especially if I have a "fail deadly" switch on the bomb).
Besides, as others have pointed out, this still doesn't affect "homegrown" terrorism. Who should we have "attacked" after Oklahoma City? Who should the Brits "attack" for their rail bombings (all carried out by British citizens IIRC)?
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
is where air travel is protected in the Constituion. Maybe I'm the enemy but I never understood why it's an invasion of privacy to be searched before boarding a plane. I would rather be searched than have the government take my name and SSN when boarding a plane. Big deal, so they see me in my undies and know that my napsack has a questionable book by Anne Coultier (ok, it really doesn't, but I'm currently sitting on the tarmac in Huntsville because my Delta FLT1492 to ATL got rerouted and I heavily considered buying one over her books at Dulles, instead I bought Freakanomics).
Anyway, last I checked, air travel wasn't forced on me. I could have driven to ATL, in fact at this point it would have taken less time, but I voluntarily flew. So why should I presume to have too many rights? And why is getting searched for any immediate risks a bigger deal than the repeated ID checks and potential government tracking?
I'm sorry, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm about to board a vehicle that's going to fly at over 500mph at 35,000 feet. I'm voluntarily getting on it, and Delta, Southwest, the CIA, whoever, can do whatever the hell they want to ensure that said vehicle lands where it's supposed to land when it's supposed to land, barring weather.
Anyway, I've always been confused because I think a more effective security measure is a thorough searching without any ID checks are more appropriate. It doesn't matter who I am, it matters what I have with me.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
A certain past president with the initials of T.R. once said, in response to a question about Central American policy: "Speak softly but carry a big stick."
That's what I'm advocating. Speaking softly in the sense of not meddling in Middle Eastern affairs and letting the Middle East deal with its problems on its own. Carrying a big stick in the sense that a major ass-kicking will be the response to continued violence against the US.
As far as the Israeli question: discontinue support for Israel, but give any and all Israelis that wish to immigrate to the US unconditional permission to do so. This will uphold our bargain to protect the Israeli people but will remove a major reason why the America is hated and constantly endangered.
We're faced with a difficult choice. Let's make the right one so that our way of life, our wonderful cities, and our freedom can be preserved.
-b.
You've hit the nail on the head. The OP's strategy would work great against Iran, or Syria or some other active sponsor of terror. But in many cases, like with Pakistan, or Columbia, or the Phillippines, such a strategy would backfire badly. The collective punishment of the entire populace would simply make the terrorists there more popular, as they'd be the only ones seen doing anything against "American aggression."
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
You might as well get used to staying around home. The security and safety problems with air transportation are just part of the problem with long-distance travel. There's also the problem of decreasing fuel supplies/increasing costs, and the ecosuicidal problem of pollution and climate change. Has anyone else noticed that air carriers keep going out of business? Maybe it simply isn't a viable business anymore.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if, within the current generation's lifetime, long-distance travel again became fairly uncommon, and the late-20th-century jet-set boom turned out to be an historical blip. Fortunately we now have global communication, so people wouldn't exactly be cut off from the rest of the world like in the 19th century and before... but physical travel may become a luxury. And the global manufacturing economy? Could be strictly a short-term phenomenon, with it eventually becoming cheaper and safer to make things in Toledo rather than ship them in from Thailand. P.S. Be nice to your local farmer; you may end up depending on him to produce food for you.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
That was more of a crime rather than an act of terrorism backed by a strong organization. And we arrested the people responsible. One of them got the electric chair. The other one will likely spend the duration of his natural life in a cell.
Who should the Brits "attack" for their rail bombings (all carried out by British citizens IIRC)?
Were those bombings carried out in a vacuum, or were terrorist organizations from certain countries responsible for funding, encouraging, and abetting the bombers?
-b.
In SE houston, we had a small start up airline called "Metro Air". They flew twin and 3-engine craft, seated about 20-40 passengers, went Houston-San Antonio, Austion, DFW, New Orleans, a few other closeby destinations, cheaper than you could drive a car, and about half the time. They flew out of small airports, the kind that can't take jets. Their planes were always full, and they were expanding flights, etc. They were seriously cutting into the big jet/big airline's market space because of simple efficiency: prop planes use less fuel, less ground support, require less technology, etc.
Continental bought them out and shut them down.
I heard (but can't verify myself) that these "puddle jumper" airlines were popping up all over the country because of this, and the big airlines were buying them like Continental did.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
Apparently not, because they're emptying all of these containers of potential explosive and dangerous chemicals into big trashcans right in the middle of airport crowds:
d _could_.html
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/08/10/if_the_liqui
Is there any way they would endanger the public this way if they really thought there was any chance the "liquids" could be dangerous? And if they don't think there's such a chance, why are they confiscating them in the first place?
I call bullshit.
We're not talking about buying one for your own use. You don't go out and buy a 737 because you want to go somewhere. We're talking about air taxi companies forming that would theoretically offer an affordable transportation mechanism.
That said, I disagree that VLJs are going to be able to make much headway in this area. It's not the vehicles that will make it expensive, it's the driver. Your typical taxi is in the same general class as most cars, but that doesn't stop a 5 minute ride being 10 bucks when hopping on a bus would take you there for $1.50.
Hmm. Maybe if airlines were really that worried about hijackers they would start whining at Boeing to make a 747 in which the cockpit uses a separate entrance from the rest of the plane, so even if some psycho with nail clippers and shampoo does happen to get on board, the worst he can do is give someone a really bad manicure. Sure, it won't stop explosives from getting into the planes, but it would be a start.
Personally, though, my money's on AirTaxi.
did you price a new VLJ? starts at 1.2$mil, nice for a company that needs a private jet, way too expensive for anyone "middle class"
Try again. New VLJs can be had for a modest $800,000 or so.
Generally, though I think prospective "middle-class" passengers will likely buy a ticket on one rather than purchase the jet itself.
All opinions presented here aren't mine.
We are everything they hate, our involvement in their affairs is a secondary concern... We are all seen as 'infidels' and referred to as such. We make nice shiny targets because we attract attention by involving ourse3lves there, but in the long run for the militants that use terrorists we are all deserving of death.
I've talked to someone who claimed to be a islamic militant who was 'visiting' the US and he made certain to remind us all he would be more than happy to see us all dead so we would stop 'corrupting' 'pure' islamic peoples... I reminded him that if he ever tried to kill me or anyone I knew I'd make a point of killing him before he hurt anyone else. To many people use religion (of all types, islamic peoples just get more attention atm because they are far better organized for the most part) as a means to be the rabid dogs they want to be... And like any rabid dog you put it down before it hurts or kills someone you care about... To many people in this world are to soft and can't see the evil that exists within others... Some people don't want to be saved, they enjoy doing things you would never want and failure to stop said people from doing it just leads to more people being hurt or killed, not an elimination of a problem...
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
The Piper Cherokee (and most [all?] light, civilian aircraft) have fuel consumption measured in gallons/hour. The newest Pipers consume about 10 gal/hr and a range of about 750 miles. Not bad.
So would you support the bombing of governments that target civilians, but aren't Islamic, or is this a religious crusade? Because if it's not an anti-Islam thang, you just condoned the attacks on the WTC in September 2001, and pretty much everything Hezbollah's been up to. Your kind of retarded dick-thinking is what got the world into this mess. Please shut up now, and let the post-adolescents try to work this out little boy.
There's a GNAA post at rank 2. Hopefully the mods will increase this rank. Gay Niggers of America are the solution to all of our problems. Or something.
Yep. I'm taking a carryon only for a two-day business trip. I'll take my eletric shaver and look into getting some powdered toothpaste and a pack of listerine strips. Oh, remind me to leave behind my swiss army knife keychain and my electronic key fob. Better to dry out than be blown away.
Gun, Bomb, Whatever... The 'winner' is the one who doesn't care if he dies... Why? Because whoever doesn't care if he dies can cause both of you to die... To bad if you didn't want to die as well...
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
Get over it & Grow up these ARE REAL THREATS!
d _could_.html
Maybe, but the Transportation Safety Administration apparently doesn't even believe it themselves...
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/08/10/if_the_liqui
If they really thought that the confiscated liquids were potentially dangerous, you'd think they'd handle them a little more carefully, no?
...you can buy a key on the black market after you land.
Even after you go to the work and expense of getting your instrument rating, there are a lot of weather conditions which wouldn't give you a second thought in an airliner that are flat illegal for you to fly in in your Cessna (unless it's a Citation X).
And more conditions than that which are extremely dangerous (like you just didn't get enough sleep last night).
-Jay-
If everyone who was fed up with this whole "war on terror" thing decided to vote their conscience, things could be very different. We could...
* Get rid of the so-called "Patriot Act",
* Protect our troops in Iraq -- by bringing them HOME (and apologizing to the Iraqi people for the mess we've made; two wrongs don't make a right),
* Restrain the TSA,NSA,CIA,FBI,FAA,FCC, and their kind before we have no freedoms left,
* Employ a two-prong approach with respect to terrorism: Be very willing to talk to any nations and groups who want to open dialogue -- as long as they renounce terrorism. Truly work with them to address their concerns. (Reducing our dependence on military action to keep the oil flowing would help here.) On the other hand, be very forceful when dealing with terrorism. Determine the responsible parties, and make them and their supporters pay. No theatrics -- just quick, effective measures with an absolute minimum of so-called "collateral damage".
* Reduce our dependence on oil. This would help on many fronts, by reducing our need to ensure the oil supply is uninterrupted; to cut funding to these radical groups; and to no longer be the massive consumerist empire in the eyes of the rest of the world.
* Finally, elect a government (from whichever party) that will recognize that neither are all of the world's people Christians -- nor do they want to be. We need to elect ourselves a more secular government that won't treat this whole mess as a jihad from the other side. Hezballah and Al-Qaeda aren't the only ones fighting a so-called "holy war" here. Let's keep our religion personal. Above all, let's have the courage to say -- and really mean -- those four important words: "I might be wrong."
(Sorry to rant, but this seemed to be the place for it.)
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
Is this a troll? I just can't tell anymore..
Those US soldiers in Iraq are not protecting MY freedoms. If that's their goal, they're doing a piss-poor job of it, because MY freedoms have been getting reduced and eliminated left and right since the infamous 9/11 tragedy.
Maybe they are over there to "bring freedom and democracy to Iraq" instead? That wasn't the given reason at the beginning. The Bush administration was telling everyone that Saddam had "ties" with Al Quaeda and Saddam was actively developing chemical and nuclear WMDs, and Rumsfeld said they knew exactly where. Fast forward several years.. We are $450 BILLION dollars deeper in debt because of this war (here you are, son), even while pork spending has increased, freedoms and rights have decreased, our volunteer forces have been stretched beyond their sustainable limits, and over 100 THOUSAND people have died as a result of this incompetently planned war. And we are no safer from terrorism in 2006 than in 1996.
Truth is, the soldiers over there are obeying orders, and generally obeying them well. The orders are what's fucked up, and the reason we're over there in the first place, and it's a fucking crime that we're at WAR in Iraq at all.
Back to the shampoo bottles.. do you think it matters to a suicide bomber whether the explosives are in the carry-ons or the checked luggage? Or whether the utensils are plastic? Forget whether you feel safer? Are you safer?
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.
You freakin' idiot. You're more likely to die in a non-terrorist flight disaster than a terrorist related one. If you fly then you "take your chances". Period.
How many planes have fallen out of the sky? How many have been due to some terrorist act? Yeah, that's what I thought. Now shut up and go back to your flag-waving bible study.
How many times does it have to be said! You shouldn't trade freedom for safety. You will wind up with a jackboot on your neck, a rubber glove up your butt, and a terrorist laughing all the way to his 72 virgins anyway.
Freedom is expensive. It means risk. It means tolerance. It means sacrifice. It means having to put up with morons like you. It means that people will die just so you can have a good quality of life. That's the ugly side of it. Freedom to travel across states unhindered is one of those fundamental rights. Why do you think your drivers license is valid in other states?
Do you think that barring cokes and toothpaste from air travel will stop the terrorists? Well, I guess so - We've already established that you are stupid.
I'm so sick of explaining fundamental concepts of freedom to people like you.
An alternate is tell the whole wold that if the US is ever attacked by Muslim terrorist, we will annihilate the black box at Mecca. MAD kept the Russians at bay, it will work with other groups as well, you just have to locate their soft spot.
In order to be fair, this ultimatum should be only *after* we have stopped our meddling in the Middle East. All troops should first be unilaterally withdrawn and all aid to Israel should cease.
I think you'd find that if the US did that, all of the attacks would stop.
The attacks won't stop until the infidel (The facist United States government) is dead. According to what I've read and seen on TV, there is a jihad against the US. A Jihad is not something to joke about, it is real, and it must be fulfilled by religious fighters. Of course, having the US pull out of the middle east, and stop meddling in everyone's business would help.
PopSci has been throwing out articles regarding this topic for quite a while now, I think they've had at least two major articles on the subject. One of the key innovations is a "highway in the sky" setup for these new small jets which will make it dramatically easier to fly this sort of aircraft. Implied is that qualifications for flying these "air taxies" will be far less restrictive than current commercial aircraft. The result, hopefully, will be more pilot jobs as the industry expands, which would be lower paying jobs than what current pilots make due to less required experience. Both of these are critical, as more pilots would be required to support it and lower pilot salaries for these flights would be required to keep it affordable.
I for one, very much hope this new air taxi industry will get underway as I'm waiting for a flight right now that is delayed 1.5 hours.
// harborpirate
// Slashbots off the starboard bow!
.... is exactly what we need. America is the only country stupid enough not to do this. Let's review what we know: Terrorists are 1) usually middle eastern 2) always Muslim 3) aged 15-35. I'm not saying do away with security checks for everyone else, but come on, quit wasting my time by pulling aside an 80 year old couple to once them over with the metal detect wand. His hemroid medicine isn't a bomb, let him go.
I can't wait till we all have bar codes on our forheads and wear uniforms. It's going to be great!!!!!!! (sarcasm)
I actually think doing the opposite of what we're doing now would work better. We should give every adult who boards a plane a gun, that way the first terrorist to stand up and yell "allah ackbar" would get his brains splattered on the cabin ceiling and that would be the end of that. It's just like the Texas mentality, if everyone has guns and everyone knows it, no thief would be dumb enough to break into a house. (and despite what Penn and Teller's BullS*$T says, there is actually less crime in texas and that's why)
I've been having to buy my razors on the other end of my flights since 9/11 (and ditch them before I fly back), adding toothpaste, shaving cream, shampoo, etc. to that isn't the problem. In fact, I predict a major economic opportunity selling "travel size" toiletries for a 400% markup from a kiosk on the public side of the checkpoints at every major airport. It's no *drinkable* liquids past the security checkpoint that will be a major PITA. I'm borderline diabetic, not only do I have to drink sugar-free liquids, but I *have* to hydrate steadily throughout the day or risk kidney failure. Can I get water in a bottle with a prescription label?
...but the job of a good leader is to minimize that chance. If you had a kid in the Air Force, would you want him in a crappy plane, relying on mere luck to survive a sortie? Personally, I'd rather have my money spent on some expensive piece of flying techno-wonder that'll improve the chance of survival.
The era of carpet bombings went out with guided munitions became available. A SEAL team on the ground lazing an important target to be demolished from afar by an F-35...guided artillery rounds...rocket assisted rounds fired from ships 50 miles away...the goal and focus in this day and age is precision strikes causing maximum effect rather than general bombing causing maximum physical damage. It's just somewhat weak against assymetric warefare, unfortunately.
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis hebes
Within 5 years, air travelers will be forced to:
1. Strip naked, since explosive devices can be woven into fabrics
2. Submit to invasive probing, X-rays, and the like in order to determine that they haven't had explosives implanted in them
3. Submit DNA samples, fingreprints, faceprints, and voiceprints
4. Be marched to the plane single-file, wearing handcuffs and leg irons
5. Be strapped into individual seats packed closely together so as to maximize the number of passengers per plane - oh, wait, we do that already so:
5. Be chained into our seats in the plane. No matter what duration the flight is, we will not be allowed to get out of the seat for any reason.
6. Baggage? Yeah, right. Any baggage checked or carried on could explode at any time, best not to chance it. If you want some of your stuff at the destination, you'd damned well better plan ahead and ship it via a ground-based shipping service (air-based shipping services will be suspended)
7. Better not need any medication of any form - if you have a note from your doctor that says you have diabetes, tough shit. That bottle of insulin could be highly concentrated ammonium nitrate and could be used to blow the plane up.
8. Forget about personal hygene while on your trip. Who the fuck needs toothpaste or shampoo anyways?
9. Once the plane lands, everyone will be chained together again to be led off the plane and out to the curb, where they'll be arrested for indecent exposure, hauled off to jail, and locked up for life.
Sure, the terrorists will have won - they'll have gotten us to change our behaviour and to give up our freedoms in order to get "security", but hey, at least the fucking planes will be safe!
"Nuke 'em 'till they glow!"
I think that a good conventional ass-kicking would be enough to get the message we want to communicate across. No need for nukes.
-b.
'cause that's working so well in Lebanon right now...
If they kill 100 or 1,000 our innocent civilians, you think we should respond by killing thousands or tens of thousands of innocent their civilians? That's about the only thing I can think of that will swell the terrorist ranks more quickly than our current meddling in the region. You're not exactly dealing with rational, cost-benefit type people here: they place zero value on human life, including (maybe especially) their own. The nuclear standoff of the Cold War worked because the USSR didn't want war anymore than we did. To a radical Islamist, mutually-assured destructions just looks like the express line to heaven.
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
I guess that includes Britain and Germany, some of US's strongest allies. Did you think about what you wrote?
This is not a war that Military Might alone is going to resolve.
I think it's reactionary to assume the guy wants to spend large amounts of money. Actually, reactionary is a bad description of it. Downright stupid is a better description, given this quote from the OP, whom you called reactionary...
Is the price point a lot higher, making this a dumb idea (just resign myself to buying toiletries at every destination and prepare for the mandatory anal probes in '07)?
Try understanding what is being asked before you comment. This will make you look a lot less like the tool you obviously are.
If you've been paying attention the past few years, the FAA and the major airlines seem hellbent on removing general aviation from the US altogether (closing non-airline airports, insisting on implementing per request fees for ATC, trying to ground all aircraft built before the last few decades. And don't get me started on the stupidity of every major city wanting a Washington D.C. style Air Defense Identificaton Zone). I suspect having nothing flying anywhere near the ground except governemnt controled drones would suit them just fine.
You clearly aren't aware of AOPA's extensive, successful lobbying efforts. They've been a constant voice against GA (General Aviation) paranoia (ie "someone's going to steal a Cessna and smash it into a Nu-cle-ar power plant!") in the Federal and local government. When the FAA abritrarily revoked the license of the widely loved Bob Hoover because he hit the maximum age, AOPA fought his case. They made a HUGE ruckus when Mayor Daley bulldozed Meigs Field illegally for a park (Daley literally had bulldozers come in during the middle of the night and start tearing up asphalt, when several groups challenged the plans in court.) They've been a powerful, strong voice to Congress (and the press) regarding the incredibly frightening "standard operating procedures" for when pilots stray into restricted airspace.
Most of the time, controllers don't actually TELL pilots they've done so- or the pilot has switched over to the next control jurisdiction (and when you do so, you tell the controller you were with that you're leaving the frequency- so they SHOULD be able to 'know' 'where' you are.) Most of the time, either nobody notices or cares, or the pilot gets an "interview" with a friendly local FAA or Homeland InSecurity rep when he lands.
However, all too often, the first sign a pilot has strayed into restricted airspace is when a blackhawk helicopter pops down next to them, or they get buzzed by a fighter jet. Radio problems are a recurring theme in the encounters- military aircraft with semi-working civilian-band radios, or military pilots not knowing what frequencies the pilot is on/should be on.) You can't really lean out the window and say "hey, officer, what's the problem?", and GA pilots are faced with a terrible conundrum- clearly someone is pissed, but what to do? Change flightpath, possibly becoming more of a threat? Keep going straight, inadvertently continuing towards whatever everyone is hot and bothered about, and get shot down once they cross some 'line in the sand'? Nevermind that when you've got a guy with a very big machinegun trained on you, flying the plane suddenly becomes the least of your worries, and that's VERY dangerous...
Then there's the media frenzy and news helicopters covering you getting taken down on the tarmac by a SWAT team, getting "interviewed" by half a dozen government agencies over a simple human error, possible criminal charges, your pilot's license suspended, your plane (or someone else's plane- many times they are rentals) getting impounded, etc.
If you're sitting there saying "stupid pilots should know not to fly into restricted airspace", keep in mind that the number of restricted spaces EXPLODED in the last few years because of You Know When...and these spaces are frequently around insignificant things like, say, a major grain processing plant that Homeland Insecurity classified as "critical infrastructure". Things that are NOT marked on charts. They're also frequently date/time specific (ie, some big concert is going on somewhere, and DoHiS issues a restriction just for the event. There are a half dozen KINDS of restricted airspaces, with all sorts of varying altitude limits and such.
Please help metamoderate.
Not a bad idea considering most of the world considers the USA are terrorists. I gather you are serious about carpet bombing cities too- civilians are easier for cowards to kill.
The point is that, while many people in certain countries may somewhat support the radical Islamists, a relatively small fraction of the population is actually willing to take the express train to heaven. If they realized that the actions of the radical Islamists had dire consequences, they might well take it upon themselves to eliminate the radical Islamists.
-b,
I think you'd find that if the US did that, all of the attacks would stop.
You can't honestly believe that. People bred to hate other people will continue to try and harm those people. The war in the Middle East is just an excuse to them, if even that.
Read up on your history if you think that terrorist attacks are a new invention, or exist just because of current US actions.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
I've been semi-kicking around the idea of getting a group of commercial pilots together and starting a small air-taxi service. The problem, however, is the start-up cost. As a commercial pilot I can legally get paid or compensated to fly passengers and/or cargo, but the catch is that I cannot "hold out" to the general public. This basically means that I can't show a willingness to fly anybody (the public) around which really imposes a strong restriction on me starting a business (obviously). In order to get around this I have to operate under a completely different set of rules that regulates everything (personnel, paper work, maintenance, etc) which in turn significantly raises the start-up & ongoing price.
As well as the government burden we will also have to buy a fleet of airplanes. While we could buy old planes, the maintenance will most likely be quite expensive over time as they are old. Also, it is important to keep the perception our clients in mind. Most will object when they see they will be in 20-30 year old airplanes. The planes that we will get will most definitely not be large turbo-props like a King Air or Beech 1900 or whatever. Those companies already exist; they're called charter. Instead we would need small normal aspirating planes like a Cirrus or Diamond. For a size reference think small like a Cessna 152 since most people know that type of plane. Fact of the matter is that those type of planes are slow and don't climb very high so now, not only are we going to take longer to get to the passengers to their destination, but we're going to be stuck in the weather all the time. I don't know about you, but the last time I was on a large airliner people were scared / sick? of some very light turbulence. It is my opinion that normal light to medium turbulence would in general be a very bad thing to passengers "stuck in a ridiculously small, dangerous plane." Additionally, not many people are going to want to sit inside of a cramped cockpit for 8+ hours just to go 1/2 way across the country in even the best of weather. Therefore, we realistically have to cap our distances to within, say, 500 miles of the destination. Note that this number was just now made up so don't nitpick.
After thinking about this for a little bit a solution for how this could be done comes to mind. Most people tend to drive the distance from their home to the airport and are then stuck paying for week-long parking for ~$100 or so. Some are lucky and know a place to dump their car for their vacation or cough up the dough for a taxi to the airport. These are not the people we care about. We will be catering to those that live 50 to 100+ miles from a major airport and don't want to drive. Think of us as a taxi to get from their local airport to the major "hubs" in their state. Because the flights will be around 1/2 or 1 hour, maybe two max, the majority of the people will not have the time to get cramped or sick from any turbulence encountered in-flight. Also, most likely they will be able to park their car for free at their local airport with an advanced notice to the staff so their vehicle doesn't get towed.
The downside to this approach is reliability, especially during the winter months. Ice is one of the greatest dangers to a pilot and personally I would not feel confident flying into icing conditions. Even if I did, practically all small planes are not certified to fly into "known icing" even though they may have anti/deice equipment installed. For a large portion of the country there is a large risk of being grounded in a storm that will not really affect the airliners. Good luck explaining to your customers that you're sorry they missed their flight but there was nothing you could do. During the summer months there are t-storms but they can usually be flown around unless its a squall/front line or something. In both cases you can just wait for the storms to move through and fly after they pass.
The other approach would be a small airport to small airpor
That said, I disagree that VLJs are going to be able to make much headway in this area. It's not the vehicles that will make it expensive, it's the driver. Your typical taxi is in the same general class as most cars, but that doesn't stop a 5 minute ride being 10 bucks when hopping on a bus would take you there for $1.50.
Huh? The cost differential between the bus and the taxi is operational costs per passenger and, typically, a healthy subsidy. You're comparing apples to oranges.
VLJs are going to fundamentally change air travel by, using your analogy, making the buses smaller while having them go from destination to destination like taxis. It's the best of both worlds: you share the costs with a small number of people that you may or may not know and you get to the airport closest to your destination rather than the one the airline decided to service.
The cost for a seat on a VLJ should be comparable with current low-fare airlines because the operational costs per passenger should be about the same. A lot of airline expense goes into facilities at the destinations, and those facilities don't exist in a VLJ world. That, along with lower fuel usage per seat, should offset the increases in other areas.
In the beginning, I'm sure VLJ air taxi service will command a premium over traditional airline service and many of the jets will have a single passenger. As the industry expands and the convenience and utility catches on, prices will drop and passenger load will increase.
All opinions presented here aren't mine.
very well put..
The only thing I over-heard which would upset me is 'no water bottles' I find airplanes extremely dry, so I'll usually take 2 - 1 liter bottles of water with me, ( yeah, thats a guarenteed bathroom break, ha ha ). But seriously, without a good constant stream of water, my eyes are burning, my mouth is all clammy, and twice, i've had nose bleeds. ( i take about 4 round trip flights a year ) So to lose something as basic as water would really frustrate me.
But as i stated at the beginning " I over-heard ", so it may not even be that bad.
I really wonder how business travellers are gonna handle this...
It's 99% command and control of the serfs, mass conditioning along with all the other terror BS, and to eventually knock air travel down to "elites only". In the NWO, you'll know your place!
I want to bring my own freakin toothpaste when I travel
So put it in your suitcase, and take it with you. They're not saying you can't have your freakin' toothpaste. It's liquids/pastes/gels in the passenger cabin that's being considered, here - because they are vehicles for multi-part peroxide explosives that can be assembled in-flight. They're not worried about you putting it in your checked bags, so just do that, and quit bitching about something that's a reasonable immediate reaction to the disclosure of a destructive tactic that a couple dozen people were about to use against hundreds of passengers.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
be free, or safe?
I have a feeling everyone who has ever risked his or her life for this country would say "free".
I am often amazed by the real blind spot America has to the advantages of rail.
I put it down to the unbelievably negative effect of any Amtrak travel experience, I can understand anyone having a negative opinion if Amtrak is all you have had opportunity to experience. They are a freight network. Please do not judge modern commuter rail travel by their miserable example.
The second barrier of course is the political influence of the airlines and car/road makers.
The fact is there are three, not two, integrated forms of transport. High speed rail is a major utility between cities and towns in most modern nations, except the US.
The lack of rail in the USA, is in fact a big opportunity to do it right. For example, if we used Maglev, we could run fast (300 mph plus trains) between cities, bridging the transit gap between (gasoline dependent) short haul cars (good up to a few hundred miles) and security infested terror target aircraft (good for long haul). Fast trains neatly fill the 50 mile to 1000, mile middle range. Imagine new york to washington in 40 minutes. Downtown to major airports in 10 minutes. Less traffic and city congestion. Less car pollution. Fast, smooth, safe, cheap. Whats not to like? Trains themselves are also a low pollution option (Initially building a rail network, however, is not so green , a necessary trade off).
Electric surface level trains are an inherently poor terrorist target, if anyone hijacks one, just turn off the power and call SWAT. They have no-where to go. If we want to talk about strategic security, I imagine that a high speed transcontinental alternative to air travel just might be a national asset in a real war. Are the people who calmly veto this, really the patriots they claim to be?
The lack of a decent network of high speed rail in the US is, IMHO, a clear example of the negative effect of corrupt political lobbying preventing any form of purely public benefits in long term planning. It seems to me that if it doesn't benefit an existing power-bloc, it simply can't happen anymore. This defeats real progress and innovation. Not a good thing.
Train networks are certainly not perfect, they tend to break even at best and in most countries seem to oscillate between inneficient government operation and efficient but overpriced and fragmented private operation.
High political maintenance not-withstanding, I submit that having a good inter and intra city commuter rail network, is a major public benefit, its simply a huge advantage to have a third travel option.
There is no god; get over it already! Never exchange a walk on part in the war, for a lead role in a cage.
One problem though, is that you are sounding exactly like the terrorists.
You seem to think that responding by killing 1000s of innocent citizens* of another country because their government may have willingly harboured terrorists** is acceptable.
How is that any more acceptable than terrorists killing 1000s of innocent civilians to make their point? That is is a government doing it? What? Seriously?
*really, travel more! 99.9% of the people you meet want the same things - a roof over their head, food in their belly, medical care and education for them and their family. They really could not give a crap about that much else.
**support for the IRA from the USA prior to 9/11 "a little something for the cause" (but perhaps still ongoing) really makes any kind of moral stance a little hypocritical.
Israel is trying that in Lebanon now. We'll have to see if it works. Probably not; it didn't work last time.
What's that I hear? A voice in the wilderness?
Thank you for not just talking crap like so many other people here today. It's almost like you... thought about it for a moment and a little damn perspective or something.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Airline security is a joke. And it's on us.
Next attack attempt: weapons/substances smuggled in via anally-inserted container
Response: All passengers must submit to anal probe prior to takeoff. You may request a same-sex examiner, but it may delay you further.
Next attack attempt: weapons/substances swallowed, produced in-flight either by regurgitation or timed bowel movement
Response: All passengers must submit to a 24-hour fasting/emetic/diuretic/laxative regimen before takeoff. Water will be provided; outside drinks not allowed. You must use the provided toilet facilities to ensure proper testing/inspection of waste.
Next attack attempt: a team of guys trained to bite effectively
Response: All passengers must have all teeth removed prior to takeoff. There will be two dentists on duty per airport to process the unprepared, but lines will be long, so plan ahead.
Next attack attempt: regular old martial arts
Response: Seats eliminated; all passengers shall be assigned a sealed 3' x 3' x 8' pen and will be locked in for duration of flight.
Next attack attempt: guys wait near airports with surface-to-air rockets
Response: All buildings/cities/people removed from all airports to a distance of five miles, and land paved (and landfill created, if near water); round-the-clock patrols and spotters emplaced, with orders to shoot on sight anyone straying from the single barbed-wire/barrier-encrusted access road.
Next attack attempt: bomb detonated and/or machine guns deployed in by-now immense crowd waiting to get through initial security checkpoint
Response: ????
How far does this idiocy go before we decide there must be a better way, folks? Hm?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Freight often moves at 40 MPH. It rarely, if ever, goes above 70 MPH. Freight doesn't complain if the track is bumpy.
There is no desire to keep the tracks in decent condition. Being cheap is what matters.
FWIW, the USA is very good about shipping freight by rail. Europe more often has to use trucks. Rail is great for freight.
No, the attacks would continue. And continue. And continue.
We are the only remaining superpower as such we are expected to be the worlds guardian (we supply a ridiculous percentage of the UN forces), people expect us to throw them money (free food, free supplies), expect us to stay out of their country (conflicts with part one), and not patronize them (conflicts with part 2).
All pulling out of Israel will do is... oh nothing, because the Palestinians aren't attacking Israel because we're there, they are attacking Israel because it's Israel.
The middle east wants Israel NOT to exist.
The U.S. not existing would be icing on the cake.
Any other 'theories' or 'ideas' are delusional at best.
http://www.andrewsmcmeel.com/godsdebris/
I don't understand why banning liquids and gells make the flight safer. Can anyone explain this.
I find it somewhat telling that every post here that doesn't conform to the reactionary, sensationalist point-of-view has been modded down as low as it can possibly go, while everyone who is just parroting the anti-administration, ACLU-esque jargon is "Insightful".
I'm having trouble hearing any meaningful discussion over the sounds of the mods' grinding axes...
The U.S. just killed my entire family. I know a guy down the street is in a terrorist organization that just killed some Americans. Do I (a) go kill him, or (b) give him a medal and probably join him?
From what I know of the Middle East, the vast majority of the people there either already frown on terrorism or else they identify with the terrorists' aims (whether or not they agree with their methods). What you're talking about would push more people into that second category.
Totally aside from the practical issues, you're just talking about indiscrimate murder on a larger scale than the terrorist themselves could hope to acheive. I'm all for an-eye-for-an-eye if you're going after the guilty, but carpet bombing civilians isn't exactly the best method to do that.
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
Didn't quite finish the 2nd paragraph:
As such WE are the easiest to identify. The biggest targets, whether we did anything or not. We a big, we are shiny, and we are filled with suburban gluttons. Face it, everyone hates us and noone has a logical reason to hate us like they do. How have we ruined the world? We didn't cause the terrorist bombings in Spain: terrorists have been bombing long before Iraq. We didn't cause the uprisings in France, hell we've had one of our own (think Rodney King) nearly the same situation. We didn't cause the violence towards the Dutch, that was their own problem. We havn't brought down the world economy, hell the Euro is higher valued than the dollar. Our policies do not affect your or any other country's moral system, your taxation. The only thing we control is pop culture.
So really what logical reason out there is left to hate us? We don't do enough, we do to much, I don't know what the hell the rest of the world wants from US.
http://www.andrewsmcmeel.com/godsdebris/
Was it the uniform?
I'm not whining about the fact that I can't bring toothpaste on a plane (I don't fly anyway; all of the distances that I travel to are within driving distance or bus/train distance). I also know the difference between privileges/convienciencs and rights, thank you very much. However, this is another governmental restriction (not private restriction) piled on an already high list of governmental restrictions made all in the name of "curbing terrah." When was the last time you've heard of a terrorist kill people with toothpaste, of all things? Did Saddam make a bomb out of shampoo and conditioner? Some restrictions of things on aircraft (such as firearms, weapons, and knives) are necessary, but soda, hair accessories, and toothpaste? Come on. Every time the feds add more laws and restrictions dealing with "terrorism curbing", they seem to get more and more irrational as they come. What's next; looking through your luggage and banning certain types of clothing?
Sure, this is one more thing that Americans have been told to suck up when they deal with "post-9/11" life, but I wonder how much the average American can suck up before his or her stomach is full from all of the sucking up they had to do in a given time period. This "war on terrorism" seems to be causing more problems than it is solving (assuming that it has solved any problems). Look at our gas prices (they have more than doubled since the War on Iraq started), our economy, the PATRIOT Act, and our quality of life. I hope that something changes soon, and fast. Otherwise, who knows what other restrictions, laws, and other stuff will be piled on us.
But for now, make sure that your teeth are clean before flying ;)
suck it up or don't fly.
(this is offended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
the us ability to carpet bomb is basically the same as during the gulf war. the b-52s, b-2s and b-1s are still there. there are less thanks to arrition, but the air force hasn't retired any bombers since the gulf war. the new direction that the airforce is heading is different, especially since carpet bombing doesnt really work well except at turning cities entire cities to rubble.
'Ya know, I had a very interesting dream . . .
I was in this wonderful, peacefull land. I arose from bed one morning. I look outside, the New Hampshire woods greet me with gentle birds chirping. The computer in the den, which is hooked up to my phone, fax, printer, and other electronic goodies; and which is hooked up to a battery that is charged by a solar panel and wind turbine, along with an excercycle, chirps. There is a message from my boss at work. He wants me to meet with the Vienamise project manager at 12 noon. It's nine AM. Good.
I do have to do some errond prior to that. I go outside, open the garage and wheel out the bicycle and trailer. I get on it and pedal three miles into town and park it at the general store. I go inside, buy some fresh fruit and vesgstibles that were grown in local farms and solar heated greenhouses. I put them in my trailer.
I then pedal over to the local tailor. When I arrived at his shop, he turned around from his pedal operated sewing machine. The wedding dress for my fiance is ready. He is now working on my suit. I pay for the wedding dress and then put it in the trailer on my bike. I pedal the four miles back home.
Feeling fully awake and refreshed after the nice bicycle ride, I shower in the solar heated shower, use the composing toilet, and then head to my office. It is 11:45. I head to the telecomute corner of the room where there is a tv camera, electronic whiteboard, and a projection TV system. I turn the equipment on at 11:55 to conserve energy. I access the company's web portal and activate the teleconference with my friend in Vietnam. He is sitting in a similar room.
We engage in small talk; where I found out that his wife had finally finshed making the small sailboat and the two of them enjoyed a quiet sail the previous day. It was a nice, quiet, peacefull time.
We then set out to work. The software problem the two of us worked on was on display on both of our electronic white boards. Our tv cameras automatically tracked us as we moved around. The tv cameras are efficient on bandwith, however they are also smart. They know where each of our eyes are, therefore, they maintain a sharp focus on our eyes, making it easier to have eye-to-eye contact. Other parts of the images (room features, etc) are not as detailed.
We finish the conference in one hour. He faxed me a work order. I sign it, and fax it back. I then electronically send him a pre-payment.
With the meeting finished, I immediately turn off the bright lights and the TV equipment to save energy.
My work that afternoon consisted of writing and compiling software. For that, I only needed my computer. The printer, fax machine, wireless modems, and other accessories are all shut off, along with all of the lights and other appliances except for the high efficiency refrigerator that is half buried into the wall of the basement where it is cooler.
My fiance, in the meantime is a local pedicab driver. Her pedicab can carry two people and luggage. She spends the day in town doing erronds for, and ferrying people who are either sick, or too frail to ride their own bicycles or walk. She does this two days a week. The rest of the time, she is a gardening tutor. She helps families grow their own food fours seasons of the year in this northern climate by using greenhouses, solar lighting (driven by solar and wind poer), and other techniques.
My fiance and I relax after she gets back home. She mentions that her mother wants to come over and see her later in the summer. Her mother is planning a multi day train and bicycle trip to make the visit. She will be with a group of bicyclists who have met using a matchmaking web site that matches people who wish to ride from and to similar places in the country or state. This way, they can ride as a group and support each other.
Yes, this is a dream. But it may be forced to be a reality.
Cars, motorboats, planes; we got along fine without them.
Business trips; thanks to telecommuting could be a t
Cleara
You're out of your g*ddamn mind if you are seriously contemplating this. The fatal crash rate for general aviation is 50 times higher than for commerical airliners. It's 20 times more dangerous than driving. (All this from here.) All this to say nothing of the considerable added cost. Take a pill and call me in the morning--this reactionary nonsense is what got us into the mess we're in in the first place.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Islamic terrorists will be attacked. Not invaded. Attacked. Their cities will be summarily carpet-bombed
Yeah, that'll fix it. America will be loved and respected once again and everything will be just tickety-boo.
"We can wean ourselves from the Middle Eastern tit"
The US doesn't actually get that much oil from the middle east. Look up the figures.
Need Mercedes parts ?
How else do you deal with maniacs who want to kill Americans even at the (guaranteed) cost of their own lives? Perhaps they'd think twice if they realized that they're not only playing with their lives, but the lives of their fellow citizens. Sometimes, force has to be met with force, and the only way to bargain with a dangerous foe is from a position of strength.
And, by the way, I *did* say that we should make a few important concessions before we implement a policy of brute-strength-versus-strengh. But the only way to preserve a free society is ultimately, to stop the terrorist attacks *externally*, without implementing draconian internal restrictions that further curtail our freedoms!
-b.
Unlike the 1980s, they are selling toiletries instead of flowers -- and they don't have to compete with Jehovah's Witnesses handing out Watchtower magazines (free), or the Lyndon LaRouche people pushing nuclear fusion magazines (not free).
If they really thought that the confiscated liquids were potentially dangerous, you'd think they'd handle them a little more carefully, no?
No. They don't think that anyone is walking on board with explosives. They're worried about what the people in the UK were planning: walking on board with multiple people carrying the separate, and individually benign, components that - when combined - make a volatile substance that could damage the plane. The uncombined components of a peroxide bomb aren't dangerous at all, and even the ready-to-go goo is something the bad guys were planning on detonating using spark/charge sources like the small strobes in a digital camera. But, since ALL of this is being talked to death on the news, you already know all of that, which means you're just grinding some idealogical axe, not talking about the realities of the situation.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
That's the idea: for us to have the ability and show the will; so hopefully we'll never have to *use* that ability to the detriment of anyone.
-b.
And the sovereign nations of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia would no longer exist.
You know how Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11?
Well, guess what. Iraq probably has nothing to do with terrorists allegedly trying to destroy a dozen or so airliners.
Your post, sir, is offtopic.
Er... Oh... Wait...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You bring up the price point, that you have done so shows me that this is not likely an option for you.
Flying small aircraft with one or two passengers is vastly more expensive than flying an airliner, on a mile for mile price. A small aircraft might run at a cost of $50 to $100 US per hour, given that it's likely to be MUCH slower in the air than your typical 737, for anything more than a couple hours flying time away in the small craft it's unlikely to be a competitive, or even close, price.
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
We're still the largest consumer of Middle Eastern oil, even if only 20-25% of our consumption comes from here. Even if the Middle East didn't produce a single drop of oil, I'd still despise the oil industry for its rape of the environment through pollution and the global warming caused by the burning of oil when other far cleaner sources of energy abound. What we need to do is tighten our belts and reduce our consumption of energy. No, most of us don't need SUV's that get 15 mpg. Incandescent lightbulbs are outdated and dump 80% of their energy input as heat. Fluorescents are much better and the mercury in them can be recycled and reused. New homes need to be designed with passive heating and cooling in mind. The wasteful highway shopping strips have got to go, too. With a modest reduction in per-capita energy consumption (say, to 50% of 2006 levels) the remainder can be generated cleanly using wind, hydro, solar and nukes. This isn't even taking into account new tech like orbiting solar power stations that beam energy down as microwaves.
-b.
... if we redirected all airline fees toward teleportation technologies.
Well, i don't know if anyone has said this, but my dad is a subscriber to AOPA magazine, and i read every issue that comes out. There isn't a whole lot of small charter-flights in the number your looking for, but fear not cliff. More and more aircraft designers-makers are making small jet aircraft just for this purpose. You might have to wait a while, but the number of available small airplane charter flights is already starting to go up, and it looks like it is going to stay like that. Totally off the subject, but have you considered getting your own pilots license?
To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were capable of staying awake long enough.
Oh, and your submission is astoundingly retarted.
try SATSair.com To be fair and in the interest of disclosure, I am a pilot for this company. It really is a neat concept and I feel certain that many others will emerge. It fills a gap between the Jet Set crowd and the old tired run down charter aircraft that are hit or miss on availability. The big problem is that SATsair is based in the Southeast. We do fly the Northeast and midwest though. The coolest thing is the planes have a parachute that can lower the entire plane in the case of an emergency....It is the only plane in the world with this feature. Tripfly
Here's an idea. Racial profiling. It works. Really...
3cx.org - A truly bad website.
For only $109,000 you can buy a Marquis Jet Card, good for 25 hours of charter jet time. Up to 7 passengers. Aircraft available on 10 hours notice. When your card runs out, just recharge it. NetJets has over 625 aircraft, so you don't have to wait.
No searches or inspections; you leave all that behind.
But what if it were Trollheim's government that had harboured terrorists? Would you want to bomb the homes and bridges of your relatives?
At least I assume Trollheim is where you're from, since you're obviously a troll. Unless you really believe what you're saying, in which case I have a bridge for you to live under at very reasonable rent.
When these sort of security checks are implemented at the state borders, then you might have something to complain about.
Me? I want to know that precautions are made to try to make my flight safe.
--I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.
Which is why I stated that we should first cease activities that others consider terroristic - namely our political and military meddling in places that don't want us. Consider it a unilateral offer of peace. If the olive branch is taken in good faith - great. If it's rejected by governments that continue to fund or harbor terrorists, then the price must be paid. Let me be clear: I want us to fight back only as a last resort. But if nothing else works, fight back we must.
-b.
You need to support the proposed Alaska-Siberia crossing. With that, you really could take the train to Europe.
Go from Brazil to the UK even.
The other problem is that the equipment that we're buying (like Stealth Bombers) is too expensive, complicated, and fragile. True, it's very difficult to shoot a stealth bomber down, but more damage can be inflicted by a flight of 30 B-52s flying at 50,000 feet, even if we do lose one or two.
The question is, more damage inflicted on what?
It doesn't help much of anything if you're carpet-bombing a bunch of empty desert. And that's what B-52's are good at, at least when used in the way you're talking about. We did this in the first Iraq war; it made for good TV but we didn't kill many Iraqis or take out many targets doing it. You have to know what you're aiming at and be able to hit it.
B-52's can also carry cruise missiles, which have been used effectively in precision attacks in the past several wars. It can't carry very many of them, though - it's a lot more effective if you can fire these from ships. What B-52's cannot do, though, is execute first-line attacks through thick air defenses in the initial phases of an operation and hit with pinpoint precision. That's why we have B-2's.
The B-1B is actually the most versatile bomber we have, and these have seen the most action in recent conflicts. The USAF calls the B-1B the "backbone" of the long range bomber force. But the B-2 serves a different purpose; it's not meant as a B-1 replacement.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that just because one plane has a bigger payload than another that it can do more damage. B-52's are good at instilling fear but they are not our best option for actually taking out a target. Heck, most targets don't even call for a long-range bomber at all - a single F-16 or A-10 can take out more targets without re-arming than an entire squadron of WWII B-25's, despite the smaller payload. Payload is only a part of the equation.
In the past, our bombers used to deliver a bunch of dumb bombs over a wide area indiscriminantly. Whole cities ended up destroyed but the targets we were aiming at often survived. The idea these days is to at least try to do the opposite. It's a shock now when a civilian building gets hit; it makes the news and people get angry. That used to just be considered inevitable in war. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
All you have to do is look at how the general public regards those in power vs. the terrorism alert level. I won't go so far as to say that the Bush Administration is using the threat of terrorism as a way to shift public opinion, but it's striking how often the alert level vs. poor public perception seem to come together. On the other side of the coin, I think that it's a factor...
It isn't that I just hate Bush. I do, and I freely admit it. However, look to the wider situation as well, those that don't have strong political leanings have expressed doubt about this administration's ability to be honest. Many admit that they do not trust any news reports, annoucements from the Whitehouse, or the statements of those that are working there.
Hard to blame people for that attitude. Look how often a bill is named to make it seem like one thing, when it is an entirely different action.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
* Just other drivers. Many of whom are drunk, assholes or dealing with screaming brats. Or all of the above.
** May require pit stops in "Adult" themed eateries.
*** And eat at the same chain restuarant you know and love from your own home town!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
MOD THIS GUY DOWN!!
(adsfjlas;fls this and that and somethign or other dajl)
I for one, very much hope this new air taxi industry will get underway as I'm waiting for a flight right now that is delayed 1.5 hours.
I think you'll be waiting a long time. The number one pusher of increases in efficiency in the sky has been the major airlines, because they are the ones who suffer the most from delays. Burning your entire profit on a flight into jet smoke because of a taxi time 1.5 hours more than expected is not good for business. If anyone had the wish to make flying easier so as to pay pilots less, it would be the airlines. It's just been proven consistenly through time that low-time pilots (both in total hours and time in type) tend to have an accident rate many times what more experienced ones do, despite increases in automation, reliablity of the aircraft, and the like. The reason probably is because with any major jump in ease-of-use/safety, the airlines tend to "push" that benefit to safety to eliminate other ones. Examples include reducing the crew in air transport aircraft from 3 to 2 in the 70's, extending the range of twin engine aircraft over inhospitable terrain (look up ETOPS for more details - and remember, pilots say it stands for "Engines Turn Or People Swim", reducing average rest periods, etc. In order to really INCREASE the capacity of the federal aviation system, major money and resources have to be invested - like tens of billions more a year for a while. I'd love it - I think airplanes are wonderful - but I don't think it's likely to happen.
And besides, there is something you haven't considered. Why take over an airliner with lots of irritable passengers, a solid door to the cockpit, and two pissed off pilots, when you can buy your own? Google B-727 for sale. For about $1 mil, you can have one, pack it with explosives at your leisure, and even file a flight plan on your way to fly it into something. This is where the next attack is more likely to come. And then general aviation in this country will be legislated out of existence.
Enjoy private flying while you can - I don't think we'll have it too much longer. *sigh*
It's probably best not to depend on Popular Science for your aviation news.
VLJ's are completely conventional in terms of how they are flown and the ratings required (except that most of them will be light enough that they do not require a specific type rating, which is required for aircraft with a gross weight over 12,500 pounds.) The innovation with them has to do primarily with the availability of smaller jet engines that can be used efficiently on this size aircraft. In air taxi operations, they will be flown by commercial pilots.
Look at Lebannon at the moment. Do you think Hizbullah wants Israel to stop their assault? Of course not. They want Israel to be as brutal as possible. They want Israel to bomb Lebannon into the stone age. In short they want Israel to be the bad guys so they can be the heroic resistance. Unfortunately Olmert seems intent on being Hizbullah's unwitting ally...
We don't want to make that mistake with Al'Qaeda and yet we have already once with regard to Iraq.
You are right about one thing though-- the current approach is all wrong. What we need to do is work extremely hard to build a concensus between us, Arab rulers, and residents of the Middle East (Jews, Muslims, Druze, Bahai'i, etc.) about how the Middle East should continue to develop. Without peace, stability, and social justice, we will be the perpetual bad guys that that the terrorists will be able to use for their own greedy ends.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Actually killing them all will cut down the swelling. Next country rises up kill all them too. Makes as much friggin sense as the morons whining about no toothpaste in their carry on bags.
You really don't have any relation to a flier, do you.
The NALL reports (http://www.aopa.org/asf/publications/nall.html) explain
accidents per 100,000 miles traveled. Driving is almost 20 times more
dangerous than flying private aircraft, and 100 times more dangerous than
flying commercial.
There are a bunch of accidents, but there are more car accidents. Fatal
aviation accidents are pretty rare, as are fatal car accidents. They
happen, figure about 2 fatal car accidents per day per state, and you
will be in the ball park for good solid numbers.
I can't even imagine peoples perception that flying is dangerous. The
reason the few airplane crashes make the news is there are so few. They
don't happen everyday like auto crashes. My sister worked in the local
TV news (top 10 population metro area), and she was told to limit the
number of car crash reports per news cast to about 3.
Use the internet, there is a lotta information out there!
Someone please mod the parent up, we need to nip these little Hitlers in the bud.
Great idea, the only problem is that both sides (ie the Anglo-American Axis and the Pan-Islamic fundamentalists) want everyone else in the world to adopt their respective cultural values and to cooperate, unilateraly in a very one-sided, one-way, master-slave arrangement.
:). )
While perhaps true on a national level, I have not found this to be true of most individuals not directly affected by the national actions (ie. having been bombed in retaliation for something they had no control over). And the more individuals travel and interact with each other's culture, the less this is true. Eventually those folks become leaders and change the system.
I don't think it's coincidence that Bush was one of the least-traveled presidents in recent history and is making so many horrible blunders. I've known and worked with plenty of muslims, and none of them particularly cared if America or I adopted their cultural values. And I sure don't care if they do. I would prefer they (and us) generally respect all of their citizens, and recognize basic human rights, but I think in general a "survival of the fittest" system will take care of that in the long term. (ie. Countries with more racism, sexism, and inequality will under-utilize their citizen's talents and get worse "return on investment" per citizen trained/fed/supported. Maybe I've played too many Civ-style simulation games
What were we talking about again? Oh, right... airline security. Insta-bombing campaigns is unlikely to help with that, either.
E pluribus unum
I'm sorry to hear your oft-exercised right to in-cabin oral hygiene is being trampled upon. Put your bathroom items in the bags you check in; you may continue to luxuriate in your hypochondria after the plane lands.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Holy crap.
Someone who's willing to kill kids, women, civillians - pretty much anything, as well as die themselves - and these guys are supposed to care about their fellow citizens?
You must be retarded or something. Sheesh!
I might support a "force" based approach if we'd already looked at the major grievences the rest of the world has with us, and made a honest attempt to resolve those injustices where we could. (And frankly, IMO, the terrorist threat would virtually dissapear or be fairly easily contained through "police" enforcement efforts if we really did.)
But we won't. The cost to us would be unacceptable, and most of those here in the US would rather be rich and fat and happy than worry about what injustices we're imposing on others. Just look at the most recent items.
OBL (osama) - he grew from the neglect of Afganistan after we A) Destroyed Afganistan and left it in shambles after the Russians left. and B) Stayed in Saudi after we had to attack Saddam after he invaded Kuwait. (Which we almost green-lighted, BTW.)
Saddam. Ah, the enemy of my enemy. We climbed in bed with him because he was a useful foil on Iran.
Which brings me to the problem with Iran, now and then. Iran was another despot regeme we supported (The Shaw) because it served our interests - mainly oil security. He oppressed his people greatly, and they threw him out. Needless to say, they were not too impressed with his enablers - namely the US, and did nice things to our embassy staff.
So, when the US actually cares about the despicable things it does to the rest of the world and cleans up it's mess - then yeah, I'm up with the bomb the shit out of them meme. But until then, lets just call it what it is. A big ruthless bully who steals your lunch money and then beats you up because you complained about it.
Cheers,
Greg
Concidering that I've been on many USA to London and London to USA flights, and I've stayed in Birmingham for weeks at a time, and Liquid explosives are readily availibe (Gasoline, Rubbing Alcohol), I'd rather pack a checked bag with my toothpaste than be blown to bits 1000+ miles from the nearest land.
-jX
Don't you just love politics? It's like a comedy of errors.
Those US soldiers in Iraq are not protecting MY freedoms
Not directly, no. But they are providing a focus point for aggression.
With regard to the original post, you might consider 'pilot share the ride' - http://www.pilotsharetheride.com/. I suspect it works better in theory than in practice, but it's tough to fault the guy for implementing a good idea.
As for becoming a pilot for personal transportation - it isn't that far fetched. I'm a consultant on a long-term contract 600 miles from home (direct - 800 by road) and I got my pilots license and bought a small experimental aircraft (vans rv-8). It's analogous to a flying motorcycle - limited space, low operating cost (something like $100/hr - burns less fuel per trip home than my subaru), high speed (about 200 mph) - and as a bonus it's fully aerobatic (bigger bonus - make it a DIY project - http://www.vansaircraft.com/).
Door-to-door it's a 12 hour drive, 9 hours flying commercial, about 4.5 hours in my plane with fueling and pre-flight. Not only are small private craft (used ones, anyway) not much more than a decked-out SUV, but because they hold their value (or even appreciate) you can get 15 year loans on them - so the payments are really reasonable. Check out James Fallows' "Free Flight" for a real pep-talk.
Also consider the new 'sport pilot' rating as an easy start - http://www.sportpilot.org/. It's about $3k for the rating, can be done in 2-4 weeks. Limits include VERY small craft - 2 seat, no more than 130 mph (as I recall), only daytime flight - but the planes are cheap ($100k new), burn premium car gas, and are REALLY fuel efficent.
Another issue most people don't think about is how FAT most middle-aged americans (the ones that have the resources for a plane) have gotten - many simply won't fit into a small airplane, or if they do it severely limits any other weight that it can hold (including fuel). At 6'5 and 235lb I only just fit into mine, and I can't get my knees out of the way of the yoke in a cessna 152. At least half the guys I've given rides to in mine barely wedged themselves into it.
As for rail - I really wish that was a possibility, but land has gotten SO expensive that I just don't think it could happen. The way things are going it won't be long before it's cheaper to dig a tunnel from coast-to-coast than to buy the land needed for a rail system (ok, that's pure conjecture). That, and rail lines are a SUPER easy target for terrorist sabotage, so I doubt any security 'theater' would change.
Hopefully the new Very Light Jets can fuel a viable air taxi service, and I REALLY hope there isn't some plot against general aviation that makes flying your own plane as big a hastle as flying commercial - 'cause as it stands right now private aviation and flying charter (at least at the little airports) has just a hair more than ZERO security, and that's fine with me.
Sorry for trying to address multiple topics with one post, but this discussion is dear to me.
Who the fuck modded this 'insightful'?
The policy you're outlining is broadly what Isreal is doing to Lebanon.
That's working out real well isn't it?
Actually, I agree with you 95%, believe it or not, except that we can't wait until we have cleaned up all of our messes in the world. We should, however, act more responsibly in the future and discontinue our involvement in regions of the world which don't desire our meddling!
-b.
I'm just a summer intern right now too, and in the duration of my 12 week internship I will have started and ended (or come darn close) my training for a private pilot certificate. Granted, I don't have any money or time left over to do anything else, but with planning and discipline, it's very possible.
With regards to mileage, a typical single-engine plane has a cruising speed of roughly 130 mph, and you could expect to burn fuel at 6-8 gph. That translates to something like 19 mpg. Not great, even compared to mediocre cars, but then again, not vastly worse than a minivan or SUV that you might take on a cross-country trip, and a heckuvalot faster.
Just kill everyone and let the dinosaurs roam
I agree with your position -- I fly on business all the time, and I want (hell, I expect) my government, if it doesn't do anything else for me that day, to at least make traveling reasonably safe.
On the other hand, the security that they do implement seems like a total waste of time. People have already pointed out the problems with the "no liquids" rule: what about liquid medications? Do you not let people with liquid medications on? If you don't, you might kill them or make it much harder for them to travel; if you don't, the whole "no liquids" exercise was pointless, since all you need to do is get an Rx medicine bottle, fill it up with your liquid explosive, and take it on board. (It's even better than putting it in a water bottle, because nobody can reasonably demand that you take a big swig to prove it's not poison -- many medications are poison, or close to it.)
Plus, all the additional restrictions apply only to hand luggage. If you're not putting the same level of scrutiny on every single checked bag (which they don't, because they don't have the resources to do so; it improved slightly after 9/11 but they still do more to hand luggage -- because that's where people will see the security, so that's where it gets put -- than to checked stuff) then someone could put the liquid-bomb there, and remote detonate it from the cabin with a transmitter like every other person in this country already carries on their keychain.
Planes are big, fragile machines; it doesn't take very much to knock one out of the sky. Eventually, I think a few things are going to happen, because the current way we're approaching security just isn't working, and isn't going to work. It's designed to create the appearance of security, not security itself. Probably the biggest step we're going to have to take is to eliminate jumbo and super-jumbo jets: when you have people hell-bent on blowing themselves up, it's not practical to assume that you're going to catch all of them. Thus you can't put so many "eggs" in one basket, either in terms of just the lives lost if one of them is crashed, or by giving the attackers such a large weapon (both literally and in terms of public relations). Smaller, lighter, more fuel-efficient jets, going to more localized airports (further removing some of the terrible centralization our system suffers from now), are probably the best way of limiting the consequences of an attack.
There is just no way to prevent someone who is so absorbed with the task of killing others that they're willing to destroy themselves, from accomplishing their task. Any screening procedure will have holes. Any background check will have places where information can be injected, manipulated, omitted, or forged.
The problem we have, and which our government (and the airline industry generally) isn't willing to tackle, is not something that's going to be solved by issuing a few new procedures to the TSA screeners. It's something that can only be mitigated, and even then will require a huge systemic overhaul of our transportation infrastructure, removing the centralized points of failure that we've built up as ready targets for terrorism, and replacing them with a more robust, fault-tolerant, and survivable one.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
you already know all of that, which means you're just grinding some idealogical axe, not talking about the realities of the situation.
Perhaps. But there's never been a time that I've trusted my government less not to be grinding a political axe of its own in these matters. I hope I'm wrong, because there is a rapidly growing number of people with similar misgivings, and this is not a time for our government to have exhausted its credibility. Yet it never seems to miss an opportunity to do just that.
Was the plot itself real? Probably it was, and I'll be satisfied in that regard when the suspects are brought to trial and the UK government presents its case in public. If there is a public trial, that is.
The security measures now being imposed on airline passengers are another matter, however. According to reports I've heard, the US government was notified of the plot at least 2 weeks ago, and it's been under investigation in the UK for several months. Why wait until the suspects have already been arrested and are in custody to issue the terror alert? Was there less danger when they were at large? Or was this just an opportunity to spread a little election-year fear and trepidation?
Terrorism of all kinds is a scourge on humanity, but these days it's not nearly what I'm most afraid of.
TSA's latest announcement banning all fluids (toothpaste even) from carry-on luggage is the icing on a very sour cake.
What exactly is so hard about putting your toiletries in your checked bags? That's what I do. Just enclose the stuff in big Ziploc bags, put 'em in a separate space from your clothes if you can, and you've got no leakage worries. If your luggage gets lost, you're gonna be buying new stuff, but if they make you chuck everything at the security checkpoint, you'd be doing that anyway.
The only stuff I carry on is what I need to keep me occupied during the flight, and my expensive items (laptop, iPod, camera, etc) that I don't want to disappear courtesy of some sticky-fingered, minimum-wage bag handler.
Travel tip: Use TSA-approved luggage locks plus zip ties to seal your checked bags. Someone unauthorized might have a TSA lock skeleton key, but if the zip ties are gone you'll know that the bag has been opened outside of your presence the second it hits the carousel at your destination.
...the word you're looking for is fascism.
-- Old Man Kensey
or take a bus or train. You don't *HAVE* to fly. It's not the only practical way to get most places, it's just the fastest. Just stop whining.
If you're going on a two day business trip, you'll have accommodation, right (or is your business' accommodation policy "yesterday's newspaper and a park bench"?) - here's a novel concept, use the toothpaste and brush you get at the hotel.
I got a pilots license years ago but stopped flying. Until 9/11. After standing in security lines for hours for a 45 minute flight I realized I didn't need to do that. So I got my pilot's license up to date, bought an airplane and use that for flights under about 800 miles. Now I drive 5 minutes to my local airport instead of an hour to the airport that services airlines. No security lines, freedom to come and go as I please, and faster door-to-door times for shorter flights. Yes it is more expensive. But owning and operating a car is more expensive than taking the bus. Anyone can get a pilots license in 50 to 60 hours of flight training. Check it out.
"Written on the pages is the answer to the never ending story..."
Charter flights
v etaxchart/taxchart.html
1) use more fuel.
2) cost twice as much or more.
3) are more risky.
4) are much slower.
Just imagine if all flight was moved to charter flights, you would have 1) an energy crises 2) magnitudes more accidents 3) am impossible traffic system to control. Instead of waiting in line in the terminal, you would be waiting on the runway for 2 hours to take off.
Trains are not the answer either, our country is too spread out for it to be feasible, this is not Europe, Japan, or England. Trains are defintely needed in larger cities such as LA, but they cannot come close to replacing the airline system.
This country needs an entirely new method of mass transportation. Figure it out and you will be richer than Gates. Its too bad we didn't spend the 300B on research for teleporters, its probably a lot harder to hijack a teleporter!
http://nationalpriorities.org/auxiliary/interacti
What about domestic terrorists? What if we find a group of (Ameircan born) terrorists have a base of operations in say, Austin, Texas. Should we carpet bomb that city?
I partially agree with you, invasion is a bad idea, but you go a wee bit too far. Sending in a few reconasaince teams to dig out the most likely spots for terrorist strong holds then smart bombing the area -- after giving fair warning so that civilians may leave -- seems a less horrific and more justified response. Also, we should offer the host country to round up the terrorists before we go in guns blazing.
Skiffy is Spiffy, but Ort is tort.
Like when they're combined at the bottom of that big ass trashcan they're dumping everything into, you mean?
Oh, wait ... you're talking about the realities of the situation, right, I got it. "Nothing to see here, move along."
Go get yourself a pilot's license (http://flighttraining.aopa.org/) and join the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (http://www.aopa.org/). Not only will you learn wonderful skills that will assist you in your everyday life, but you'll be free to travel where you want, when you want.. without the fear of a shoe-bomber, potential of an anal-probing, or long lines and general confusion. Even if you decide that flying is not for you, taking an intro flight will help you gain a better understanding of air transportation in the US (God knows you won't get that from the hysteria creating media).
There should be an ultimatum: if there is another terrorist attack or attacks causing major loss of life, any country found to be harboring and/or funding Islamic terrorists will be attacked. Not invaded. Attacked. Their cities will be summarily carpet-bombed.
Perhaps you forgot that the last major terrorist attack in this country before 9/11/01 was hashed up by two guys from Oklahoma. Are you really advocating that we carpet-bomb Topeka?
Or do we make an exception when American authorities can't foil a terrorist plot but expect the Egyptian security to be fool-proof?
It's lucky for us that quite a few terrorists do seem to be uniquely stupid: there was that guy after the first WTC bombing that tried to recover the deposit from his rental truck that he blew up, for instance. But it's not really smart to assume that they'll stay that stupid forever.
Let's review the facts here: (from this article)
Oh wait -- isn't this the "racial profiling" we're always being told is wrong? Maybe they were just a bunch of dark-skinned plumbing aficionados. Naturally, the police are helpless:Guess they'd be feeling pretty stupid right now, if the terrorists hadn't been quite so incompetent.You can tell this guy's a real winner already.In retrospect, going back to the bomb-factory...probably not such a good idea. Let's all take a moment to thank your diety of choice that this guy lost one of his two functioning brain cells in the explosion, and decided to do something so dumb.Humm..."intensive interrogation over time." You know, that sounds almost like a euphemism for something unpleasant, doesn't it? I wonder what kind of 'interrogation' you get in Indonesia after you are caught trying to blow up the Pope? I'm going to go out on a limb here and bet that they probably don't just ask you the same question each morning until you get bored and decide to open up. Apparently, it was the kind where you spill your guts about every other terror plot you know of. In the U.S., he'd probably be smirking at a Federal judge when the planes finally blew up.
What foiled this plot? Sounds to me like it was a combination of racial profiling, general incompetence and stupidity on the part of the terrorists, and a healthy dose of things the CIA claims it doesn't endorse anymore.
I feel so much better already.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Which, quite curiously, is the realistic outcome of what's going on in the US today - distrust of the Arab.
It's not that people can't adapt to small shifts. They can and usually do. The problem people have here is that they realize that adapting to each shift is an acceptance of the extra quarter degree of heat. --The eventual result of which, when all those quarter degree increases are added together, is that the water will boil and the frog will die. Why doesn't the frog jump out before the water boils? Because it's easier to pretend that small shifts don't matter than it is to do something to remedy the situation.
-FL
Or rather, they're making it a breeding ground for terrorists and sowing more resentment of the US in the Middle East.
The terrorists have already won. Bin Laden knew what our reaction would be and we went right along with it.
It is pretty unlikely that charter companies will be able to compete with major airlines for the low cost end of things, more due to physics than business. Turbofan engines tend to be more efficent the larger they are, and the LARGEST aircraft tend to be the most efficent per seat mile, with an execption being for ultra-hi bypass jets (otherwise known as turboprops) in the 50 seat (give or take 20) category. For illustration, the cost per seat-mile for various aircraft is about (on average) $0.06/seat-mile in 777's (about 350 seats), $0.09/seat-mile in 737's (about 130 seats), and about $0.14/seat-mile in EMB-145's (50 seats). Of this, usually 30 - 50 % is fuel costs. When you get to charter size aircraft, the numbers get even worse. Look at a typical charter outfit: http://www.wisconsinaviation.com/charter/intro.htm l - let's do some basic math on the numbers listed there to get an idea of seat mile costs - I'll neglect anything less than a turboprop, because of their far slower speed and ability to handle weather. Based on their numbers, here are the costs per seat-mile, only taking into account aircraft rental and fuel - i.e. ignoring fees, repo flights, and pilot expenses.
:)
Cessna 340: 0.66
Piper Navajo 0.41
Cessna 414 0.51
King Air 0.40
Cessna Conquest II 0.36
Cessna Citation 500 0.59
Cessna Citation I 0.72
Cessna Citation S/II 0.53
All these, even the cheapest, is more than TRIPLE the airliners. And I also made the calculation assuming that every seat was taken, an unlikely assumption given than the person was interested in charter (i.e. non regularly scheduled) ops. It's just not a viable idea. Sadly, from a long-term cost and energy consumption standpoint, rail beats air hands down for most overland travel. Oceans still give planes somewhere worthwhile to fly over....
Exactly. Leaving aside questions of media bias, support for Hez'bollah in Lebanon seems to be growing with every Lebanese death.
if there is another terrorist attack or attacks causing major loss of life, any country found to be harboring and/or funding Islamic terrorists will be attacked. Not invaded. Attacked. Their cities will be summarily carpet-bombed.
I think first we need to take care of the people who funded the Nicaraguan Contra terrorists. We even know where to find most of them. A lot of them are still in Washington, so start by taking that city out.
Or do you insist on limiting this to attacking one religious group?
This terrorism thing is a real can of worms. Bomb a building in NYC and you're a terrorist. Bomb a building in Tripoli (where the USA killed Khadafy's baby) and you're a hero. Bomb an apartment block in Lebanon and you're exercising self-defense. Machinegun a pregnant woman on her way to the hospital, and you're just a jumpy soldier in Bagdahd, oops sorry about that. Can't tell the difference between terrorists, covert ops, liberators, occupiers, freedom fighters without a scorecard.
That was more of an insane criminal act, rather than terrorism on the scale of 9/11. They may have been members of the Michigan Militia at one point, but the Militia was horrified and disavowed them afterwards. Contrast that to the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaeda, and bin Laden - bin Laden has consistantly spoken in support of the 9/11 attacks! Besides, we *did* get rid of the people responsible for the Oklahoma attacks. One got the chair, the other's in prison for life.
-b.
Go to hell. Maybe you'll grow up some on the way, but I seriously doubt it. The world is not safe. Get over that, or go crawl back under your rock and hide there. I don't really care which you do, but don't expect me to follow you into servitude. I didn't create a system in the US where the ONLY serious alternatives for getting from point A to point B are either driving for (in some cases) literally days on end or subjecting myself to useless inspections by government goons. I didn't create our air traffic system, either, which is one of the points of this article. The tenet goes something like "if I don't like what they're doing, what are my alternatives so that I can avoid it?". Pretty grown up if you ask me. More so than your emotional rantings, anyway. The problem is that we don't really have any serious alternatives.
If our highways resembled the air traffic control system, here's what would happen: you could drive your car on back roads all you wanted to. However, where those back roads come near a major city, you'd find that the main roads are dedicated only for use by trucks and busses. You can get on them, but only with permission and then only when there's a space between the trucks and busses. You might think you could start a bus company, but while you could afford the bus, you'd find that regulations make it financially impossible to actually afford to start operating legally. That, of course, would be exactly how the existing bus companies would want it. The government would say that it's all in the name of "safety", of course. Oh, yeah, and if the President or somebody like him wanted to stop at a restaurant for a burger or something along the highway, they'd make you and your little Toyota stay 30 miles away from him, while huge trucks hauling trailers full of gasoline and other such stuff whizzed by a few feet away. Can't interrupt commerce, after all.
If you think for one second that nobody thought this sort of "plot" was a possibility before, you're as ignorant as Condaleeza Rice when she said that nobody could have thought of using airplanes as weapons. Omitting other known facts, such as military exercies going on around that time centered on this very thing, perhaps she never heard of certain Japanese tactics during WWII. Funny how the "liberal" media never mentions that, but I digress.
No, they thought of it, but they were hoping nobody else would, so even if you believe exactly what they say, they're still lying. Why? Because it means they were leaving you exposed to something they knew about, on the chance that they'd find someone who was up to it first. Most likely, that's because rational people won't want to put up with this nonsense and it will tend to depress airline corporate profits. I don't know what these people were really up to this week, and I don't believe the US or British governments will ever tell the truth about anything, but I know what these plotters accomplished: they pointed out the mind-numbing "stupidity" of our alleged airline security system, and THAT simply can't go without a good old-fashioned over-reaction. In order for that to work, though, they need to have a bunch of cowardly people who'll whimper in fear and do exactly what they're told. Now where are they going to get people like that? Oh, yeah, just read the comment I'm replying to. Plenty to go around.
A grown-up (I prefer "adult", but I want to use words you'll understand) assesses risks in terms of probability and impact. The probability I'll encounter an actual terrorist is significantly less than that of getting struck by lightning. The impact is high, which is why the sane approach is to not make it too easy. I don't walk around in the open during thunderstorms. I'm willing to tolerate some security checks at airports. As a citizen and not a subject, "tolerate" is the operative word here. I'm not willing to surrender every personal possession and sit there quietly in my seat for 5 hours with nothing to do but watch the censored mov
Of course, that's exactly what they did. If you look at the photos it should be obvious even to a layperson that the bombs were planted underneath the floorboards. It's an own-goal, dude. Hella strategy that.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
And maybe if the government really were more worried about hijackers they'd make it a bit easier for pilots to get their Federal Flight Deck Officer certification so they could be armed in the cockpit, and put an end to the ridiculous limitations that FFDOs are subject to once in flight.
Hell, for that matter, allow qualified citizens that can show verifiable proof of competency to board the plane armed.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
> Islamic terrorists
Oxymoron.
I like the way you exclude everyone except the great white father who is not a terrorist, oh no no, but a Godly Man in Authority who protects you from the terrible ugly semitic lunatics who hate your freedoms so much that they want to die in order to force you to give up all semblance of human rights and dignity, and all power to threaten tyrannical machiavellian mass murders who steal elections.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Who gives a fig about world opinion? The issue is not world opinion, it's the truth. We'd be EVIL. That is defeat.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
What The Prez says:
Bush the younger, who thinks that Al-Quada are "Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation," - that's a direct quote from today.
What Mr. Bin Laden says:
"We should fully understand our religion. Fighting is a part of our religion and our Sharia [an Islamic legal code]. Those who love God and his Prophet and this religion cannot deny that. Whoever denies even a minor tenet of our religion commits the gravest sin in Islam.
"Hostility toward America is a religious duty, and we hope to be rewarded for it by God . . . . I am confident that Muslims will be able to end the legend of the so-called superpower that is America." Time Magazine
"We--with God's help--call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan's U.S. troops and the devil's supporters allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson." Feb. 1998 - Bin Laden edict
"We love death. The US loves life. That is the difference between us two."
I would say that The Prez has pretty much got it nailed.
* * * * * * *
I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.
--Groucho Marx
Not only was it hypothetical, it existed: The Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
Thanks to the Taliban, the Buddhas of Bamiyan, statues that were 1,500 years old and stood 120 feet tall, were blasted out of the mountain cliff from which they were carved because they were "un-Islamic". From the Wikipedia article, "On March 6, the London Times quoted Mullah Mohammed Omar as stating, 'Muslims should be proud of smashing idols. It has given praise to God that we have destroyed them.' " Refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamiyan.
Of course, that is just one of the outrageous acts commited by the Taliban during its terrorizing reign of the Afghanistan, such as beating women for not wearing burkhas, denying women education, executing homosexuals, executing men who didn't wear their beards to the correct length and style, forbidding children from flying kites, etc., etc. Reminiscent of the Nazi regime, which required Jews to wear the Star of David, the Taliban required Hindus to wear a visible patch signifying their religion http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-05-22-tal
See also "Islamofacism" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamofascism_(epith
"cowards" - you mean like the scum who crashed two jetliners loaded with ... gasp! ... civilians into buildings full of ... again! ... civilians? I'm not counting the Pentagon because that *was* a military building and thus it could be argued that it was a legitimate target, although the plane that hit it was still full of civilians.
-b.
Fine, if the people given to the US (a) are given up in a timely manner and (b) are actually meaningful players, not some barely-involved schlubs that are given up just to appease the US.
-b.
Not directly, no. But they are providing a focus point for aggression.
And generating more agression while they are there.
meh
Don't you remember the Madrid train bombings?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrid_train_bombing
You haven't flown recently, have you? Nobody checks anything if they can even remotely get away from it. Last time I flew (a few months ago), there were people carrying on things that would hardly fit through the door -- they knew damn well it was too big... the "if your bag doesn't fit in here" things are all over the airport. There are two reasons for this... first and foremost, carry-on stuff never leaves your sight and often never leaves your hands. So, It. Doesn't. Get. Lost. (or stolen/picked up by mistake) Since you are carrying it, it goes exactly where you go. Second, checked items are subject to TSA "inspection" which too often translates to breakage and theft.
Official Club Membership part of the flight. Also available in other cities.
:(
Unfortunately, your other option is no longer in business.
-- pupkick
So, all we have to do is adopt a neutral foreign policy.
Don't piss people off, they don't have any reason to take your planes out of the air.
Compared to what, and how do you justify that claim? Certainly not in terms of actual passenger injuries per mile, since air travel is close to rail travel in that respect, and much better than road travel. For longer trips in particular, alternative forms of transportation can't compete with air travel in terms of speed, and it's not as easy as you might think to compete in terms of cost. Rail isn't cheaper than air in many (most?) cases, and that's not just because of market distortion etc. Building a faster, more ubiquitous and more reliable rail system wouldn't help bring costs down.
NY to Chicago is an 18-hour train trip. NY to LA is something like 56 hours, IIRC. Faster train systems would help, but no country in the world has succeeded in making train travel a really viable system over such long distances. The U.S. dependence on jet travel is a pretty rational one, assuming you don't hanker for the days when travelling across country and back was a multi-week affair.
You are a very silly Troll. Why would McVeigh or the other Oklahoma City bombers care if you attacked someone on the other side of the world? Or are you suggesting that Iran would have stopped McVeigh if they had a chance?
Sucks, though, when the terrorism is domestic, and you then have to start carpet bombing your own cities. "Oh well."
Oklahoma City doesn't fit your model too well.
After coming back from Paris, I found myself in that 2% of airline travellers who ends up in a different place than their luggage - I was in Salt Lake, my luggage was in Spokane. Interestingly, my wife and I each lost only one suitcase - of course, our most vital suitcases.
After going to my in-laws place for the evening and being forced to use some of my father-in-laws toiletries (ah... nothing like old-man dandruff shampoo and Old Spice... at least I had some clothes...), I came up with a solution:
You get frequent flier miles when your baggage goes cross country without you. It's a fair way for the airline to pay you back for the inconvenience, I think, and encourages them to pay closer attention to where they route your baggage. Luckily, nothing too bad has ever happened to me (my great-aunt had her baggage on a London to Atlanta flight shipped to Berlin on accident, where it sat for a few days), but it's still a big inconvenience when it does happen.
So, I say let our baggage earn frequent flier miles. When my things don't meet me at the airport, and when it's obviously not my fault, I should receive some kind of compensation - miles are a fair way of handling this, I think.
Think about it: how many Americans want to kill hundreds or thousands of fellow Americans? Not many? Good. McVeigh and Nichols were just deranged criminals. As was the Unabomber. Insane people happen, and there's not much we can do about it.
Now, how many Middle Eastern Muslims want to kill a lot of Americans. Quite a few, right? More than the previous category? Definitely. And how many of them are backed by organizations that recieve funding and/or material support from nation-states other than the US. Again, quite a few.
People: you aren't getting it. *These people want to destroy our way of life and the freedoms that we hold dear.* We can try appeasement - disengagement from the Middle East - and I hope that it will work. However, if they persist in being a danger to the US, we have two choices. One of them is to deal with the issue decisively and forcefully. The other is to lock down the US so stringently that a terrorist act will be difficult if not impossible to accomplish. Unfortunately, this will result in the loss of the freedoms that we cherish and hold dear. Personally, I'll take the first choice since I *like* my freedoms, and I hope that this country's leaders will do the same, because a leader's first obligation is to their country and its people, even if it means harming people in some other country.
-b.
You haven't flown recently, have you?
I travel frequently. I check bags and carry things on with me. I've never had a problem in either scenario, luggage-contents-wise. I did make the mistake of buying a one-way return ticket from an open-ended trip with a debit card, though. That means I always get the Super Duper Inspection Line at the airport when flying towards DC. But then, I'm a large guy with long hair, so they always like to look me over anyway!
Yes, I'd rather keep my laptop and camera gear within arm's reach. Luckily I don't have to carry any liquid, since the flight attendants are always willing to serve up water for free.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Do I believe this is a true scenario that happened earlier? Yes, very probably there was a terrorist plan and it was stopped. Do I think that there is a LOT of fear mongering going on? Yes, absolutely. I used to work in media, so I understand how something that is easily used for fear almost certainly will be used to drive the ratings up. I also think that the side benefit of "trust in government" is something that they will be happy to see.
I'm reminded of "V for Vendetta" in which the leader utters the line (paraphrasing, forgive me) "MAKE them remember why they need us!" Fear is a wonderful tool for controlling sheep, and say whatever else you like - paranoid skeptics are NOT sheep.
I wish there was a choice that said "Factually Wrong -1" when I mod.
Multiply that sentiment times 300 million and the relative priorities of the U.S. government make a lot more sense. The government sets and enforces manufacturing standards, road infrastructure standards, and driving laws to reduce the chance I'll be killed driving. The goverment forces companies to tell me what chemicals are in their products, and funds research into the effects of those chemicals, and funds disease research, all to reduce the chance I'll die of cancer. The government encourages economic growth, and failing that provides welfare, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to reduce the chance I'll die of poverty.
Likewise they rightly regulate and police the air travel system to reduce the chance I'll die on an airplane.
What we really care about is ourselves. "Could I have been killed?" is what we think. That's why we react a lot more to deaths on random airplane flights than we do to deaths in the Sudan. We don't live in the Sudan and we don't have malaria or dengue fever here in the States. So while it's a tragedy and we give a lot aid to try to prevent it, it's not really a top priority for us.
Oh and you can please stop posting and reposting the Northwoods link, Jesus Christ WE ALL KNOW ABOUT IT BY NOW. Yes, some crazy guys came up with some crazy ideas. The ideas were rejected and the guys were all shifted out of positions of responsibility pretty darn quickly. This sordid little piece of history is a great argument AGAINST today's conspiracy theories. After all here is a perfect example of a classic conspiracy plan, and it and its authors were rejected out of hand, and it is now public record. In other words it is concrete proof that our government does not conduct conspiracies of this sort against its own citizens, even when given a perfect opportunity to do so.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Try to think like a bureaucrat for a second[*]. There are warnings everywhere about knifes and box cutters being banned from the cabin, but they may not specifically mention firearms (depending on where you are). Also, being in the military you are perceived to have a licence to carry a gun, which probably does not trigger any red flags with the above bureacrat. On the other hand, his instructions specifically tell him to remove knifes and box cutters, regardless of the owner.
[*] -- "by the book" security screeners included
Well, we can be sure that we can kill that many. I'm not sure how the ranks would "swell" after we knocked em down hard. Real hard. Anyone been bothered by any fanataical Imperial Japanese lately? Yeah, didn't think so. Playing nice and playing war are 2 different things. One you teach to kids, and the other you teach to soldiers. You send soldiers halfway across the world to play nice for 2 years while the other guy is playing war, pay him what ammounts to $2 an hr and then your surprised when he feels that the people of the US didn't let him do his job?
Somewhere between the Peace Corps and the Marine Corps are the Firmly Nice Brigade. They are immensly popular with the indecisive, kinda patriotic middle of the road types, but unfortunatly, they have never won a battle as they have never beeen able to stand up their unicorn cavalry unit.
The Firmly Nice brigade are also popular with terrorists, especially thise from really rich arab nations like Saudi. See, their countries dont get invaded at all, since they are protected by the finest (US and UK) milataries in the world, so their children sleep calmly even while their dads dream of virgins while dozing off during their last flights here in the US.
Toss a coin, send the Peace Corps or the Marine Corps in, fully funded, and let them do whatever they want to convince a country that there are different ways of doing things. When one doesnt work, you'd better send the other. If you want to be sporting about it, let the country in question call it in the air.
Or, you can look at history, tally up all the countries that have been set right by Marines, Peace Corps and whatever else, and then be logical and let the numbers decide. We are nerds, right?
Why wait until the suspects have already been arrested and are in custody to issue the terror alert? Was there less danger when they were at large? Or was this just an opportunity to spread a little election-year fear and trepidation?
Because they were watching all of the people in this group very closely (for months), and to announce measures to counter a very specific threat before they were ready to scoop all of these people up would have immediately tipped them off. The idea was to follow all of this up the food chain as far as possible into Pakistan while still being ready to stop these guys the moment it looked that they were actually getting ready to deploy.
There was less danger while they were at large, because they didn't know they were being watched, and weren't ready to walk on a plane. They were apprehended because they did start to gear up for walking onto a plane.
Spread election-year trepidation? Hardly. If you're than cynical, why not wonder why they didn't let a couple thousand people die? That would have done even more, right? Right... that's BS, of course. MI5 swooped in as soon is was clear they were about to start climbing on planes for smuggling rehersal flights. The bad guys set the timetable unless other events shift the priorities. The NSA had these guys talking to their overseas handlers, and MI5 was listening in on their meetings and local calls, and they knew it was time. Zawahiri's latest tirade also signalled that the AQ PR machine was starting to warm up, so it all sort of falls together, and it's time to do something. And they did, and good thing, too.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
You know, I am certain to get a -1 for this, but once in a while it has to be said:
Go to hell, you despicable coward. Go to hell and roast with Neville Chamberlain and every other appeasing cowardly worm.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
You are the one wanting to carpet bomb cities. This can only imply you want to target civilians and wish to do so from a distance. Sounds cowardly to me.
This is of course quite true; however, people seem willing to trade security against dying accidentally, for security against dying at the hands of terrorists. For whatever reason, we seem to care more about getting killed by someone else intentionally than we do about dying in a perceived accident. My suggestion more or less took this as a premise: that the increased risk inherent in having more planes in the air would be a good tradeoff for having smaller targets for terror.
Given the political destabilization that can occur as a result of terrorism, this might actually not be a bad thing: look at the chain of events that we can extrapolate out from 9/11, and from the responses to it, and to the responses to them. If an equivalent number of people had died accidentally, many of those secondary and tertiary deaths would not have occurred, the government would probably be less powerful, in general the world would probably be a better place, etc.
While it may seem stupid to say that we should increase our risk of dying in one way to prevent dying in another, when looked at as a society, it may be preferable to have more people dying in airplane crashes than to have a system that is susceptible to terrorism, because of the destabilization that occurs as a result of it.
Indirectly, we do this already: as we make it more and more of a pain to fly, we encourage people to use other, more dangerous methods of transportation. Although I've never seen anyone actually investigate the number of highway accidents as a function of the wait times and security screenings at airports, common sense dictates that when people don't fly, they either don't travel or they use some other method of transportation, and driving is undoubtedly popular. Given that we know driving to be a dangerous way of moving oneself around, we are in effect raising a person's risk by causing them to use the roads instead of the airlines, by making the latter less attractive.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Actually, neither of you are thinking big enough. Dubya was a step in the right direction, a crazy faux cowboy who refuses to back down. But in the end, he's too civilized and restrained. What's really needed is someone who's willing to go through with major genocide, using nuclear weapons, to remind humanity of what's at the end of that road. We haven't had such a reminder since 1945, and it's starting to show.
After all, there are over 6 billion of us, we can afford to lose a few billion. The remaining ones will hopefully have a bit more respect for the value of peace. It's an evil job, but somebody's gotta do it.
Maybe you're right, maybe the US should pull out of the middle east altogether, leave Israel to it's own devices (you *do* know what that might actually mean, right?) and leave that area of the world alone. After all, Canada has more than enough oil to keep the machine running for quite a few decades while the western world weans itself from the teat of petroleum.
You just don't see their point of view. Remember how in doom in case of death you appeared at the beginning of the level with just the basic weapons? It was really pain in the behind if it was something like that "spider/fiery fat guys" square level, because you didn't have anything to find with. In the near future flights will be something like loosing your life in doom, only ADVANCED: In every single place (level) you woud have to get completely new identity: new wife, new job, new kids, new college degree etc.
there is no issue with my network
If they kill 100 or 1,000 our innocent civilians, you think we should respond by killing thousands or tens of thousands of innocent their civilians?
A google search for "civilian casualties iraq" suggests that the United States already has.
In order to be fair, this ultimatum should be only *after* we have stopped our meddling in the Middle East. All troops should first be unilaterally withdrawn and all aid to Israel should cease.
I'm impressed, you managed to put into one sentence exactly what the US could do to make the muslim world stop hating them. Maybe someone should pitch that line to Bush Jr... ^_^
Citation Shares
http://www.citationshares.com/
I didn't say that. We are talking about Iraq here, not Israel.
US troops are generating agro by being in Iraq.
meh
I helped some friends start-up eJets, which offered flights on private jets on their empty return flights. Unfortunately, they folded and didn't survive the dot.com crash.
If there is a real threat of attacks using binary explosives, then it is reckless to pour all the confiscated liquid together (in the middle of a crowd)
The facts are consistent with the hypothesis that there's a genuine threat and that some security personnel are stupid.
This is just another reason to support the development of safe, easy general avaiation alternatives to commercial flight. The NASA PAV Centennial Challenge needs your help: http://cafefoundation.org/v2/pav_home.php
Yeah, because every tube of toothpaste can explode at any time - and there's nothing else out there that could possibly explode on a plane, and the terrorists are too fucking stupid to find something else to blow up. It's toothpaste or nothing, baby!
I'll tell you what makes me so special that I shouldn't have to check my bags. I'm not a terrorist.
"Vivian, where did you get that Howitzer?"
"I found it. Now hold still."
-BANG-
I don't know about you but I just came from Buenos Aires and I had tooth paste with me only I was unable to take it as carry on luggage as well as some other things from the family. They simply take it down to cargo and you can pick it up at baggage claim with a number. The only problem was the 1 hour delay. Frankly I think it's more important not to have some terrorist on board than worry about your god damn tooth paste.
You are obviously correct. I didn't mean to confuse the issue by bringing up other complicated stuff and I apologize.
I'll be glad when they start banning carry-on luggage completely. It seems like an hour of every flight is spent just getting people on and off the plane, and this is because of people having to get on, one by one, and stuff their shit in the overhead bins, blocking the aisle so nobody else can get ahead.
Then, when you get off, you end up with the same situation in reverse. It shouldn't take more than five minutes to load/unload a plane.
You're not exactly dealing with rational, cost-benefit type people here
Just because you disagree with their values (and goals) doesn't mean they are not rational within thier value system nor that they are not doing "cost-benefit analysis". I'm not saying that the problem is with the "westerners" alone, but part of the problem is due to the inability of western people to understand or even want to understand other people.
The rest of the world doesn't live in Arkansas, you know.
I run it, so this could be spam, but http://www.rsvpair.com/ is exactly what you requested - a free directory that lets people who want to fly charter find operators, give feedback and see prices, both for large executive jets, turboprops, and smaller props like you were requesting here.
No offence intended.
Please use some common sense. The idea may or may not have occured to them yet, but that doesn't mean that you need to invite trouble. The terrorists may not be listening (or just might be), but you know the gov hasn't figured this one out yet (and aren't listening). I've got a very sensible way to smuggle weapons aboard (that they may, or may not have thought of) but you don't hear me spouting off the details on the web. And why not? because I'd like to make it as hard as possible for the @$^&#^%s. I'd rather not ever hear "they did [such and such]" and have to think to myself "dang, did they read my post? Do I hold any responsibility in that?"
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
I work for an air charter agency in the UK but we operate globaly and put a number of domestic US charters together for our American clients.
Currently, the cost per person of chartering an aircraft is very roughly in line with your high-end business class fare on a scheduled carrier. As an example, a return flight from Port Columbus Intl., Columbus (OH) to Orlando International, Orlando (FL) would cost apprx. USD $1,840 per person in a King Air 200 (based on 7 passengers travelling) and USD $2,660 per person in a Citation II jet (based on 8 travelling).
However, the general aviation world is gearing up for what many people predict to be the dawn of a new age in aircraft charter, the introduction of the VLJ or 'Very Light Jet'. These new style jets are due to come in to service at the end of this year and they have been designed from the ground up for the specific role of air taxi. They are massively more efficient than existing aircraft in their class (4 to 5 seater light jets) and take advantage of all the advancements in material sciences, airframe design and fuels consumption that have been achieved over the last decade or so. It is predicted that these VLJs will open up the air charter market to the middle classes and SMEs. You will no longer need to be a high net worth individual or work for a Fortune 500 in order to afford to regularly fly in them. For more information, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Light_Jet/. Cessna, Embraer, Eclipse and even Honda are all entering this market.
By the end of 2007 air charter in the US should be a lot more viable for people who are fed up with airlines and major airports.
Your laptops and cameras, cellphones, pdas, all have to be in checked bags now for UK flights or if you are transiting UK. There is talk of these restrictions becoming permanent.
That's really going to be the big problem for business travellers in particular. All the discussion on toothpaste is bizarre - replacing a tube of toothpaste is trival compared to replacing your laptop cellphone and car keys. [when they lose them, not if].
"We lost 10 people today? Oh no! We should just roll over and surrender now! /sarcasm"
During WWII, it was not uncommon to hear reports of HUNDREDS of COMBATANTS being killed in a single day. Throw in the ungodly losses the Russians took and the fact that hundreds of thousands were killed by singlar bombs (the atomic bombs), and today's modern wars look like minor skrimishes.
Someone buried alive in the rubble? If they can't dig you up by hand, chances were you weren't getting out alive. Burning building? Get whoever and whatever you can out then run! Enemy troops rolling into town? Don't fucking stand by the road yelling at them, get inside your house and pray no one uses your roof to ambush them or a tank round is going to smash through your wall!
Wow I am totally shocked that everyone above is saying this is a bad thing! The reason they were not allowing any kinds of liquids on flights is that they were expecting liquid explosives to be used, to me this makes a lot of sense and I feel comforted that the secuirty services actually knew what was going on and stopped it.
With regards to liquid medicines mentioned above, they are allowed on if they're essential (e.g: insulin), however they must be tested for authenticity.
I can't believe so many people are saying that not allowing this stuff is limiting their freedom, sod that! I'd prefer to be restricted and alive than free and dead! Being 6 feet under is not free... unless you truly believe in heaven and you've been a good boy/girl!
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas Adams
We obviously have a hub & spoke system at the moment, the economic change to switched requires the hub and spoke system to become more expensive or switched transport to become less expensive. Hub & spoke is very expensive as it is, airports are expensive and large jets are also expensive. For that matter, trains are expensive, stations are expensive and rail lines are also very expensive. The additional security concerns will add to those costs.
Switched transport though has to become cheaper. At the moment it's limited primarily by the cost of the vehicle and cost of pilot/driver. The solution is to get rid of the pilot/driver entirely and to mass produce the vehicle to reduce the per unit cost. Frankly this means something like a fully automated Moller aircar or CarterCopter for air transport and Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) for ground based transport.
Deleted
If they realized that the actions of the radical Islamists had dire consequences, they might well take it upon themselves to eliminate the radical Islamists.
Similarly, as Americans and Europeans realise that the actions of their governments are having dire consequences (9/11, London and Madrid bombings, etc.) they will undoubtedly take it upon themselves to eliminate their leaders and immediately convert to Wahhabism.
At least that's how it's supposed to work in the deranged minds of the fanatics (and, apparently, of some Westerners as well).
Its not that impoverished muslims are not rational cost-benefit analysis types.
0 289542379413&q=george+galloway
Because of whats going on Lebanon right now, everyone has had their lives and houses destroyed, families ripped apart and they will want revenge. Its pretty much the same for Palestine. Crimes like these beget more crimes - its a vicious cycle without end.
The average (non-Wahabi/non-Al Qaeda) muslims place tremendous value on life, however the general feeling in the west seems to be that perhaps these people count for less. The people are not looking for ways to get killed and go to heaven - they are going about their daily lives and worrying about how to pay for rent, save and buy a nice car, put kids through college - the regular old joe stuff!
The Lebanese were rebuilding their country and democracy taking hold. The Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, contrast with Iraq, a miserable failure, was a success. And now the country has been turned into rubble. A MILLION people displaced - do you know what its like to be homeless with roads bombed, bridges destroyed, airports closed and no way to escape?
Apart from the criminal action of destroying a sovereign state's infrastructure and people, this is also self destructive for Israel as it will encourage MORE attacks. A vacuum in Lebanon will do what a vacuum in Iraq has done - draw in extremists from across the region to engage in battle.
The way forward was to help the moderates and thus isolate the extremists. Collective punishment just makes things worse because it just validates the extremist stance and closes off all avenues of dialogue since you're no longer talking to anyone in power to do anything.
Take a look at: http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-453741
While, the US must support Israel's right to exist, it must also not provide Israel a blank cheque for violence in the middle east. Doing so only draws anger towards the US for supporting these war crimes and incites MORE attacks against Israel.
Had the US reigned Israel in earlier, so much destruction and anger would not be around to defuse. And even Israel could have called off the attack without losing face. Encouraging the attack was... stupid!
As it is, the Middle East has now become even more unstable and violent. All these displaced people will now, justifiably, see the people fighing the invasion as their only hope since everyone is encouraging the Israeli attack till it cripples Hezbollah!
How?
By destroying Lebanon!
MORE support for war! More rockets, more shelling!
Its MADNESS!
I think you'd find that if the US did that, all of the attacks would stop.
Not exactly, because the networks that have already been put in place will still be there; HOWEVER, it will certainly make it much more difficult for the masterminds to recruit and brainwash new troops for their plans, and might eventually lead to their disappearance through evaporation of popular support (their mindless violence in Iraq and Jordan has already alienated a big chunk of the population from them, even in Sunni countries).
Some people say "they kill us because they hate us". Others say "they kill us because we invade them". What people seem not to realise is that both explanations are true: the leaders are murderous lunatics who are only interested in World Domination [tm] (and destroying anything that stands in their way, Western, Muslim, Hindu or whatever). But if it was only about them, they wouldn't be really dangerous because there's just too few of them. What makes them really strong is that they can recruit thousands of foot soldiers to do the dirty work. "Look how all those infidels have been invading us and killing us for centuries ! Do you want to fight for your fellow Muslims all over the world ?" And once the guys are hooked, they thoroughly brainwash them into total submission. Voila, another suicide bomber.
With such tactics, that GWB method ("Bin Laden is attacking us ! Quick, let's invade Iraq !" - uh ?) was probably the best thing that could ever happen... for the fanatics ! Talk about "playing into the enemy's hand" !
Damn,576 comments... I checked 3 of the 6 pages. Only 4 replies addressed the OP's legitimate and interesting question. There were dozens of uncomprehending "put your toothpaste in checked luggage" replies, along with the expected scores of political wanking. Response to this posting was an embarrassment.
in a country with a speed limit of 100 mph, where you max out after, what-3 hours of driving?
there is an upper limit of how long you can focus on driving at high speed.
I don't worry about someone doing 100mph all the way across germany, they start at breakfast and finish with a late lunch.
I'm worried about the guy TRYING TO CROSS THE COUNTRY at 100 mph, in 30 hours of straight driving..
I happen to live on the coast, and don't won't some guy finishing in my house...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
he can hand the 'nail scissors' to someone getting on a different flight.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Check out http://www.dohop.com/ they specialize in finding connections between any sets of airports, so you can fly from that small, out of the way airport to another small airport if there are any connections available. Hope that helps.
Frogs do jump out before the water boils and they die.
Here
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
I used to live in a small town about 200 miles from the capital of the state. The small town was served by a small commuter airline and had an FBO that chartered small airplanes, including a Piper Aztec that could carry 5 passengers (plus pilot). It was cheaper for four people to get together and charter the small airplane to fly between the small town and the big city than it was to buy four tickets on the commuter airline. The air time was about the same and the fifth passenger was a bonus. Another factor was that the morning commuter flight was frequently canceled due to fog; the chartered plane (which just had to be wheeled out of the hangar) could take off, but the commuter plane (which was flying in from another small town) could not land in the fog.
I think this is all a big ploy by the baggage handlers. See more and more people are wising up to them stealing and breaking things so they started carying anything important to them. By disallowing all carry-on luggage, the baggage handlers now have their choice of high end electronics.
I would think this might spur a switch to trains for business types, who could then get some work done while traveling. When you factor in the airport wait times, "short hops" like DC-Boston, DC-NY might even be quicker by train. Now if the railroads were *smart* they would provide free internet connectivity on the trains (maybe they already do?).
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Would you prefer to get blown to bits by some wackjobs with explosives in a toothpaste tube?
Just don't fly, or fly and put your shampoo in your checked bag.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Chartering for the average individual is out of the question due to cost and unless you're well known to the charter company, they too may give you a similar screening. Charter rates are typically by the hour, but if you had to break it down it's somewhere around $5- $10.00 a mile. Our direct operating costs (DOC) on an 8 passenger average size jet alone run $3.35 a mile and charter is often 3 to 4 times DOCs. Eclipse Aviation is working on a jet taxi service, but I have my doubts given that it's not caught on with other aircraft in the past.
which one? the prices i've seen on the various sites (honda, eclipse, diamond, embraer) were all higher than that.
As for fuel consumption, it is true that a smaller plane probably won't have the efficiency an airliner, but the comparison should still take into account the load factor for both. Obviously, an airliner flying from New York to SFO with only 20% of the seats filled is wasting a lot of fuel. The Cirrus will do about 175 knots (~200 mph) while burning about 14 gallons per hour, which works out to about 14 miles per gallon (assuming neutral winds). One other thing to consider is that the smaller plane may allow you to go into a smaller airport closer to your destination (or conversely, departure point), possibly allowing you to avoid renting a car, getting a taxi, etc.
The big win, of course, is in *total* travel time. Yes, you will be in the air for a longer time, but on trips of 500 miles or less I can almost always beat a direct airline flight (and that's flying in a plane that only goes 150 knots) that goes between the same two airports that I fly myself between. If you consider that the small plane flies to a more convenient airport, or the airline flight may have a layover, or longer airport security lines, etc., then trips of 700-1000 miles start to become practical as well. Also remember that the charter isn't going to leave without you, and you can generally book one for a flight at almost any time.
You are right about all of that, but the planes are for short-hop flights, so nobody sits in them for hours.
I fly Cessnas in my spare time. The prop noise is considerable, but the pilot's headset muffles it fairly well. If passengers are ever allowed to bring carry-on items, I think a Bose noise-cancelling headset would deal with the noise issue fairly well.
Not much you can do about the altitude, turbulence, or climb rate of the smaller planes, but those are minor issues.
Here is the biggie: When your flight is less than 90 minutes in the air, it means you get all of the time-wasting airport experience to cover a distance that might take longer than driving!
Example: I was coming back from London, landed at JFK, and had a puddle-jumper flight to my local airport (about 120 miles away). The flight was delayed. They made us switch planes. Then we got on the plane and they taxied away from the gate. Then the airport got fogged in; dozens of planes were lined up on the taxiways. We were stuck on the plane for 4 HOURS before it finally took off. A bunch of us angry passengers considered using our cell phones to call to police and get us off the plane so we could take a bus or cab home. By the time we were angry enough to do it, the plane was ready to take off, so we just sat there and let them finish the trip. Never again!
Something has to give. The regional air transport business is simply DEAD if they continue the status quo.
Compare this to the private plane, where I show up at a small airport, park my car, walk maybe 200 feet to the pilot's lounge, straight to the flight line. I can do the pre-flight inspection and all the preliminary stuff in less time than it takes you to get through airport security. As an added bonus, there is no such thing as missing the flight and (almost) no chance of a delayed departure. Sure, the airline is cheaper, but the airline is also becoming irrelevant, at least for regional flights.
Nobody worries too much about terrorists using 4-seat civil aircraft for suicide attacks because no matter what they did with the plane, the payload is less than you can put into a rental car. Sure, the cropduster scenario is scary, but those are tailwheel aircraft. Getting them into the sky is not so easy.
There should be an ultimatum: if there is another terrorist attack or attacks causing major loss of life, any country found to be harboring and/or funding Islamic terrorists will be attacked. Not invaded. Attacked. Their cities will be summarily carpet-bombed...
I'm a Londoner. Our city has been bombed both by Islamic terrorists and Irish republican terrorists. Would it be OK by you if we carpet-bombed New York?
I've been flying for 35 years now and every single time my carry-on luggage has been x-rayed and lately also inspected by hand sometimes. I'm sure these terrorists didn't invent a new liquid explosive so the question begs: Has the carry-on luggage check always been unable to catch these types of dangerous materials (giving us false security) or did the authorities simply not think of it?
Also, the carry-on luggage ban seems to be a major overkill. How hard can it be simply to check the contents of each container by smell/taste and allow those obviously innocent (like saline solution for contact lenses, baby milk, toothpaste and so on) on the planes? - The x-ray machine will show hidden compartments in the containers so sneaking something past that way should be impossible.
Lastly, both the bombers of last summer and the stupid 'shoe bomber', as well as these would-be terrorists, came form the pakistani community in Birmingham and the obvious question must be why the authorities didn't clean that environment of extremist groups (all the old terrorists was associated with the same mosque) no later than last year? - I mean they did have these new would-be terrorists under observation for a long time so they knew something was going on. Why wait until now and not simply throw them in jail based on the laws about interaction with known terror groups (illegal since shortly after 9/11)? - The sooner they're removed from the streets, the sooner their influence on other members of the community ends.
(1) all luggage travels in a separate aircraft from the passengers, so cannot blow passengers up if it explodes
(2) to avoid the need for complex and unreliable searches, passengers will travel not only without carry-on luggage but also without clothes.
The latter has the added advantage that fundamentalists of both religions seem to be the most opposed to public nudity, so this will help to discourage from them travelling to where they can fight each other.
Unfortunately, the former is probably not ecologically sound; that's two airframes to be kept in the air.
55mph limit? Huh? It's usually 70 outside of cities on the Interstate. Sometimes 65, sometimes 75. Yes, it's 55 inside of most cities, but that's perfectly reasonable and does not add significantly to a long trip.
It is not hard for one person to drive 700 miles in a day, even if you follow speed limits strictly. I've done it several times. And since most people drive 5-15mph over the speed limit, so they can go even farther.
I really don't understand why everyone is jumping on toothpaste as their example of how this rule bothers them. How about water? You can't bring a water bottle onto a plane. This means that you are completely at the mercy of the very slow cart that brings the tiny cups of soda once or twice during the flight. And airplanes are very dry places. When you're terribly thirsty and you realize that you were barred from doing anything about it by the TSA, you're going to be much more pissed than when you realized you would have to check your toothpaste.
I don't understand why trains are so out of favour in the US. They are a good alternative to air travel or road travel.
...straw man down.
Good God, man. It's bigger than all that. It has nothing to do with Bush. This started years and years before Bush, or even his father. Does it make you feel good to parrot Air America? You accuse Bush of parroting Fox News. Both have it wrong. You are just the reverse side of the same coin Bush is on.
The real problem is that:
Lastly, you are way off-topic, unless hidden in there, was the secret to finding spare seats on chartered flights, and I'm off-topic for replying to you.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
How is it unreasonable? You don't HAVE to fly. Their security as being a mandatory condition of something that you CHOOSE to do does not deminish your rights. If you don't like it, go by land or sea instead... You are taking a recent innovation (travel by air) and reguarding it as a right of yours as a citizen, it is a modern convenience and things were much harder at one time...
My camera/laptop won't leave my sight. I'm willing to check batteries, but I'm betting that the "new improved regs" will make that impossible as well.
So I won't fly if I have any choice in the matter until these regs are gone. FYI: I've already experienced the joy of mistakenly checking valuables once. Let's just say that my baggage arrived, sans valuables. And this was before they checked everything.
As for the water, you should check the stories about water. I'll only accept bottled water, and that's usually $3. (unless you're flying in enhanced classes) If they included free bottled water, or at least just @ cost water and drinks, that would make at least the no drinks part more acceptable.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
1. GW Bush
2. TSA
3. Airlines
Very little content on answering the poster's question: alternative airline travel options and cost-benefits analysis. Quick suggestion on these rants:
1. Work to get GW and the Republican majority out of office (we are still notionally a democracy). Primaries and elections are coming up--VOTE. Don't just whine. Go work for a candidate-they need IT people!
2. Ditto about TSA- GW created it from 21 agencies, and threw in FEMA to boot-remember Katrina this November.
3. Vote with your dollars-if one airline screws you over, check for nearby airports using competitors (I have Southwest now in my area of PA that has broken the monopoly USAir had on air travel-prices are down, service has improved). You'd be surprised how many airports are nearby-within an hour's driving distance.
Enough ranting...it's rather addictive; I think most Americans are getting fed up with the current regime...gotta stop....must remove hands from keyboard...take coffeee......
Okay...better now...
I'm thinking about that myself (but I rarely travel by plane, mostly by train or car within 200 miles of my house) and will investigate it a bit further but my take on it is:
1. Fractional ownership is not cheap...at least for me...$100k and up per year
2. Can use smaller airports for domestic flights...less time in security and most smaller airports have car rental agencies right at the airport or serve them regularly.
3. International flights generally use the same airports as commercial, smaller planes (20-30 passenger) with long range flight capabilities, quicker security (same level, but since you pay more and are more "noticed", less incentive to be a terrorist).
If you are with a large corporation, check and see if they have their own fleet or fractional ownership. You might be able to hitch a ride with an exec. Might want to suggest that to company as way to save cost/time/amortize expense to shareholders (ooohhh! financial talk)/etc. Also keep in mind for medical emergencies or family emergencies, companies might make private jets available to employees or family members for evacuation/airlift use--great for goodwill.
On the flip side of fractional ownership:
1. With cost-cuttings going on today, most companies won't do this
2. If you got money, you get special treatment; otherwise, move along with the cattle...
3.Some companies restrict it only to senior executives as a matter of policy.
Hope this helps...
Supreme Granter of Doctor of Obviology Letters ("A FIRM Command of the Obvious")
The "flypaper" theory has absolutely no credibility. It was invented after all of the other excuses for this sorry mess were debunked.
Even if we accept the theory as truth, it clearly isn't working. It's a failed strategy. Attacks in Iraq are getting more frequent and more deadly by the day. The Middle East is obviously less stable than it was before this whole thing by any measure. Afghanistan is not stable and the Taliban has not been eliminated. Bin Laden.. who?
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/video/ps187 0/index.html (cisco.com)
Business travel is a major reason why we have so much air traffic. IMO, it is a huge waste of money/resources/time for all involved. I telecommute and, due to cost saving travel restrictions, haven't been on a plane for over a year - it has not affected my ability to do my job ONE BIT.
Of course, the majority of business travel is carting salespeople around and the only way to eliminate that nonsense is to change the way corporations buy stuff, but would it be so bad to eliminate the human salesperson from the process? We have done it effectively for consumer products, why not take it futher?
>If you're sitting there saying "stupid pilots should know not to fly into restricted airspace",
>keep in mind that the number of restricted spaces EXPLODED in the last few years because
>of You Know When...and these spaces are frequently around insignificant things like,
>say, a major grain processing plant that Homeland Insecurity classified as "critical
>infrastructure". Things that are NOT marked on charts. They're also frequently date/time
>specific (ie, some big concert is going on somewhere, and DoHiS issues a restriction just
>for the event. There are a half dozen KINDS of restricted airspaces, with all sorts of
>varying altitude limits and such.
Aren't GPS units pretty cheap these days? I would think there should be some centralized database at the FAA, kept continuously up-to-date, that lists all restricted airspaces. When filing a flight plan, you should be able to log into the internet and download this data into your GPS unit. And then when you fly anywhere your GPS unit should tell you if you have or you are about to violate a restricted area.
I would think this would be a simple-to-implement kind of thing and the market for such devices would be huge. Imagine the peace of mind as a general aviator knowing that you will be safe from flying into restricted areas.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
"...Can anyone suggest alternative flight services?..."
One interesting solution is to learn how to fly yourself; Its still a cool way to get there from here. Of course there's always the phone, internet conferencing; But the bio-feedback sucks. There's more to doing business than doing business.
As for a long term solution, move towards Energy Hydrogen/Wind/Solar-Energy/Solar-Heat Economies, Automated Manufacturing/Agriculture, and Holographic Communication.
Did you actually read my post? The entire point was that they had a different value system and I don't think we should intentionally kill their innnocent civilians. How did that trigger an attack on me for being from Arkansas? Did you once get a ticket going through the state or something?
And no, the terrorists are not rational. I think being a 'fanatic' eliminates that possibility, by definition.
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
I would recommend using Mr. Garrison's IT but as we all know, the government closed him down to protect the airlines.
What's depressing about Iraq is precisely the death of nuance in American politics and foreign policy -- as well as the erosion of any trust in the middle east. George Friedman's book highlights how the initial effects of the moves in Iraq meant countries were suddenly worried about the US and coming to the table to talk. In the early days of the conflict, it did achieve key strategic goals in terms of projecting US power in a very unstable region. I'd argue that it Bush's insane policies and bullheadedness in the face of ya know, facts, that have actually made the middle east worse in the ensuing time period. The current Israeli situation would've been a good opportunity for a smart, dead serious, and limited intervention against Hezbollah, except for the fact that between American public opinion and global public opinion has so turned against Bush (and because we're so overextended in Iraq) that we've seen middle eastern governments turn from being angry at Hezbollah to being angry that Israel seems bent on bombing Lebanon to rubble (which is, I think, exactly the kind of ammunition that Al Qaeda and Hezbollah can use to further their causes). The result is a weird sort of wish-fulfillment process in which the US and the terrorists mutually create exactly the world they anticipated in their skewed, paranoid fantasies. Fatally, civil liberties here and a lot of lives (of American soldiers, Iraqi civilians, Lebanese civilians, Israeli civilians, Israeli soldiers, shoot, even the poor saps who buy into the terrorist fantasies of Hezbollah) are wasted in the process.
Online citizen journalism from the inner city: The View From The Ground
Gone are the days when you could pay in cash and your right to fly wouldn't have been denied because you paid with cash.
I'm impressed, you managed to put into one sentence exactly what the US could do to make the muslim world stop hating them. Maybe someone should pitch that line to Bush Jr... ^_^
Agreed, and I have no love for the asshole who's in the White House these days. Let's try this first, then if the violence continues, play some hardball and kick some ass. Is this a war of defense for most of the terrorists, or is it really a cultural/holy war thing where they are out to destroy our way of life? Let's hope it's the former, because if it's the latter, the consequences for the terrorists and their compatriots will be very dire indeed.
-b.
Not even dictatorships like Vietnam or Zimbabwe.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Terrorism The practise of coercing governments to accede to political demands by committing violence on civilian targets; any similar use of violence to achieve goals.So you solution to terrorism is to become a terrorist nation state?
What the hell is wrong with you?
Oh, wait, I see. Your a troll.
Nevermind.
"The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
Major Major
Is the FAA keeping us from having flying cars in the same way the oil companies have been keeping us from our 1000 mpg alternative fuel cars?
Flying cars would be the best solution to this problem, short of a working airline system.
Oh dear, some of you guys are truly disgusting.
How are you going to identify Muslims wise guy? The beards? The turbants? Some of you are really good at that. Shame you may confuse Sikhs for that reason, but who cares, their bad for wearing them.
Moron.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
How about DON'T resign yourself to anything? Have you forgotten that this is supposed to be government of, by, and for the people? They work for us, not the other way around; does a boss resign himself to the fact that his employees will show up 5 hours late every day? Hell, no; he tells them to show up on time or he fires them and finds others who will. It's time to take a stand against bad government, the kind that has allowed our rail infrastructure to degrade to pre-1900 performance levels and the kind that scares and/or bullies people into waiting in line 2 hours to get searched for incredibly dangerous items like nail clippers and shaving cream while as everyone knows there are dozens of ways to destroy an airplane if you're determined enough. Instead of kowtowing to the government's plans for you, how about sending the government a message by proxy?
Stop traveling. Just stay home.
I understand this may be a slight annoyance for you, but it's vastly more effective than writing your Congressman. Why? It puts the economic multiplier effect into play. When you don't travel, and make it clear to potential hosts, such as family and friends, as well as the hotel you would have stayed at, the theme park you would have visited, the owner of the boat you would have rented, and the guide you would have employed, you give other people reason to fight for your cause. And when these people turn around and tell their local chamber of commerce about these calls, an entire city's worth of business leaders will be on your side, even those who don't care about tourism or hospitality: they know that the hoteliers, theme park operators, boat shops, and guides are their customers, who now have less money to spend. Just a few thousand people making a point not to travel, and to let others know why they're not traveling, are enough of an economic force to enlist millions of powerful allies. Start an organised travel boycott in a few cities and it's all but over. Direct pressure on the government doesn't work; a few thousand people can't influence an elected official, especially if they're not wealthy. But the interconnectedness of the economy, and business owners' fresh memories of a nation that doesn't travel, allow us to harness the multiplier effect and force change.
What kind of change? Nationwide high-speed rail, for one. An end to ineffective, inconvenient, undignified, and unconstitutional searches and demands for identification for all domestic travel modes. Better training for all transportation and emergency personnel to ensure that everyone knows that transit vehicles, whether on land or water or in the air, have priority at all times. Changes in the law to prohibit police (whether federal, state, or local) from interfering with safe and timely transportation operations - be it traffic on a freeway or a train crossing a bridge - for any reason. In short, the only reason any transit vehicle should ever arrive late is unavoidable mechanical failure. And no one should ever be searched without a warrant. Simple as that.
Join the travel boycott. Enforce change.
In big international airports (which in Europe, given the many countries there are in a relatively small area) it can take as much as that:
Landing on time, clock starts ticking:
- Taxing, deploying bugs: 15 minutes.
- Walk to baggage reclaim: 10 minutes.
- Queue in immigration: 10 minutes. Are you a furreinger? 20 minutes.
- Wait for your baggage: 15 minutes.
Total: 50 minutes to one hour.
And this is pretty conservative, what if you have to take a bus to the terminal or you are searched in the way out...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Day Jet is getting ready to launch their new service that offers consumers "Per-Seat, On-Demand" service.
A new startup company, http://www.pilotinvestors.com/ seems to be looking for exactly this kind of market.
Looks like an 'air taxi' service with a potentially reasonable price. Probably won't be "really" affordable for most individual commercial fliers, but get a group of four people together and I bet it'd be almost as cheap as ticket resellers like priceline, etc.
I'm going to keep my eye on this company. They're still in the 'looking for investors' stage now, but if they take off (pun coincidental, but funny), they'll make lotsa money. Those mini jets they're buying are quite neat http://www.eclipseaviation.com/eclipse_500/. I wish I had one.
Whenever Mrs. Fitch breaks wind, we beat the dog.
http://www.aircharter.com/ is another web site which allows you to price and book charter aircraft over the web. I worked on this site during the boom. We used some interesting AI to optimize the itinerary for best price, fastest time, etc.
Charter aircraft are more expensive than regular commercial flights, but there are a host of advantages. You are not tied to a predetermined schedule. You can land at smaller regional airports which might be closer to your final destination and quicker due to the lower traffic volumes. You don't have to wait to check your bags, board, reclaim your bags, subject to anal probes, etc. The best itineraries are the ones which a bunch of small cites over a short time.
As a small aircraft pilot I can tell you that flying in small planes is not economic. The wet fee (gas, insurance, aircraft) for a single engine aircraft is usually upwards of $80/hour. This of course does not include a pilot, which will cost even more (probably around $40/hour). Most small aircraft have a cruising airspeed of around 120 kts/hour, which means that traveling 300 miles would cost upwards of $240 and take around 2 hours. High performance and multi engine aircraft can travel much faster but also are much more expensive to rent. The other problem is that small aircraft are affected much more by the weather. While large jets can navigate above storms, most small aircraft cannot, and must either navigate around the storm or land. Corporate jets (like Lear and Gulf) cost ridiculous amounts of money, which is why the only people using them are those who are amazingly rich. Needless to say, there are very few Lears out there for charter flights. Unfortunately, this means that the only practical method of air travel is through the large airlines.
They continue to take away our freedom so that the terrorists won't kill us. I guess "Live Free or Die" are no longer options. We'll just have to settle for mere existence.
On second thought, screw it! I want my options back. Arm the passengers! Existence is Futile!
So for there hasn't been any indication that the US carry-on rules will be changed to prohibit cameras, laptops, or any other electronics. The UK is indicating that the current no carry-on rules are temporary. I wonder if there won't be a third alternative, requiring passengers to gate check bags that would have otherwise been carry-on. This is currently done on several commuter airlines because there is no space for carry-on luggage on the plane. Gate checking of luggage is also currently required on larger planes for things such as baby strollers and oversized bags.
I had a semi-cheap MP3 player stolen from checked luggage, and now I won't check anything that is worth stealing. Luckily I travel with very few things that I think are worth stealing.
I also would never drink the water from an airliner water system.
I have noticed that it is now pretty universal that US airlines serve complimentary bottled water on all flights with beverage service, even if it is bottled purified water from a 1.5 liter bottle served in a plastic cup over ice. One of the commuter airlines that I was on recently didn't have a beverage service but offered plastic cups of bottled spring water (I watched the stewardess crack the sealed caps on the 1.5 liter bottles). SOME airlines do charge for bottled water if you ask for a bottle of water; a complimentary plastic cup of bottled water, with or without ice, is almost always available. Most airlines also serve complimentary canned or bottled soda water.
Delta and Air Tran serve complimentary Dasani bottled water. Alaska and Horizon Air serve complimentary Athena bottled water. United Airlines serves complimentary "bottled purified" water (I would guess in a glass).
as a sign of how detached the wealthy are from the reality of the everyday person.
To me its the same as 'let them eat cake!'
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
You guys have no shame.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Tony Blair is sending the plains to bomb London as we speak.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
SHAKES ON A PLANE
What's the fuel efficiency of these things? With only 1 passenger, it sounds like the passenger-miles-per-gallon efficiency would be abysmal. This isn't an environmentally viable option for tons of people to take up, unless you're extrenely selfish and don't care about spewing pollutants into the atmosphere.
Do some research before condemning them. You'll find that some light aircraft are actually more fuel efficient than cars or trucks, even when only occupied by a single person (the pilot). For example, the 2-seater Diamond Eclipse DA20 cruises at 138 knots, while burning 5.5 gallons per hour. That's almost 160 (statute) miles on 5.5 gallons of fuel, or 29 miles per gallon. Factor in that you're not burning any fuel sitting at stoplights or crawling along in traffic, and you'll realize that even from an environmental point of view, flying can be very efficient.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
catch a bus, great way to see the country--don't sit in the back near the toilet.
What the hell is wrong with Tony Blair. The midterms aren't for _MONTHS_. Don't they realize that the terrorists could have been delayed for awhile and then arrested, helping immesurably more with the 'War on Freedom^UTerror'?
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
You are MUCH more likely to die on the drive to the airport, than you are to die on an airplane.
Car accidents are never televised, because the news would be monotonous--someone dies in a car accident every 12 minutes! There are 40,000+ automotive fatalities AND 2.5+ million automotive injuries per year in the US alone.
The few hundred in a plane that crashes are guaranteed to be in the news not because of its brutality (have you ever seen a bad car accident?) but because it happens so infrequently.
The only thing threatening the safety of flying (statistically at least) is the fear of flying itself.
And this is with Lycoming Aero engines, which are basically 30s designs. There are companies offering converted auto engines (the Subaru boxer 4 seems to be a popular choice due to its form factor) that are significantly more efficient. There's also a German company that has designed a Diesel aircraft engine that burns inexpensive jet fuel rather than $6/gal+ aviation gasoline.
-b.
Which is not much more than first class
s .pdf
http://www.eclipseaviation.com/files/pdf/Economic
vs $291/hr for a Piper Malibu Mirage (pressuized single engine piston).
Obviously they would fudge the numbers in their favor but if this technology takes off it will only be a sign of disrespect if your company forces you to fly on a domestic airline, especially for short hops.
No, no guarantees is the Microjets start turning into lawn darts in the hands of cheapo air taxi operations hiring minimum wage pilots, or, worse, every rich asshole in the US buys one and insists on trying to fly it into their favorite ski resort in the dead of winter.
But of I had a few million I'd buy one right now. I have piston-powered aircraft. Nothing but trouble!
Another possibility that might save the day - a no-carryon-luggae airline. I'd be first in line. I've had it with assholes trying to carry on (real world examples) steamer trunks, elk antlers dripping with blood, and 6-foot stuffed llamas. All you people with big carryon items - you deserve the crap your getting now at the hands of the airlines.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
So like if safety was the criteria why wait to ban liquids till after the arrest? Or are 3000+ lives and x million $ worth of airplanes a good risk versus the hunch that there were not two or more groups out there?
I mean really, what is the goal our safety or to "get those guys"?
I have a similar theory:
I think that the UK or USA needs to have a true trigger-happy fascist government, complete with large scale death camps. Only then will people learn to take freedom seriously. The UK is full of compacent people who say "Well, it's never happened here, good old England, go ahead and give us ID cards and put cameras everywhere"; and the USA is full of people who say "Well, I'd just get my rifle out and see them off". Both groups need a dose of reality.
However, I don't want to be here when it happens.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
HA HA ha ahaa heeeyuk yuk shwoooeee..
Yup, I'd like to have been at some of those parties....
thanx.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
The purpose isn't so much that it's LIKELY they'll have to shoot, fight, etc. But that the uber-terrorists that plan all this crap, safe in their caves in Outer Rockpile Bumphork, Asia will know those guys are there. They'll know that any plan they hatch must come up with a way to deal with or bypass enforcement located at front, back, and an unknown/unknowable location. The reason they're targetting planes is cuz air traffic is a Tootsie Roll Pop - Hard crunchy outside, but soft chewy inside. Once they get past the security at the airport, there's nothing to oppose them on the airplane itself.
Even if armed guards can be overcome, it will so thoroughly complicate any planning that air travel will become safer. The terrorists will have to target something else. But that's another problem.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
You might also like to read about:
The thing about most conspiracy theories is they're no worse than things our governments have either done in the past, or considered doing.
Some of the real plans are downright weird, too. The US military actively considered trying to develop a Gay Sex Bomb that would demoralize the enemy by making the troops all hot for each other. And that was during the Clinton administration, not back in the 50s.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
So why not implement such a ban 1 year ago?
Then again. It's always fair to consider: are the ban effective?
- electronic ban in cabin: well there are plenty of other electrical devices built into the cabin, so it's not clear that this helps much.
- liquid and gel in luggage only: it seems not too difficult to rig up a time delayed mechanism to mix liquids in a piece luggage. So when the handler 'gently' place your luggage in/out of the plane....
I would have to conclude that the new ban only marginally improve safety
and that was probably why the ban was NOT put in place 1 year ago.
So I can see this being relaxed into a random search regime after
the hysteria dies down.
A much better answer would be scanning equipment that can detect the wide
assortment of explosives, but they are apparently not ready for prime time yet.
Remember that ALL of the terrorists in the attack on 9/11 successfully passed thru security checks.
What if, instead of NO ONE being allowed to have weapons on the plane, most people were allowed to?
What's the difference between a police officer of any enforcement agency, and a private citizen? Training, certification, background checks, and a career choice.
What if ANY citizen that can qualify the same way be allowed to carry weapons in the same way? Why should a citizen have to make a specific career choice in order to be allowed to carry self-defense?
Offer the same exact training and treatment that police get to everyone - and allow anyone to do it. Weed out the same people that police training/certification does, and the rest are armed.
That means that the armed citizens, whether they're security guards, computer programmers, waitresses, librarians, etc are just as trust worthy with weapons as those people whose career choice was police work.
And like any police officer, these trusted armed citizens can be found going about their lives and jobs in restaraunts, subways, on airplanes, etc.
I don't think there's any way that terrorists could plan around that in a meaningful to make a 9/11 attack possible.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
You're obviously confused. Terrorism is a type of crime. There is not "crime" in a different category as "terrorism". McVeigh was a terrorist, just a domestic one. One does not need a giant organization behind oneself to be a terrorist.
Actually, you raise a couple of good points in this post that deserve clarification:
.. i.e. like the rest of us. Hopefully Eclipse will fix that problem, but don't count on it.
#1 Security screening for on demand charter ops is actually very light, and will probably stay that way. There is name checking for sure, but no toothpaste confiscation or gratuitous fondling. It will probably stay this way for quite some time due to the shear impracticalities of this.
#2 DOC's (Direct Operating Costs) for the aircraft you mention highlights a key shortcoming within the industry that effectively prevents normal people from accessing the business. A commercial aircraft, by definition, is one that makes money when it flies. Anything that costs $5 - $10 mile with such a small load cannot work, at least for cost driven peole - i.e. the rest of us. But, you might argue, the problem is that no one has ever asked a corporate jet to perform like a commercial aircraft. (Except perhaps the Challenger 600 series that begat the CRJ line, which has its own story.) To give you an idea on how messed up "the culture" of biz aviation is and why your DOC's are so high, compare the cost of a new windscreen on a Lear 60 vs. a Boeing 737. Hint: the Lear 60 part (same part almost) is about 10 times more expensive - why? Because the idiots that buy Lear 60's tend not to be price sensitive,
#3 Eclipse is a manufacturer, not service developer. They want to sell more units by "hoping" that air taxi takes off, but some don't think it can / will under present cultural paradigm. When thinking about Air Charter for the Unwashed Masses you really have to look at companies like Southwest to see how they made it. They looked (in 1971) at a broken model / pricing structure and asked themselves how to quadruple the market size. Once they figured out their "best" price on a cost plus basis, they offered something that revolutionized scheduled air. Air taxi folks really don't think this way yet. DayJet might, but they also may have picked the wrong aircraft.
The key to the whole question of developing "Everyone's Air Taxi" is to tackle the utilization problem. If the aircraft (any aircraft, older or newer) flew 2000 hours per year instead of 800, then the prices (let's say on simple turboprops flying 500 miles or less) would be affordable for a larger swath of people. But for now, it will remain in the leagues of the stratosphere where people burn $10,000 a day for fun.
In order for air taxi to work, business owners need to think backwards from what they can sell (to the masses) and then get the utilization / cost structure on the aircraft to match it through proper planning. No one, to date, in air taxi has really attempted this. Great passion and ideas, but poor planning and execution.
It took me two years of hard work building an experimental airplane and getting my pilots license but it was worth it. I now fly myself from an airport 5 minutes from my house. I can usually land at an airport much closer to my destination than the big planes fly into. I also don't consider getting somewhere by commercial airliner flying, it is traveling. Flying means getting behind the stick and doing it yourself. Plus since I'm not flying at 40000+ feet I get a much better view of the country. Here is the breakdown of costs: Vans RV-9A with a Lycoming IO-320 engine: ~$38000 and 1500 hours labor. Pilots license (Instructor and aircraft rental) ~$6500. On-going costs: $220/month hanger rental. Fuel @$3.90/Gal using 6.5 Gallons per hour at 180 knot cruise AND loving it!
I'm sorry to hear your oft-exercised right to in-cabin oral hygiene is being trampled upon. Put your bathroom items in the bags you check in; you may continue to luxuriate in your hypochondria after the plane lands.
I only find that necessary on the really long, overseas flights, and, at least with Cathay Pacific, they give you toothpaste and a toothbrush for such flights. However, when I go on short trips, I take one carry-on with everything I'll need during my stay. Whether it's one day or 4, I'll need the regular assortment of toiletries. People who wear makeup or have more elaborate hair-care routines will need quite a lot of stuff. Stuff that now has to be repurchased at every destination, or stowed in checked baggage. Maybe I'm just lucky, but whenever I must check baggage, roughly half of the time it is lost, stolen, or, if I'm lucky, merely delayed.
Perhaps you're just trolling, but this ham-handed "security" measure is making travel much more costly or much more inconvenient, or maybe just both. Hypochondriacs and OCD tooth brushers aren't the only people impacted.
which one? the prices i've seen on the various sites (honda, eclipse, diamond, embraer) were all higher than that.
The DiamondJet will be under a million, with them projecting about $800,000 or so. The pricing on their website (1.2mil) is for their "executive" model, which has all of the options, the luxury interior, etc. They've decided to certify the executive model first, probably because it's easier to certify decremental changes than incremental ones.
I don't know if that price will hold out, but that's what they've been trumpeting.
All opinions presented here aren't mine.
Back to the shampoo bottles.. do you think it matters to a suicide bomber whether the explosives are in the carry-ons or the checked luggage? ... Yes, it does. For much the same reason that you want your shampoo bottle in your carry-on. The Terrorists are fully aware of how poorly the luggage handling systems can be, and it would really "harsh" their day if the pound of SemTex in their checked bag got on the wrong plane, out of range of their key-chain fob detonation signal. Sure, there might be a timer and an altimeter for back up detonation, but it'd be embarassing. Here the Terrorist is, all shaved, perfumed, ready to go meet his virgins... and HIS plane didn't blow up. He'd feel pretty much like he failed his cause. And since it's religious... he failed his god.
Terrorists don't want to take chances. They want it to work. That's why there are relatively few plots utilizing checked baggage in the first place, and why prior to THAT DAY they didn't check all checked bags. That's also why liquids weren't a problem before... terrorists hadn't really considered that as a prime method to take down a plane.
Remember, Terrorists are PEOPLE too. (Despite what some people say.) They have problems, personality flaws, and pecadillos. Just like you, they have the same worries... will I get hassled by TSOs? Will I make my flight on time? Can I get the exit-row seat?
They just also have another set of worries in addition... rather than worry about how the trip will be, they worry about how the trip will end.
It is possible to stop all terror threats to commercial aviation... but we will never be able to do so, because the cures are as intolerable as the ills. Like using bleach to cure disease.
you're going to be much more pissed than...
Well... you're a lot less likely to get pissed if you're dehydrated.
Not to mention that a smaller fleet is also a "loss-effects multiplier"
When you lose a B-52, there are a reasonable number of spares. When you lose a B-2, you don't have that luxury.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
So you are admitting that on thier face and in total ALL of the fears expressed in this thread are based on Slippery Slopes? I agree. Thread closed.
2. Can use smaller airports for domestic flights...less time in security and most smaller airports have car rental agencies right at the airport or serve them regularly. This is not correct. There is NO time spent in security. If you own, fractionally or otherwise, a plane, you go directly to it, no security at all. As far as travel to and from the airport goes, there is a private limo to pick you up and drop you off .... from curb to aircraft (again, no security check points there).
I did some consulting work for (a company that became) NetJet and you would be surprised at the number of clients they have. Companies small and large as well as individuals all enjoy the speed and convenience of their own personal aircraft.
"Nuance" is a French word.
Is that discrimination based on one's looks?
Race - racism
Face - facism
Fascism probably was your intended slur. You're welcome.
The latest Slashdot meme.
Do you like dead children?
And you're obviously an idiot.
I recently had a perfect occasion to charter a small plane -- I had to make a service call in the following cities:
Louisville, KY
Dayton, OH
Fort Wayne, IN
Toledo, OH
Cleveland, OH
Each service call lasted about 15 minutes - 30 minutes, and I had to get them done in as short a time as possible.
I was able to fly between those cities for about $1,200 - and spent another $300 or so for car rental/taxi. It took about 15 minutes at each airport to board and take off, and about 5 minutes at each airport to land and deplane. (Take offs take a little longer because of takeoff preparations.) Considering that I booked the flight only a day before, it was about on part with commercial flights, and was much more convenient.
I found the service (Interstate Air Taxi) by googling for Air Taxi. I also found the company listed at CharterHub.
National security demands that we not care who it is who is serving or who they like to fuck; that they have the skills necessary to fight this war should be sufficient. That we're going to let institutionalized homophobia prevent us from effectively fighting "the bad guys" tells me that the fact that there are gays out there is more scary than the fact that there are people out there who are willing to fly planes into buildings and kill thousands of people. We're more afraid of "catching homosexuality" than *dying*.
That you consider maintaining the homophobic "status quo" a higher priority than preventing another attack by processing the SIGINT we've got in order to prevent another attack is simply disgusting.
Not exactly. and I'll tell you why. Your post is fine, but the parrent to your post is not. That post was in response to my post ON A VERY DIFFERENT TOPIC. He hadn't read my post carefully, and came off looking a little foolish. What you think his post said is just fine, but is in response to a different topic (and is therefore NOT "Exactly" right)
Nothing against you. Just a little peeved at people who don't pay attention.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
First, the frog boiling thing is NOT true. Second, some of us only travel with carry-on luggage and therefore require toothpaste to be in our travel bag. I do not trust my expensive laptop and other gear to be handled with care by the underpaid and overworked baggage handlers. Besides, what if they lose my laptop? The data that it has on it is very valuable to me and while I may have backups, I do not have them with me.
strike
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Last time I checked, it was barking moonbats like Charlie Rangel (D-NY) who were jonesing for the return of the draft. Thanks for playing, though.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Good point, but Rangel is a Globalist, not a true democrat, as he lobbied for the Singapore Accords and I believe he was part of the original crew (which was up for corporate sale) of the Congressional Black Caucus that created, lobbied for, and successfully passed the legislation giving corporations a tax back for laying off American workers and offshoring their jobs. But the neocons are still the worst of the lot on the march to fascism....
I didn't mean to confuse the issue by bringing up other complicated stuff and I apologize.
Ah yes, the "if we pull out of one bad war, we should pull out of all the good places we are" arguement. Well, since you agree it is complicated, why are you purposefully complicating the issue at hand with something completely unrelated? Oh, because you know that your argument is wrong, therefore you are purposefully obfuscating the matter at hand? Yeah, I thought so. Bush lied about terrorist links to Iraq. Bush lied about WMD. Bush lied about what he knew about WMD. Bush lied in his State of the Union address. Bush knowingly sent soldiers to their death. Bush acted in a manner to benefit friends and political allies to the detriment of Americans and Iraqis. Bush turned the only surplus in recent history into a deficit. Bush lied about what he wanted to do with the budget, increasing spending but doing a good job of cutting taxes only for the rich (and lying to the American people to convince them that the cuts affect the poor and middle class). But hey, don't let the facts get in the way of your mindless worship of the man and the obfuscation you will go to when people point oud that he is a screwup.
Learn to love Alaska
I find it amusing/alarming that somebody actually tried to boil a live frog in order to test a literary metaphor. For the sake of small amphibians everywhere, next time I'll say "human" instead of "frog", "society" instead of "water", and "fascism" instead of "temperature".
I believe that scenario has been tested quite effectively.
-FL