In New restrictions to add to air-travel headaches, Yahoo/Finance is reporting:
New security restrictions swiftly implemented following a botched attempt to blow up an airliner on Christmas Day will make air travel more burdensome and could discourage some business fliers, key customers for the airlines.
Passengers will likely face longer lines at checkpoints and less freedom to move around the airplane during flight. Leisure travelers, such as the families that packed airports to return home on Sunday after the holiday, are likely to put up with the new inconveniences, as they have before.
But business travelers may think twice before flying if stepped-up security means spending hours at the airport. That's troubling to the airlines, because business travelers tend to fly frequently and pay higher fares.
Alarmed by the prospect of losing their best customers, airlines are already asking federal officials to make any new procedures palatable to passengers.
The past 24 hours, I have seen airline security experts and political pundits opine on this issue. What only one person (a Republican Senator) mentioned was the obvious, which is that Richard Reid and the latest villain were known adherents of jihadist Muslims. It's time for real profiling. The latest bad guy was in fact already on a terrorist watch list. What about putting any such air traveler through the wringer before he/she gets on a plane? Doh?
Instead, the CNN commentators yesterday all sort of agreed to a "what can you do" resignation to this problem, as did a security expert on FOX News this AM. Sorry. Fair-skinned grandmas and priests don't blow themselves up on airplanes. Regarding the Yahoo writeup, CEO road warrior don't do so either.
Switching topics but staying within the realm of common sense, if a Republican Congress passed a healthcare bill and called it a reform to benefit the people, but took drug reimportation from Canada off the table, do you think the Democrats in Congress and, let us say, a Democratic President, would yell and scream? Oh, but the practicalities of getting 60 Senate votes, they now wail.
The country has been captured by political correctness gone wild in the airline screening business and by corporate interests. Wouldst this Congress and administration believed in some political correctness in actually passing a healthcare bill that promoted generics, attacked bloated pharmaceutical company profit margins, provided benefits to the people the same time that taxes were imposed, and got practical with the life and death issue of screening air travelers.
Not to mention the Bushbama continuity continuing to socialize the losses while the winners of the past decade count their millions or billions.
The world has gone a bit mad.
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