Europe studies lessons of living with volcanos (AP)

[News Manager]

AP - In the ageless contest between man and nature, nature reasserted its primacy for an entire week, crippling air travel around the world and sending shudders through the global economy.




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[rattler]

The crisis only highlighted the shortcomings of airplanes as opposed to, say, trains: lengthy and intrusive security checks, shrinking leg room on board, deliberate overbooking and mounting hidden costs like paying extra for food or drink, a second suitcase and even hand luggage.

Indeed, concur with all.

Flying just is not fun anymore, less so to the US. Paranoia has got us, check external (not fligh paramter induced) life losses versus (externaly induced) other means of transport life losses, my take is that we are going nuts over a perceived threat here for a/c but ignore others... No checks to board a subway commuter, last experimet here in Madrid (2009) showed that any attack on a Metro like 11M might be repreated, with higher losses, not one "terrorist" (25 simulated by journos, with real C4 in same backpacks as 11M) got caught.

We try to discern the lonely bomber on a flight of 250 with ever more sophisticated (and truly molesting) measures and have no problem whatsoever leaving the the door open for am attack on a train of 2.500. Safety does not exist, ad striving for it does harm our way of life.

A7C related it is a true paranoia, fueled by the basic FiF anxietey most people feel (however irrational it is for facts).

Rattler