Maurice Kinal wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:

 MK> Hey Roy!

>> Therein might lie the answer.  Would you have considered flying if
>> all that happened never happened?

> Probably not,

MK> There you go.  Offhand I don't think it changed my attitude that
MK> much either.

Well,  I _have_,  though.  It's gone from "probably not" to
"no way in hell"!

> I'll get myself an ultralight.  :-)

MK> I see one of those overhead every once and awhile.  I am not sure I
MK> am that daring anymore.  Getting too old but it does look like fun.

I've only seen one once in this area,  and am not sure I'm that daring any
more either,  but yeah,  it sure does look like fun.  And the thing is, 
they're completely exempt from most of what you have to deal with when it
comes to more typical aircraft...

> The latest in a long string of excuses.  And I'll bet that if flight
> crew get laid off because an airline isn't doing real well,  those 
> fat cats up at the high corportate levels won't suffer at all!  Even 
> Pan Am,  which I've flown on went down the tubes but I'll bet that 
> the executives got nice severance packages out of the deal.

MK> Could be.  I am not in that league so ...

Nor am I,  nor would I suspect are most of us,  but you hear things all the
time on the news.  Beyond a certain point,  it makes no sense to have
somebody getting paid millions more than somebody else who's in a
comparable job,  justy as a method for keeping score,  but just based on
what you hear on the news that seems to be the way the game is played.

>> I hear many businesses are pooling their resources and sharing 
>> company planes instead of using commercial flights.  I wonder how 
>> much impact that has.

> Probably quite a bit,  as business travel makes for a big chunk of their
> business.

MK> Again I am not sure how widespread this really is.  Just something 
MK> on the news that caught my attention.

Not just sharing private planes,  but also sharing charter flights.  From
what I've seen,  I'd say it's pretty widespread.  But hey,  that's the
market reacting to what it perceives as less than tolerable conditions...

You know how often it happens that there's so little time to accomplish
what you want to do,  and how sometimes it just seems like there's never
enough hours in a day?  Well,  business executive types who fly (as opposed
to traveling sales reps who drive,  etc.) are in the same kind of a
situation.  I used to think it was bad enough that they told you to show up
at the airport an hour before flight time,  now they're saying three
hours?!  And if you're taking a flight that involves making a connection
somewhere (as was the case the last two times I flew,  where I had to
change in Chicago both ways),  then it means you have to go through the
same rigamarole all over again at your changeover point.

It'd be no surprise to me at all to find that both business travelers and
tourists are actively using alternatives and that _this_ is why the
airlines are in trouble.

Of course,  they were pretty tightly "regulated" until not that
many years ago,  and then they were "deregulated" (which probably
means only partially so) and found out that they couldn't compete. 
Probably the same sort of nonsense that the power companies are dealing
with.

Them,  and "the phone company",  whoever that might be in your
area,  tend to have particularly rigid mindsets,  and to be unable to
function in a free market.  Instead,  they go to bed with government at
different levels,  and "accept regulation" to some extent so that
they can acquire and keep a monopoly position.

Insurance companies also do this to some extent -- what other business has
the state (in most cases) telling you that you _have to_ buy some product
or service?  At least in that case,  you have a choice of who you're
dealing with,  though with the noise that's been going on over the past
year or so regarding the "medical malpractice `crisis'" the
choices are apparently not that good in all cases.

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