Now why could that be?

[debgeisler]

The BBC reports that last year was the worst year in history for for the airline business worldwide.

The year 2009 saw the biggest decline in air passenger traffic in the post-war era, according to the International Air Transport Association (Iata).

"In terms of demand, 2009 goes into the history books as the worst year the industry has ever seen," said the group's boss Giovanni Bisignani.

Passenger traffic dropped by 3.5% from a year earlier, while freight traffic fell 10.1% as the downturn hit demand.

Let's see...stupid (and frequently useless) "security measures" are imposed on those who fly...then, once they are finished with the indignities that are TSA, they are tucked into a tin can with their knees around their ears and provided with less and less for their airline $$.

Oh, yeah...the story also notes that there was an uptick in air travel in December. But I'm sure the idiot Nigerian terrorist who set himself on fire will ensure that we get body cavity searches soon, so that uptick will go away.

Comments

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I expect that there will be renewed calls from the airline industry for subsidies, although of course they won't call them that, because it will be "a valuable investment in our national strategic transportation infrastructure" as opposed to payments for rail transport, which are "wasteful subsidies squandering the taxpayers' dollars."

Sometimes I think the people who say such things really do believe what they're saying, too; they're too blind to their own biases to realize that "it's only a 'wasteful subsidy' if you personally don't like it."

[debgeisler.livejournal.com]

... "it's only a 'wasteful subsidy' if you personally don't like it."

Ayup. There are a whole lot of people now screaming about federal spending to prop up banks and the auto industry...and many of them, 13 months ago, were screaming that we had to spend more money to prop up banks and the auto industry.

I find that "you're either on my side or you're an idiot" mentality that infuses our modern discourse to be divisive, hateful, and damned stupid.