And more about air travel.
When it comes to luggage, most airports work on the honor system. You lift your suitcases from the carousel and walk out with them. Not at the Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. There is only one exit from the baggage claim area, and before leaving it, a security guard matches your claim check or identification card with the tag on the suitcase.
He does not want to hear anything about you being in a hurry. You wait on line like everybody else, and if you do not like it and give him some lip, another security guard is called over to explain why you have to wait like everyone else. Just to make sure that you understand him, he enunciates every syllable very slowly — and the more you gripe, the more time it will take for you to get out of the terminal.
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Carol has a good laugh every time we board an airplane. If there is one screaming child on our flight, she will bet me before we board that the kid will be either next to me shattering my ear drums or behind me kicking my seat. I love young people — but not when they’re sitting near me aboard a 727 heading west.
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When the cost of airline fuel was rising, our favorite airlines raised the price of tickets and almost everything aboard the plane except soft drinks (those are still free). Now that the cost of fuel has dropped significantly, those ticket prices are still way up there. Not very nice.
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Cable News Network tells us that the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is, for the seventeenth consecutive year, the busiest airport in the world. Yes, I said in the world — not in the United States!
The numbers for 2015 are not in yet, but in 2014 more than 96 million passengers flew in or out of this facility. Who can guess which airport is the second busiest?
The runner-up to Atlanta is the Beijing Capital International Airport with 86 million travelers passing through. People are flying more than ever. Last year, a total of 6.7 Billion — that’s billion with a capital “B” — passengers passed through airports worldwide. And I remember telling Wilbur and Orville, “Stick to bicycles — you’ll never get those big silver birds off the ground.”
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I do a lot of flying, and I love getting to my destinations in as short a time as possible. Sometimes it takes under three hours to travel a distance that would have had me behind the wheel for more than 20 hours. That translates to two whole extra vacation days — one at each end of the trip.
It’s hard to believe, but I still know people who have never flown. They have a fear of flying that they will not even try to cure. I will not attempt to help them by showing them the different websites that offer safety statistics. I am StanG
