...my circle is about 700 miles now. Unless I'm going to Colorado or California, it's windshield time. TSA security sucks, the airlines suck, and whole experience is just miserable. We're planning drives this year to Boston and Nebraska to see family.

And if they can't make a profit with 99% full flights, there's something seriously wrong with their business model.

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Fighting for Reform and Representation, Fourth District
Steve Drevik, Commission Seat 4-B
(link...)

I just got back from a trip to New York to see my sister. Even though I was only going for six days, I drove. Plane tickets from Knoxville are through the roof ($365 right now), and I swear it's not any more tiring to drive 12 hours than to deal with the hassles of even a direct flight. (It helps that the New York drive is just gorgeous, up thru the Shenandoah Valley and thru miles and miles of rural Pennsylvania.) I saved a lot of money, too.

if it's within a 500 mile radius it's usually cheaper and faster to drive...

...my circle is about 700 miles now. Unless I'm going to Colorado or California, it's windshield time. TSA security sucks, the airlines suck, and whole experience is just miserable.

Right after 9/11 I thought of the prospect of increased delays and security nightmares and that alone was reason enough that one of the president's major responses to the attacks should have been to greatly focus on new and innovative regional rail infrastructure. Air travel has become sort of the nuclear power in our mode of travel palette. Overgrown, vulnerable, and expensive.

Imagine a regional rail paradigm shifter similar to the interstate highway system or air deregulation. We'll never know if President Gore would have taken such a bold move, but it would probably cost but a tiny fraction of the endless $250 million per day that we are spending from invading the wrong country. (Let alone all the lives and injuries.)

United missed my Chicago connection 2wks ago and only offered a 50% discount on lodging at 11pm! It was the pits.

I'm 53 years old and in my entire life I've flown commercially exactly once, in 1979, Indianapolis to New Orleans via Memphis. It was on a ratty old Delta DC9 that appeared to be held together with bubblegum and duct tape.

We had thunderstorms with lots of turbulence (and wing flexing) just before the brief Memphis stop. At New Orleans, final approach took us lower and lower over nothing but water and tree stumps, and just when it looked like the tree stumps would snag our landing gear -- WHAM ! -- we crossed the airport boundary fence and our tires kissed runway.

In all honesty, I can't really say that I fear flying...I just don't like it.