Holy Crap! Not Again With The Stranded Passengers

Last Friday, less than two weeks after the debacle with a commuter jet held on the ground overnight with 47 passengers on board in Minnesota, something quite similar happened at JFK.

Not many people noticed (except the Minneapolis Star Tribune and Arthur Frommer) that 154 passengers were trapped on a Sun Country jet for about six hours at JFK. As the Star Tribune reported:

Once they got off, the passengers complained not only about the delay, but also that they had had to buy their food and water from the airline, and that, even so, provisions quickly ran out.

In response, Sun Country announced a new policy under which it says it will let passengers off a plane after four hours and will stop charging for food after three hours.

Not even close to good enough. We need a law.

Anger, Boycott Talk Persist After Bomber’s Release

The controversy over Scotland’s decision to release the Lockerbie bomber is not dying down, The New York Times reports. Calls for a boycott of Scottish tourism and goods continue.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen boycotts like this one succeed in the short run, as it’s very difficult to measure their impact. But I do believe this incident will harm Scotland’s and Britain’s image — and therefore tourism as well — in the long run.

Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, released to Libya on the grounds that he is terminally ill, served only eight years for the deaths of 270 people, including 189 U.S. citizens, in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The families of the victims are outraged, and the motives for his release are being questioned vigorously, in Britain and the United States.

What an ordinary traveler from the United States might well wonder is this: if I am harmed or killed in Britain, how seriously will that crime be addressed? And if such crimes aren’t severely punished, how much more likely is it that those who want to harm U.S. citizens will do it again?

These a reasonable questions.

Arthur Frommer Stirs Things Up

I just looked at Arthur Frommer’s blog entry from last week about the possibility of a boycott against tourism to Arizona because protesters carried guns to an appearance by President Obama in Phoenix. The entry had 1,123 comments at last count.

After two and a half years, my blog has 1,169 comments. Total.