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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Topic: Impact of 9/11 on flights
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Charles Everett
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1470
From: New Jersey
Registered: May 2001
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posted 09-13-2003 11:40 AM
From today's Toronto Star:
quote:
One of Canada's most moderate and respected Muslim clerics was pulled off a plane Thursday and thrown in jail by U.S. immigration officials in Fort Lauderdale without any charges being laid.
Ahamad Kutty, who has preached tolerance and peace throughout North America for more than two decades, was ordered off his Orlando-bound flight from Toronto and interrogated in an airport holding cell and a local jail for 16 hours as the U.S. marked the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
He has been declared a risk to national security.
Kutty, an imam and scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto and at the city's west-end Jami Mosque, was detained with fellow Toronto cleric Abdool Hamid. The pair had travelled to Florida to attend seminars and give a series of lectures and sermons on, among other things, the dangers of fanaticism in the Islamic world.
"We have gone through a traumatic experience. Really it dehumanized us," said Kutty, who arrived at Pearson International Airport last night at 8:30 p.m. Kutty said he was pulled off the plane at 9:30 a.m. Thursday and was grilled by at least 10 officials until about 1:30 a.m. yesterday.
"They handcuffed us and took us to jail."
Kutty said immigration officials told him his Islamic Institute of Toronto organization sounded familiar in name to the Islamic Institution of America, which he assumed was some sort of suspect group.
Authorities, Kutty said, were especially interested in a business card that he carried in his wallet bearing the name Islamic Society of North America. He said immigration officials made him sign a waiver giving up his application to enter the United States.
Kutty also said he would not return to the United States and would caution others in the Canadian Muslim community against doing so.
Hamid, who arrived with Kutty at Pearson last night, said one of the two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents who had joined in the pair's interrogation had been apologetic about their detention, saying "You picked a bad day to fly," referring to the 9/11 anniversary.
Kutty, 57, and Hamid, 38, were released yesterday afternoon.
The impact of 9/11 on aviation? An excuse for the US to target people based on race, religion, and political views. No wonder the airlines are begging for government bailouts!
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Paul Mayer
Oh get out of it Melvin, before it pulls you under!
Posts: 3836
From: Albuquerque, NM
Registered: Feb 2000
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posted 09-13-2003 05:13 PM
SWA and Jet Blue seem to be the only two major- or national-level air carriers that consistently know what they are doing. Long ago SWA figured out an algorithm that accurately predicts city-pairs that make money for them, and they've been very disciplined about their growth plans. Jet Blue hasn't been around nearly as long, but they essentially copied SWA's business model and as long as they exercise similar restraint in their expansion decisions, they should have similar continuing success.
As for the other global and major carriers--screw 'em. I too wouldn't give them a plug nickel. They've basically painted themselves into a very bad corner and have no one to blame for that but themselves. Here we are 25 years into the deregulated era but you wouldn't know it looking at the mindset that exists in the corporate suites at these older carriers. I am amazed that such levels of executive incompetency still exist in the industry after all this time. Such incompetency was a given back in the days of the CAB--airline executives were considered the dunces of the business world, and the frilly glamorous airlines were considered to be the place to go if an executive couldn't hack it in a real industry. Heck, none of them were smart enough to hire me to fly for them when they had the chance. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif) On that point alone I say screw 'em. ![[evil]](graemlins/evil.gif)
Of course these airline execs blame everyone but themselves for their companies' failures. They especially blame their employees, most especially their unionized ones. But that argument doesn't hold up too well when you look at SWA which has union contracts too (for example at $144,624 per year, SWA's 10-year 737 captains come out slightly better than the industry average of $143,652 for all types). Yet SWA has been profitable for 29 years in a row. Still, these execs like to blame the unions for their woes, but they forget that it takes two to sign a labor contract. Some pretty stupid contract language got approved on both sides over the years--guess who signed for that.
Post 9/11 the industry has contracted quite a bit. Business flyers (the last-minute full-fare profit makers), seeing the TSA screening hassles and the long pre-departure showup times, are now travelling by air only when it is really necessary to do so. I've seen that myself--I can drive door-to-door from LV to LA (about 280 miles) faster than an airline+local rental car could get me there. On the east and west coasts the trains are running full and out here Greyhound can't put enough buses on the road. Of the flights that are still running, from what I've seen they're pretty full too (load factors of 80%+). The way they did it before was incredibly wasteful--flying half-empty planes every hour on too-short segments. Now, for any stage length less than 300 miles people are realizing there are other options.
Eventually the airline industry will stabilize, but it will be different from the booming everyone-can-afford-to-fly pre-9/11 days. I predict airline flying will become more like it was before deregulation--less (but still adequate) frequency, longer route segments (few less than 300 miles), higher fares, fewer but more affluent passengers, better cabin service, maybe even more civility at the airports and on the planes. ![[Wink]](wink.gif) I think the days of flying as mass transportation are over. Those airlines that can't shrink to adapt to this new 1970's-like transportation world will die, unfortunately taking 1000's of airline jobs with them. Sad in a way, but in the long run a good thing. We've got better things to be spending our expensive foreign-supplied fuel on.
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