Many are predicting airline delays this summer as travel heats up and airports are crowded.
The News Observer observes that increasing use of discount airlines for business travel and leisure travel is putting an added strain on existing airport facilities. I think this is a taste of how air travel will change in the future - basically we'll continue to have relatively cheap cross country and international flights but we'll see sacrifices in service, quality, on-time flights, and perhaps even safety.
In my opinion flying is actually *way too safe* right now because we spend *way too much* on airline safety and ineffective TSA measures while foregoing cheap life saving tools like more clever enforcements of smoke detector and seatbelt rules, drunk driving rules, etc. Each year only a few thousand people die from air crashes *world wide* while over 35,000 are usually killed on US Highways alone. US Air crashes are extremely rare despite the huge traffic from US air travel.
It's ironic but true that lower safety standards ... will save more lives.
