Flights Cancelled as American and Delta do safety checks

Delta has cancelled several flights to inspect them in line with the FAA rules that may not have been followed as closely as required:
Delta Grounds 133 Aircraft for Inspections Brian Finnegan at JetBlog! reports:
The airline is not sure how long the inspections will take but Delta cancelled about 56 flights out of Hartsfield Airport Wednesday evening. No flights to Tampa were affected but flights to Tallahassee, Sarasota, and Pensacola were ...JetBlog! Interactive - http://pamablog.typepad.com/pama/

American cancelled some 200 flights over the past few days for similar reasons. This from the Huffington Post:

American Cancels About 200 Flights
26 Mar 2008 by The Huffington Post News Editors FORT WORTH, Texas — American Airlines canceled about 200 flights on Wednesday so its crews can inspect some wire bundles aboard its MD-80 aircraft.

There appears to be no reason for alarm on the part of travelers. These are fairly routine type inspections to make up for what may have been compromised inspection processes in the past. Air Travel is, in my opinion, actually far *too* safe. Risks more in line with what we experience with car travel would bring down the cost of flying dramatically, especially in the areas of security where the TSA's massive, bloated budget and inefficient procedures threaten to cripple the American and perhaps even global Airline and Airport industry.

Cell phone as boarding pass in Houston Airport

Barbara La Dollis writes about an experiment using cell phones as boarding passes at George Bush Airport in Houston, Texas USA. I think only Continental Airlines is using this right now, but I bet this will catch on fast.

This is a good idea because a cell phone is a very secure, info rich, "intelligent" environment. Most of us guard our phones carefully and report them when missing. The phone could easily contain an extensive amount of additional important information to expedite security and boarding, and ideally the airline could even more easily keep us informed of changes or issues.

Why not extend this to security? I'm sure my phone number and ID are already tagged in some TSA database, so why not pre-screen those who choose to participate as follows?

* Phone company is given permission to give TSA my data.
* I upload a set of photos for the master database. This data is also on the phone.
* At flight check in, internet or bluetooth or even a physical inspection of the phone is matched to the master database, pinpointing me as the travel guy who has been profiled already as "safe".
* Only those who opt in are profiled, and anyone can opt out of the system once in, and items like credit card data are strictly off limits.

Summer Delays Expected

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.