=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SFGate. The original article can be found on SFGate.com here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/c/a/2007/07/23/EDG6QQ4RMB= 1.DTL --------------------------------------------------------------------- Monday, July 23, 2007 (SF Chronicle) Unfriendly skies cloud our American horizons Richard Rapaport Summer 2007 is turning out to be an epically unpleasant air-travel season for U.S. airlines and for millions of weary passengers forced to take their chances in the unfriendly skies. Since 9/11, flying has increasingly become an act of desperation, an ordeal to be endured with the stoic acceptance of Depression-era dustbowl refugees driving to California in their overburdened Model T's. In the 1930s ballad "How Can You Keep on Moving (Unless You Migrate Too)," the song-writer/refugee makes an existential recognition: "Can't stay, can't go back and can't migrate, so where in the hell am I?" Similar thoughts of being marooned in travel hell percolated through the minds of the thousands of us forced in early June to sit on runways for hours when United Airlines grounded its fleet due to "a computer glitch." For me, the dread grew more intense the following week when my return flight from Chicago was canceled after our United Boeing 777 clipped the tail of a smaller jet on the taxiway. The passengers were still gawking when the captain weirdly announced: "I made a boo-boo, and this plane is going out of service." The wounded machine limped to a gate and disgorged its passengers, who were left to mill aimlessly until the lone agent announced that United was indeed formulating plans to accommodate a now-plane-less plane-full of passengers ... if they didn't mind waiting a day or so. The saddest part was that pilots, passengers and ground personnel seemed to take the whole incident, and so much else of today's airplane travel misery, for granted. Passengers meekly got in line to wait for whatever the airline had to offer. With increasing regularity, it seems, American fliers find themselves pa= rt of airport incidents that put them in the same "where the hell am I" mind set of the dust-bowl troubadour. The connection between the travelers of the '30s and of the '00s is not so far-fetched: During the '70s and '80s, millions of middle-class Americans began to rely on air travel in much the way their Depression-era grandparents took to their autos to take them wherever they needed to go. Missed so far in the ongoing hand wringing over our air travel system is recognition that commercial aviation today is as basic an economic and social cog in modern America as was the car for previous generations. Jet travel is now a bottom-line necessity, one that helped establish a w= ay of life. Until recently, Americans were confident enough in the state of commercial aviation to be willing to base fundamental life assumptions on it. These included uprooting oneself to live and work thousands of miles away from family. The unwritten compact was that an affordable ticket bought us the peace of mind of knowing that we were a day's flight from home. In a similar way, American business in the last third of the 20th century was built around commercial jet schedules that enabled our best and brightest to move easily between home and work. America became the "can-do" nation, able to fly out its pros to solve the world's industrial, political and economic problems. How times have changed. Americans need to recognize that the air travel we once celebrated as a touchstone of national prosperity and pride is no longer in its golden age and perhaps America no longer is, either. Perhaps, in the name of environmentalism, sustainability or just plain lethargy, Americans ought to accept the need to limit the personal and national horizons widened so dramatically in the jet-age. Doing so, however, may well signal a national decline that seems, well, un-American. Richard Rapaport is a freelance writer living in Mill Valley. He can be reached at rjrap@xxxxxxx --------------------------------------------------= -------------------- Copyright 2007 SF Chronicle <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> If you wish to unsubscribe from the AIRLINE List, please send an E-mail to: "listserv@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx". Within the body of the text, only write the following:"SIGNOFF AIRLINE".