Can they make the US less inviting?

[purplecthulhu]

Now they want to scan the full fingerprints of all UK and European visitors to the US so they can put us all into the FBI files.

Comments

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

There's action that can go on behind the scenes. Just expressing concerns to management about the impact of this on the airline in all ways - members and passengers. A resolution opposing this idiocy and breaking the cosy conspiracy that surrounds airport security theatre would do even more good.

The UK flying unions know more about airline security than any politician or journalist. If they all said at once that the security emperor has no clothes that could be a major step forward. And no strikes would be needed. There'd even be some airlines who'd support this (Ryanair for one).

[feorag.livejournal.com]

Truth is, the security theatre has probably done more to benefit the environment than any number of hypocritical greens bleating. Anything that can have me saying to autopope How ridiculously expensive would it be to get the sleeper train to London for Picocon? must be having some effect.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

Has there been a measurable change to the number of people flying as a result of all the security theatre, to the US or elsewhere? I've not seen any reports of this.

If you book a sleeper far enough out they can be quite cheap - I did this for Worldcon and it was really rather nice!

[feorag.livejournal.com]

It's definitely affecting the number of people travelling to the US. I saw an article a couple of weeks ago that gave the figures (which I can't find again, pooh). The business travel sector has been particularly badly hit, with losses to US businesses estimated in the tens of billions per annum as a result.

Personally, I'm down from nearly 40 sectors a year to around 10, even though I'm better off than I was. I'm not bothering with the US at all, my trips to London are down to about one a year and trips to the Midlands are done in the Swedish Tank. Number of trips in Tank will increase when I have a full driving license - not exactly good for the environment.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested to hear more of those figures. I've not heard them anywhere and its the kind of thing that needs to be said about all the security theatre, not just in the US.

Add up the cost of all the new security measures, and this economic cost, and its doing more (financial) damage than 11/9/01 itself, which is exactly what the terrorists want.

[feorag.livejournal.com]

I've been looking for the article. It was only a couple of weeks ago, and in one of the news sources I read via RSS, but I can't come up with a decent search term for either the BBC or the Grauniad that will reveal it. It wasn't in the aviation-specific news feeds. Am now trying Google News - it's all very frustrating.

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

Any figures will be masked by the weak dollar encouraging tourist travel.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

In terms of raw passenger numbers yes, but not if you can measure the knock on economic effect on business in general.Of course I don't know if you can measure that (which is why tracking down feorag's original reference would be useful).