The airlines blame the FAA, the FAA blames the airlines. Both organizations have completely screwed up air travel in this country, though. The current state of air travel is proof that deregulation is not always a good thing.

Let’s start with the FAA. Underfunded, run by political hacks, paying new controllers dirt and making life miserable for current controllers, and currently facing a huge manpower deficit as boatloads of controllers head into retirement. I predict it will take a mid-air collision of two packed airliners before the government finally wakes up and does something. Business as usual, I guess.

Now for the airlines. The skies are packed to capacity, but none of the airlines will give up routes or flights. There are four (count ‘em, four) flights from little old Champaign to Chicago O’Hare every morning at 6:10, 7:10, 8:10, and 9:10. Is this really necessary? What’s wrong with using a bigger plane and having two flights? Right there you’ve reduced the traffic from one airport by 50%. Multiply that that times the number of other small airports with multiple flights to O’Hare and maybe you wouldn’t have planes full of passengers sitting on the tarmac for an hour or more waiting for gates and watching their connecting flights leave.

And how about those CEO’s who get paid multi-million dollar bonuses every year? What’s up with that? What have they done to deserve it? Air travel gets worse and worse and the bozos at the top get paid more and more. Go figure. How about paying your mechanics and pilots and flight attendants and gate/ticket agents and baggage handlers more? Maybe then flights wouldn’t be delayed so often for maintenance issues and your flight crews and ground personnel would be a bit more accomodating.

On our recent trip to Florida had four flights, two down and two back. Three of the four were in tiny “regional” aircraft. Chicago O’Hare to Jacksonville is not “regional.” It’s halfway across the country. Stop using tiny aircraft for long distance service. Reduce the number of flights and use bigger aircraft. You’ll reduce maintenance, reduce gate usage, use fewer pilots, take up less airspace, and make a whole lot of passengers happier. Where’s the downside?

This is the first in a series about systems in this country (or the world) which just don’t work. And instead of fixing the system, the government just throws band-aids at it (or worse, exploits it to fill the public coffers). First up - Driving.

Drive anywhere in this country and it quickly becomes apparent how many really poor drivers are out there on the roads. The problem is not cell phone use or speeding or distractions or poor manners. Those are all symptoms. The problem is education. We don’t teach people how to drive. We teach them (maybe) to control a vehicle at slow speeds, and then we give them a license and turn them loose on the roads. And then, to make things worse, we don’t really hold people accountable for their poor driving. We just fine them, raise their insurance rates, and turn them loose again. This is one of those situations where the state would rather maintain the status quo rather than rectify the problem and risk losing their cash cow. One needs only to travel to Germany to see how a government can require people to demonstrate an ability to drive safely and responsibly and then require that they continue to do so or risk serious repercussions, including a loss of their license and/or a humongous increase in insurance rates. That is why the Germans can safely drive on roads with no speed limits. (It also is because they know how to build and maintain roads, but that is another issue for another time.)

The Germans must also maintain their vehicles to a very high standard. People in the US who complain about inspections and emissions testing have no idea how easy they have it. Try getting your car through TÜV, the German inspection system. In some places in the country, including central Illinois, there is no inspection at all. You can drive around any old piece of junk even if it doesn’t have an exhaust system or decent brakes. But in typical back-ass-ward Illinois, it’s required that all children under the age of 8 must be in a car seat or booster seat. It matters not that your car has poor brakes and bald tires and is belching carbon monoxide into the passenger area while Mom is smoking up a storm and yacking on the cell phone while driving. As long as junior is strapped into his car seat on the way to soccer practice, he can inhale all the second hand smoke and exhaust fumes he can handle. Not that anyone actually obeys this law once a kid hits 5 or 6. After all, how do you prove your kid is under the age of 8? Just another idiotic band-aid law that fails to address the real safety issues.