If any of you have the mess in the Middle East figured out, please explain it to me. I only understand that it is as serious as a heart attack, and that the world will never be the same again. It reminds me a lot of Iran in 1979. Will another unpopular guvmint (which we supported to the tune of billions of dollars) bite the dust leaving survivors who hate us? Yogi Berra might call it déjà vu all over again. Makes one wonder if perhaps we should quit trying to manipulate other countries. We’re not even doing so hot with our own.
One thing for which I am grateful—the tumult and the shouting didn’t arise at an airport or aboard an airplane. Yet does anyone doubt that airport/airplane security will get even more invasive in our country? If so, as the old saying goes, just you sit back and wait.
Less than two weeks ago I interviewed by phone a senior VP of a Middle East airline (see my next column in Airport Business magazine). Neither he nor I had any idea that such changes would occur at all, much less so quickly. Today’s news reports talk of hordes trying to fly out of Egypt. In the meantime, our guvmint warns us not to travel to Egypt. How will airline schedules hold up? Will our airline service be disrupted? How will our airports be affected by canceled flights in or out of the Middle East? How will our international airports, airlines and worldwide air-freight carriers be impacted?
To what extent are our citizens and businesses involved in that area, and how will they be affected by the disruptions? It remains to be seen.
Aviation, more than most industries, depends upon global stability. Methinks we are about to learn how true that really is. In 1624 John Donne wrote, “No man is an island.†Today he might write the same words about a country or a continent.
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