Mark My Words - commentary on news, politics, religion, philosophy, science and social issues

Many have complained about Washington not spending enough money on the domestic side of the war on terror in this place or that. Certainly, there must be give and take and pragmatic decisions made when there is not an infinite supply of money to go around. Knee jerk criticism should take such into consideration. One wonders though, if much criticism will even be allowed by the usual suspects, when such decisions are being made, not by the Bush administration, or by any American company, as the following story relates.

German Sky Marshals Feeling Grounded (excerpts and thanks to Captain's Quarters)

The men say Lufthansa keeps cancelling first- or business-class tickets that would put them close to the cockpit -- and sometimes bumps them off flights entirely. "They don't want to give out expensive seats anymore," complains one of the officers.

[...]

Tickets for intercontinental flights are cancelled most often, and getting first-class tickets is always a problem, says the officer. With such expensive tickets Lufthansa waits until the last minute in the hope of being able to sell them. The airline even cancelled sky marshals' ticket allocations on flights to endangered regions like the Middle East, "and that was shortly after the plans to attack several passenger jets were thwarted in England," said the officer.

[...]

Lufthansa spokesman Klaus Walther denied the accusations.

And yet Der Spiegel has several sources as well as an airline pilot confirming the matter.

One more senior official who declined to be named referred to "major problems," and said people were "pretty angry" that Lufthansa was relegating more and more sky marshals to budget seats. A Lufthansa pilot who declined to be named said, "Our company has to look at its bottom line." After all, a round-trip ticket from Frankfurt to New York in first class can cost €6,576 ($8,597).

[...]

Another well-known airline -- whose name can't be revealed for obvious security reasons -- doesn't even allow sky marshals on board. "We don't see the point," that airline says.

"Tickets for intercontinental flights are cancelled most often," despite common sense saying such flights would be of interest to terrorists. Clearly not the best marketing plan for Lufthansa or any other airline. One wonders, will Senator Kerry or some other constant critic of the Bush administration and American companies take the time to criticize a German company taking such risks?

What good is your bottom line if it unreasonably raises the risks to your other paying customers? I guess that's what insurance and expensive lawyers are for. While we have to tolerate tradeoffs is this really a good one to make? Considering just the economic impact of a major terrorist strike, much more thought than what appears to have been made on this particular matter, is very much in order.

But hey, it's not the Bush administration or even a Republican government official, so a few words of concern will not doubt be the extant of the comments from the normally outspoken critics the MSM usually rushes to get on camera. Regardless of how little they may speak up about this, and I hope that I'm wrong, there is nothing stopping the rest of us from simply refusing to fly on Lufthansa. For those of you who have the ability to travel internationally, you might also want to voice your concerns here.

Hopefully, public exposure, criticism, and threats to their bottom line from currently paying passengers will be enough to change their behavior. Perhaps, if they take the time to think of the various inquiries that would be launched after another attack, they might actually think twice about what they're doing. It's a rather depressing thought that concerns about money and proactive CYA may have a more significant effect than the thought of people dying from another attack.

It seems that it should be obvious that taking the loss of ticket sales to air marshalls or putting some effort into finding a way to recover the lost sales is preferable to the possible alternatives. Such is the world we live in, that the catastrophic loss of life that would result from another terrorist attack, or the shame of being the airline that sold a ticket to one of the murderous pigs, rather than give up that seat to an air marshall, needs to even be mentioned.

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Filed under: News -- Terrorism

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