Next week I will be traveling by air during the notorious Thanksgiving holiday. Instead of dreading it, I will be savoring every line I wait in, every rude traveler, and every indignity of the security screening process. Perhaps I will get lucky and warrant the full body search it seems every 10th passenger is subjected to.

We have very few holiday-crowed airports left in our oil constrained future to contend with. Delta is going to merge with SOMEONE (looks like United at the moment), and this is only the first of many mergers that will dramatically shrink the number of planes (and passenger seats) in the air. Certainly there will be a great deal of air travel in the future, but as jet fuel (Jet A-1 is very close to kerosene) is a product of crude oil (not natural gas plant liquids, ethanol, etc…) and as crude is in obvious decline, their will be a certain and significant decline in the availability of jet fuel… less fuel means fewer planes and passengers in the air. And that means over capacity in our air travel system.

I wonder if this will improve their on-time arrival performance?

Perhaps.

I will freely admit that I have been a shameless capitalist my entire life, and hope to continue for quite some time. However, as an alumni of "the wrong side of the tracks", I think it silly to ignore the political ramifications… For instance, I wouldn’t invest in a personal jet (not that I can afford one) at the moment. It seems politically incorrect (impossible) that our wealthiest citizens would be permitted to consume thousands of gallons of precious fuel on a cross-country private jet flight when working (and non-working, but voting) poor are unable to compete economically for that same fuel to heat their homes. Any student of history will recall that that kind of class privilege while others are being harshly challenged did not work out so good for the folks running things just prior to the French Revolution (I can just see Paris Hilton paraphrasing Marie Antoinette, “let them burn wood”).

A blessed and joyous Thanksgiving to all!

Mentatt (at) yahoo (dot) com