Droppie [infosec] 🐨:archlinux: :kde: :firefox_nightly: :thunderbird: :vegan:<p><a href="https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8915650/opinion-why-aussie-travellers-steer-clear-of-the-us" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">canberratimes.com.au/story/891</span><span class="invisible">5650/opinion-why-aussie-travellers-steer-clear-of-the-us</span></a></p><p><u><strong>Quote</strong></u></p><p>There are reasons I'm betting Australians won't travel to the US nearly as much as we used to. It has very little to do with its president and much more to do with staying alive.</p><p>After decades of not travelling myself (we had babies, we were broke and our builders had become family members), the very first place we visited in 2010 was the US. Yes! Off to the US!</p><p>It was so thrilling I spent three weeks laughing and eating, somehow losing a beautiful dress which I was wearing at the time. Don't ask me how because I do not know.</p><p>I was sharing these memories with some much younger mothers about the excitement of your first trip after the kids leave home. Where'd you go? asked one.</p><p>First stop San Francisco to hear famed artist Judy Chicago talk. Second stop, New York to eat, drink and be very merry. Third stop Washington. All the museums and monuments. The now sadly departed Newseum. The Kennedy Centre.</p><p>The younger mum said the US was right off her list now. Was it Trump? I asked. Did she have a prior conviction for marijuana use? Yes, I have no boundaries and no, she had no prior convictions.</p><p>Not exactly. She was worried about flight safety. So I rang various travel agents. Have you had any prospective travellers say they wanted to avoid the US?</p><p>Every single one, from major to minor, said they had no idea what I was talking about. But I knew exactly. Now there's proof that travellers are freaked out. At this stage, it's just the poor folks who are residents in the US - but I doubt it will be very long before international travellers decide they want to travel somewhere it's safe to land at an airport.</p><p>Speaking on Tuesday in the US, each of the major US airlines put out guidance pointing to "significant economic uncertainty that is directly affecting their domestic bookings this year", according to the US ABC News.</p><p>"We just went through a little bit of a parade of horribles," Ed Bastian, the chief executive of Delta Air Lines, said at the JP Morgan Industrials conference on Tuesday morning.</p><p>Here were some of the reasons cited. The fatal collision on January 29 between an American Airlines aircraft and a US Army Black Hawk helicopter over Washington DC. The subsequent crash in Toronto on February 17. The Trump effect on the economy (who knows what the petulant president will do next).</p><p>Turns out the chaos has also impacted government and business - there is far less travel. Consumer confidence is in chaos.</p><p>To make matters worse, Elon Musk is trying to slice and dice the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in exactly the same blundering way he and his DOGE misfits have tried to do to every other government department.</p><p>You'll remember that crash. Yes, 67 people died, the deadliest US plane crash in more than two decades, and Trump immediately blamed it on diversity, equity and inclusion because he is pointlessly cruel and ill-informed.</p><p>Yesterday, the US National Transportation and Safety Bureau held a press conference which gave much more information. Most of it was incomprehensible to a non-aviation pointy-head - but one reporter asked if the data that the helicopter was using may not have been the same as that seen by the air traffic controllers. Was it bad data?</p><p>"We are looking at the possibility ... there may be bad data. We're looking at, were they seeing something different in the cockpit?"</p><p>As The Atlantic wrote earlier this month, those deaths alone would have been a crisis for the Federal Aviation Administration. But Trump decided to politicise it.</p><p>"That same day, FAA employees including air-traffic controllers, safety inspectors, and mechanical engineers received an email advising them to leave their job under a buyout program announced just two days before. 'The way to greater American prosperity is encouraging people to move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector,' urged the email, sent to all federal workers."</p><p>Right. So the air safety body sacks people when it's already short-staffed. Can it still do what it is meant to do? That seems like it could be terrifying and I already hate flying.</p><p>So I asked Keith Tonkin, aviation expert and managing director of Aviation Projects, which works on aviation safeguarding if he was at all concerned about airline safety in the US.</p><p>He says that - so far - there have been no changes to systems and procedures.</p><p>"But I think concerns are valid because there is some uncertainty about staffing. It seems as if the FAA is already suffering from staff cutbacks.</p><p>"If the regulator is not there to provide some surveillance, there is a concern that the airlines might not be held to account for their obligations," says Tonkin.</p><p>"The regulator is a very important part of the process. If the staffing is not there, then that's a valid concern."</p><p>But he did also point out to me that there was one another reason for the airlines to be downgrading their forecasts. There's a significant drop in the number of Canadians travelling to the US, by air and also by car, about twice as many as the US travel industry industry predicted for this year. Forbes magazine estimates it could cost US $4 billion in 2025.</p><p>Take Gary J Kings. He's a British games developer currently staying in Canada with his Canadian partner, Tanya Kan. They had both planned to travel to the US for the Games Developer Conference but together decided against it. "It wasn't an easy decision to make," Kings posted on BlueSky.</p><p>Don't you love the Canadians? Both a current prime minister and a soon-to-be prime minister telling the US where to get off. Entire bottle shops sweeping any US product off the shelves. And a travel boycott.</p><p>Let's hope we can all stay safe and stand up.</p><ul><li>Jenna Price is a regular columnist.</li></ul><p><u><strong>Unquote</strong></u></p><p><a href="https://infosec.space/tags/USPol" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>USPol</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/TuckFrump" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>TuckFrump</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/FuckRWNJs" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>FuckRWNJs</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/magamorons" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>magamorons</span></a></p>