The beautiful weather has finally arrived and hopefully will stay with us for a few days.  With all this sunshine and the Pope in town, I can only wonder if Gordon Brown will bring sunshine as well or will we see some typical London rain?  As the Pope leaves DC this morning to head for NY, it raises the question, will his flight be delayed?  I’m thinking no, arriving to a reception of great fanfare, high-school bands, honor guard, color guard, the Pope knows how to fly!  Does he have to pay extra for a second bag?

In other discerning airline news we recently found out that flight times have increased.  Taken in context, I guess we should just be lucky the flights aren’t cancelled?  In a recent article published in USA Today (very obvious I am staying in a hotel, just a little note;  Dear Hilton Garden Inn owners, I am in NYC, why can’t you spring for a copy of the NY Times?) it has been reported that back in 1988 flight times were significantly shorter.  Today, airlines are padding extra time into their flights to cover their assets.  One would think that 20 years ago technology may have ben a little lacking and since then the check-in, flight and de-planing process might have been slightly expedited, not so much.  What used to take only 1 hour, now takes 1 hour and 18 minutes fora flight from DC to LaGuardia, the trip form San Jose to Kennedy went from 5 hours and 25 minutes to an excruciating 8 hours and 17 minutes.  What makes me scratch my head is that there is no uniformity in the increase, I am sure someone could develop an algorithm that would nail this, until then I wonder who came up with the increase and why?  The logical answer would be that this is how long it usually takes, however this is air travel, so the obvious answer is obviously wrong.  Are we as consumers really that powerless when it comes to air travel or is it simply ignorance on our part?

Here is a snapshot of the increase in flight times courtesy of USA Today;