Fingerprinting Americans who travel to the EU

The European Union's top justice official proposed Friday to replicate U.S. border security measures in Europe with plans to fingerprint and electronically record the entry and exit of all visitors to the 27-nation bloc.

Oceana, indeed... its all coming together.

WaPo:
" What for? Does this actually make the world a safer place?"
The Bush administration says it does.

"Not only do we support these measures, we applaud them," said Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security. "Measures like fingerprint and passenger-data collection can disrupt the ability of terrorists to move easily across international borders. They also serve to protect American citizens traveling overseas."

DHS already has a database of 85 million sets of fingerprints collected, for instance, from U.S. and foreign travelers stopped at the border for criminal violations, or for U.S. citizens adopting a child overseas. The FBI is building a huge biometric database for criminal justice purposes. All are supposed to be built to the same standards so data queries can be easily exchanged.
The "common ambition across the Atlantic," the European official said, is to achieve "as much interoperability as possible," through common technical standards for fingerprints and facial images..... "

I really don't want to do this when I travel.... The Euros already do when they come here...

Midway is better

Regarding a previous post on Air Travel, the Trib had an article just today by John Hilkevitch confirming my hunch that Midway is a better bet for on-time travel, vs O'Hare.

Those numbers translate into vastly different flight arrival rates to O'Hare and Midway. The number of planes that land on average at Midway is consistent, from a low of 28 planes to a high of 36 planes each hour, based on weather conditions and other factors, according to the FAA. But at O'Hare, depending whether two or three runways are used for arrivals, the landing capacity fluctuates from as few as 50 airplanes during a snowstorm to as many as 100 planes arriving each hour on a blue-sky day.

"One big difference that many people don't realize is that Midway is a one-runway arrival and a one-runway departure operation. It makes things steady and predictable, usually right around 32 to 34 flights an hour, all day long," said Bob Flynn, the FAA's traffic management officer for all Chicago-area airports.

Air Safety

Air Traffic Safety vs. Capacity

This is interesting.... makes sense to me...

" ....there is an absolute limit to the number of airplanes any runway can handle, per hour, even in perfect weather. At an absolute minimum that limit should be enforced -- by rule and regulation -- for every commercial airport in the country. Currently it is not and -- unbelievably -- airlines are allowed to schedule more flights than the runways can handle in even perfect weather. It is madness."

Aha- so its not the weather only as we've been told so often. They built this system with NO leeway...

Even though I often think of flying in & out of O'Hare or Midway as equivalent in terms of MY time to get to the airport, check in etc...Probably Midway is a better bet in terms of flights being ON TIME... not as many big planes for International flights to mess up the time sequence. Airlines should only be allowed to sell seats for capacity, not over-capacity. But there is not really any incentive for them to do it the right way because all of their competitors are in the same situation. That's why there needs to be better safety regulations and oversight.

My cousing is a flight attendant for American and her husband is a pilot at American too. I'll definitely ask them about this. (I've had to call them last summer to ask for logistical help when my flight from Boston was completely cancelled -I was stranded and the weather wasn't even bad).