X-Message-Number: 25625
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2005 07:21:34 -0500
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #25617 - #25623

For Mark Plus:

You have made this statement before (international air travel stopping
because of the price of fuel) and it remains just as faulty as before.

1. Forgetting what happens with airlines in the US, lots of other
   airlines can simply raise their prices and go on as before. Once
   international air travel was more expensive than now, so that fewer
   people paid for it. We may simply see the same situation again.

2. If NO US airline can make a profit with international flights, that
   will not be because of the price of oil but because of bureaucratic
   anticapitalist restrictions imposed by government agencies in the
   US. For what it's worth, I am optimistic that either such restrictions
   will be revoked or modified so that even US airlines can take
   profitable international flights. 

3. THE major Australian airline, Qantas, seems to feel the problem of
   the price of fuel much less than many large US airlines. Qantas 
   still flies to the US, too. Perhaps this is because the Australian
   government owns part of Qantas and so doesn't want it to go out
   of business; it may be simply that government restrictions on 
   Qantas are less than those on most big US airlines. 

In the long range, of course, we'll all stop using oil as fuel. Other
alternatives exist, after all. Before South Africa gave up apartheid,
they had no source of oil, so they made their own. A large airliner
could probably be easily designed to use hydrogen instead. Then we 
have such things as ethyl alcohol (no doubt laced with something so
that it ceases to be drinkable).

Please don't repeat yourself as you have done. If you wish to argue
that air travel will become impossible or even very difficult and
costly, then come up with new rather than old arguments to that
effect.

             Best wishes and long long life for all,

                Thomas Donaldson

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