First off, by "nowadays" I mean March and early April of 2003, a period during which I will take twelve flights. SARS and the US-Iraq war are incipient, but the biggest influence is still 9/11. Since all the airlines are hurting, they've drastically cut back on flights, so every plane is packed to the gills and there are no deals.

I spot a few, very few, apparent flight deals, but as Henning quotes to me: "when you pay peanuts, you get monkeys." Nothing could better describe my experiences flying with Biman (Bangladesh) Airlines. Aside from a ridiculously inept rebooking system and surly staff, you see some appalling behavior on their flights. One steward yelled at a little girl who asked for a bit more food. Much worse, I saw the stewardess refill coffee for the guy seated in front of me. He takes a sip and appears (I don't understand Bangla) to tell her that he wanted a refill for tea. Without missing a beat, the stewardess took back his cup, dumped the contents back into the general pot, and gave him his tea. Then she continued serving! This was just before the SARS outbreak and I shudder to think of what I consumed on that plane.

At every transfer, I have to go through security checks again, making layovers far longer than they used to be. This is most glaring during the Tokyo stopover. I've transfered through Narita many times in the past and it is usually smooth. They have a circular shaped international terminal where you used to be able to come out of one gate and walk a very short distance to get to your onward flight. With the added security check you must walk all the way around the outside of the circle, all the more tantalizing because the walls are clear plastic and you can clearly see your final destination, before queuing in a backed-up security check. And no, I don't feel any safer flying with all of these cursory checkpoints!

Flying, never fun to begin with, has become onerous and overly expensive. I have an unbelievably difficult time booking a flight to Europe that doesn't cost a fortune. Normally, so early in the Spring, good deals are a snap, but now there are none and even regular priced flights are booked out.

The other big difficulty for me, as a long-term traveller, is getting tickets with a period longer than 30-90 days. One way flights are as exensive as roundtrip so I basically have to eat the return trip on my flights or spend a ton of money to get a ticket with a longer duration.

I hope (but don't expect) that the current situation is temporary. I recently saw the dire prediction that only three US carriers will survive after the war. I may wind up doing a lot more overland traveling and may be forced to shorten this ramble. With flights at these prices I'll need to get a job soon.