UN should forget space and make air travel easier

NOT WANTING to be seen to be behind the times, the UN aviation agency has started making rules and laws to regulate space travel. Richard Branson’s space travel agency, Virgin Galactic, has already unveiled a spaceship that will take tourists into space and SpaceX, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, is not far behind in the race to attract space tourists.

Of course, lawmakers, wherever they may be, are always eager to make new laws to cover new situations.

No doubt we shall soon see regulations about what space travellers must wear, what they must eat and how many milligrams of luggage they will be allowed to take into orbit.

Insurance companies will think up a million items to add to the small print of their passenger policies to ensure they are totally unreadable to the ordinary traveller.

“This policy is deemed to be invalid in the event of the gravitational force of said space vehicle dropping below 0.987 of earth’s normal gravitational attraction as defined in Section 238 (b)(2) of the Newtonian Standard Gravitational Tables of 1947 as amended by article 6 (c) of UN regulation 44(e) of 2012.”

In layman’s language this means roughly: “You are not covered in spite of having paid a R20 000 premium for your policy.”

Special visas will probably have to be issued for all the countries over which the spacecraft may happen to pass.

I think the UN Aviation Agency could far better spend its time thinking up ways of making existing air travel more user-friendly.

For some reason the people connected with air travel seem bent on making things as miserable as possible for passengers.

Customs officials are rude, many baggage handlers are thieves, airport officials order people around as though they were sheep heading for slaughter, rather than fee-paying customers on whose money their jobs depend.

Passengers are barked at wherever they go. “Take off your shoes! Empty your pockets. Open that case. Take off your belt. What’s in that packet? Did you pack it yourself?”

Instead of welcoming visitors, countries make things expensive by charging high fees for visas and requiring forms to be filled in with ridiculous and irrelevant details: “What was your mother’s maiden name?”

What’s that got to do with your wanting to go and watch a football match in Scotland?

Your mother died 20 years ago and wasn’t interested in football anyway.

I believe world trade and international relations would be far better served if the UN recognised that every international traveller is adding to the essential movement of money from place to place.

Money is only of any value when it changes hands. In a box under the bed it’s worth nothing.

Don’t worry about legislation for Mars travel; make it easier to visit Rome and New York instead.

Last Laugh

The pretty secretary smiled admiringly at the young executive and asked: “How did you manage to land such an important job when you’ve only been working for the company for three months?”

“Oh,” said the man modestly, “I ran into my father in the boardroom and he took a liking to me.”