Sturm, drang, but no storms

After all that noise about how bad air travel could and probably would be over the five-day Thanksgiving Holiday, and after the White House stepped in and ordered the airlines to fly right, even the heavens cooperated. With a few exceptions, air travel over the major US holiday went about as smoothly as could be expected. Some 2.5 million people a day flew on the peak days, and between November 16 and November 27, some 27 million people were scheduled to fly. The worst we've heard is that United served a Thanksgiving turkey dinner to some of its O'Hare workers, a number of whom promptly suffered nausea. We think this was after they ate. Even trouble-prone US Airways had a good holiday. We’ve only heard a few kvetches, although a common complaint has been that otherwise navigable airports had been blocked by television camera crews and reporters looking for stranded and inconvenienced passengers. We’ve heard that George Bush is seriously considering a ban on journalists for Christmas, but we don’t know if it will only be at airports or will extend to ink-stained wretches everywhere.