Rethinking Travel to Academic Conferences (Again)

In a couple of weeks, many of my fellow law professors will be traveling to New Orleans for the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools. I bailed out on that trip a while back, due to the AALS' asinine registration fee rules. The announcement of the moronic new air travel security precautions, however, makes me even more glad I'm not going.

To be sure, traveling to attend academic conferences or to give faculty workshops has definite benefits. You raise your visibility in the profession. You meet interesting people and see old friends. Occasionally, you even learn stuff and/or get valuable feedback on a project.

The costs keep escalating, however. Security hassles. Long lines. Delays. Cancelled flights. Grungy airplanes. Lousy food. Surly service. Disrupted sleep patterns. Lately, moreover, I seem to come down with a cold - or something worse - after roughly every other flight. And, of course, were I an ecomentalist, I'd have to add my carbon footprint to the list of worries.

Regular readers know that I keep threatening to quit traveling by airplanes to anything except for funerals of immediate family members. But if the new rules are as idiotic as they sound at first blush, I may finally carry through with that threat.

So if you're expecting me at a conference in the next few months, consider this fair warning.

Comments

[Eli]

I agree with ost of what you say but this "carbon footprint" worry is outthere. The priests of the Global Warming-Climate Change beliefs claim that your dogs have a far worse impact on the environment than any air travel.

[Flighterdoc]

And how long before the obamidiots screw up private aviation?

[jsallison]

I used to enjoy flying. No longer. Unless my employer absolutely insists that I do so, on their dime, I'll drive. It'd be nice if rail or bus was a realistic alternative, but they're not.

[Leslie]

What is truly crazy is that anyone thinks full body scanners will do squat to protect airline passengers. It just drives me nuts. There is no technology that can stop dangerous people from taking dangerous stuff on an airplane if they have a mind to. What they have to do is keep the dangerous PEOPLE off in the first place. That is not too hard. As we see there really aren't any lone wolfs and we can trace them through their contacts.

[astonerii]

That is what the people who make these 'security' rules want you to do. They have the exact same world outlook on human beings as, say a professor at a university, an eco zealot and any Malthusian, they want you to stop prospering so hopefully you will stop reproducing and eventually they want to cause enough pain for humans that we start bleeding bodies en mass til there are 300,000,000 of us left.

[The Pathetic Earthling]

It's a small deal, but we decided that I would take my five year old boy to Legoland in San Diego in January for a first big trip-with-Dad. Under ordinary circumstances, I would have simply taken Southwest from Oakland to San Diego -- I wouldn't have even thought to do anything else -- but the idea that TSA might yet change its mind about the rules on domestic flights simply has ruled that out. I will not plan a trip not knowing whether or not my boy will be able to get up half way through the flight to use the head. So I will wake up at 3AM on a Sunday morning a couple of weeks hence and drive down Interstate 5 -- and back a day and a half later. I'm sure a flight would be a great part of the adventure, but nuts to that. I'll take the three hour time penalty on both ends rather than deal with this stupidity.

[ajacksonian]

Go the Jerry Pournelle route - anything under 500 miles you drive. Avoid metropolitan airports like the plague.

The alternative to commercial plane travel is private plane travel via the services that offer up the routes that companies and private individuals regularly fly for other reasons and then offer trips on them: either empty leg trips or ones you schedule with the individual or company. You will pay more for such a service, yes. There is a very high probability that you will get point to point service via municipal airports which eliminates lines, parking and other problems at the larger metro airports.

If you want an alternative flight system, then find your options and pay for it.

[Brett]

Heck with the travel. Ditch the expensive parties known as academic conferences. The academic papers can be exchanged and discussed by mail.