Arthur Frommer's Blog, page 22

Celebrity is Now Charging as Little as $1,800 for 10-Night Mediterranean Cruises and Round-Trip Air

On several occasions, I've written about the collapse in cruise prices for sailings in the Mediterranean this summer and early fall. For departures in June and July, I've been fascinated by rates as low as $347 for a seven-night cruise, and $499 for a 10-night cruise, on ships a cut above the standard vessels. Once you've paid a relatively high airfare to fly to Mediterranean ports (mainly Barcelona, Rome and Venice) for boarding the ship you've chosen, you find that your time aboard is occasionally costing less than you would have spent living at home.

Nothing could better illustrate this phenomenon than a recent surge in Mediterranean cruise sales by cruiselines that are now including round-trip trans-Atlantic airfare in the prices they quote. And no one is more active in doing this than Celebrity Cruises, operators of elegant ships that are a full category higher in quality than ships operated by Carnival, Royal Caribbean or MSC.

For a 10-night sailing of the Eastern Mediterranean (Rome, Naples, Messina, Athens, Mykonos, Ephesus, Rhodes and Santorini) leaving Rome on July 13, aboard the excellent Celebrity Equinox, Celebrity is charging only $1,853 per person, INCLUDING round-trip air transportation between New York and Rome. And that, I believe, is for a veranda cabin, no less.

For a 12-night sailing from Barcelona to Italy and the Greek Islands and back to Barcelona, aboard the Celebrity Solstice (I've sailed on this excellent ship), leaving Barcelona on July 22, Celebrity is charging only $1,873, INCLUDING round-trip air between New York and Barcelona. Your itinerary: Barcelona, Rome, Naples, Athens, Mykonos, Santorini, Ephesus, Valletta, Barcelona.

For an 11-night cruise aboard the Celebrity Silhouette from Venice, leaving Venice on October 23, and sailing to other ports in Italy and Croatia (you stop, among other places, in Split, Dubrovnik and Kotor, as well as in Catania in Sicily), Celebrity is charging only $1,805 per person, including round-trip air between New York and Venice/Rome.

An important point: when these packages were first announced a couple of days ago, Celebrity announced they could not be booked online but only by phoning tel. 888/305-9153. Since then, I've seen similar packages (and others) advertised as available from Online Vacation Center (tel. 800/329-9002; www.onlinevacationcenter.com ), this time for as little as $1,599 per person, including round-trip air between New York and various Mediterranean ports. And that's for veranda cabins, again. OVC lists numerous dates for these almost-too-good-to-be-true bargains.

It's obvious that the cruiselines have placed too many ships in the Mediterranean for summer and fall of 2012, a time when public doubts still exist about the stability of life in various Mediterranean ports. Those fears are, at least in the port cities named above, totally groundless, and you might well consider taking advantage of prices that will likely notbe offered in later years.

In Travel, Does Only the Chump Pay Full Price? Yep, That's Often the Case

It's a point we've discussed on many occasions, but as weary as it may seem, it bears repeating. The airlines sell seats on the same
flight at two different prices: full price publicly, a discounted price secretly. People sitting next to each other have often paid widely varying prices depending on how and from whom they bought their tickets.

That ancient wisdom was again brought sharply to my attention as a result of a friend's experience this past week. She attempted to buy
trans-Atlantic tickets from New York to London at the height of the Olympics frenzy, for a departure in late July, return in early August,
and went directly to a carrier well known for its flights to London. They quoted her an awesome price of $1,700 per ticket, round-trip.

Aghast, she proceeded to open her laptop and went to Hipmunk.com, requesting seats for the very same dates to and from London. Hipmunk led her to Vayama, which
responded that they could provide her with seats for those dates on a "mystery carrier" for $1,200. She would learn its name when she
committed to buy. Relieved over this $500 saving, she immediately punched "buy." And lo and behold, she was given seats on the very
airline on the very same dates and flights -- a well-known London carrier -- that had earlier quoted her $1,700 for them. Obviously, the
carrier was selling its seats at full price to unsuspecting buyers who contacted them direct, while dumping them through an "aggregator" (and
not the biggest of them) for more sophisticated buyers.

Note how policies vary among various purveyors of travel. Recently, I wrote about how certain prominent hotels are holding back
their rooms from the various OTAs on dates when they know they can sell those rooms directly to the public without paying a commission to
the OTAs. But almost at the same time, a desperate airline was offering its seats to a airfare aggregator at a discounted price.

The lesson from all this? You need spend a few moments testing various sources of travel products when you buy a travel product. You
cannot afford to be impatient. You must spend the time. If a hotel search engine offers you a poor price, call the hotel directly. If an
airline offers a poor price, contact the airline search engines. Try them all -- and often you'll rejoice.

Really, How Necessary Are Those Cruiseship-Organized Port Tours?

I receive more questions on port excursions than on any other topic. Learning the prices of those motorcoach tours sold by the cruiselines, and multiplying the cost by all the ports visited, most people react with anguish to the resulting total cost. And recently, one reader asked me to assess the options in six different cities that would be visited on a Mediterranean cruise scheduled for later this summer: Nice, Livorno, Civitavecchia, Naples, Venice and Split. The idea of touring in a motorcoach didn't appeal, he wrote. Can't he simply tour these places on his own? Here's how I responded:

You are right that a cruiseship-operated tour is not the best way to experience the ports on a Mediterranean cruise. They are, to begin with, ridiculously overpriced. And the way they are conducted -- in a 40-person motorcoach filled with fellow passengers -- is totally destructive of the authentic European experience that one enjoys by simply sightseeing on foot.

That lesson was forcefully brought to my attention on a recent Mediterranean cruise that stopped in Istanbul. Most passengers crammed into a cruiseline-operated motorcoach (charging $85 per person for the tour), which required nearly an hour of threading through heavy traffic to reach the area known as Sultanahmet, where most of the sightseeing attractions -- the Blue Mosque, the Grand Bazaar, Topkapi Palace -- are located. My wife and I, instead, simply walked across the road from the dock to a streetcar stop and took a trolley directly to Sultanahmet, which took less than 20 minutes for a public vehicle enjoying the right of way. In the course of the ride, we entered into a fascinating discussion with an English-speaking woman resident of Istanbul who was wearing a complete, full-length, headscarf outfit. We could never have had that experience if we had visited Istanbul in the company of 40 other passengers. Once in Sultanahmet, we toured happily on our own two feet, by ourselves, and then took the trolley back to the ship in mid-afternoon, having spent exactly $2 for the experience.

The only problem with some few ports -- like Civitavecchia -- is that they are quite far from the city you'd wish to visit. You are of course aware that the average cruiseship arrives in port around 7 or 8 am, and by the time you have breakfast and are permitted to disembark, it's 9am. You then have to return to the ship ahead of the time when it leaves the port, which is usually around 4pm the same day. And you can never put yourself into a situation where you fail to return in time to reboard the ship before it sails away.

That being understood, there are still many ports which you can visit without boarding those awful and expensive motorcoaches:

Venice: It's a ten-minute walk from the cruise terminal to a vaporetto stop (Venice's seagoing streetcars that go up and down the canals), and a vaporetto (costing about $2.50 per person) will then take you easily to the center of Venice at Piazza San Marco. Venice is a walking city, and you can see a great deal -- on foot -- during your several hours in Venice.

Naples: The port of Naples is in the very center of Naples. A fifteen-minute walk, on foot from the dock where your cruiseship will disembark you, is Naples' famous archaeological museum containing many of the best relics of Pompeii -- a fascinating place to visit. If you wish to go to Pompeii, you simply take a streetcar from the dock to Naples' train station, from which there are hourly trains to Pompeii (a 40 minute ride). Be sure to leave Pompeii in time for the return ride to the train station, from which you take a streetcar back to the dock.

Livorno: The multitudes descending from the cruiseships all flock aboard buses that charge passengers upwards of an outrageous $160 for a one-hour trip to Florence and several-hour tour of Florence. The train from Livorno to Florence takes about an hour and a half each way, and to me it's too tricky to arrange your own transportation to and from Florence in time to reboard the cruiseship at around 4pm. I'd suggest that you visit Pisa and/or Lucca instead. Pisa is a 20-minute train ride from Livorno, and Lucca is a 20-minute train ride from Pisa; and with careful scheduling by you, you could squeeze in both during
your several hour stop at Livorno.

On the other hand:

The port of Rome (Civitavecchia) is quite far from Rome -- an unfortunate circumstance. You'll need to take a taxi from the dock to the train station at Civitavecchia, where trains leave every hour for Terminal Station in Rome -- about a one-hour trip. With
careful scheduling, you can squeeze in a do-it-yourself tour of Rome by thus taking the train (simply buy tickets at the train station's ticket office; no advance reservations necessary). In Rome, you'll need to confine yourself to one or two major attractions: the Roman Forum primarily, the Colosseum, the Vatican.

I haven't been to Split, so can't help you there, but I have the feeling from photographs I have seen that its port area is within easy walking distance of the center of town.

In sum, I don't think you need book any cruiseship tour of the ports on your cruise, with the possible exception of Civitavecchia -- although even there you can do it (with some difficulty) yourself.

Summertime Musings on Recent Developments, Events and Issues in Travel

Last week's most important travel news was in the world of currency rates and has to do with the considerable recent decline in the worth of (a) the Chinese yuan and (b) the euro. Violating every promise, the Chinese have again begun lowering the value of their currency to bolster their rapidly-declining export industry and their incoming tourism. If the yuan continues to lose at least 1% per week, as it did last week, China will become an even greater bargain than before. What's bad news for the world's economy is good news for the tourist. And have you looked at the euro lately? It's recently selling at $1.23, and although airfare to Europe is high, the cost of living once there is thus declining. You might want to reconsider your decision to avoid a trans-Atlantic trip this year.

The other big news was the move by the Department of Transportation to put 26 so-called Chinese bus companies out of business, because of alleged safety violations (unlicensed drivers working too many hours a day, poorly maintained buses). Left untouched were such apparently reliable firms as BoltBus and MegaBus, and you might want to keep those names in mind for your own next trip in the northeast and the midwest, where Chinatown buses (so named because they usually drive from one Chinatown to another) offer fares as low as $10 per one-way trip.

Also making travel headlines: the decision by Homeland Security to permit persons over the age of 75 to keep their shoes on and avoid pat-downs, if they are also willing to undergo swabs by a chemically-treated cloth that detects traces of explosives and multiple passes through an electronic security gate. The new rule is an experiment only, undertaken in only four airports. I hope it doesn't represent an unwise surrender to anti-T.S.A. hysteria.

I'm also seeing a great deal of Internet comment about the lack of sufficient life preservers and other safety equipment on ferries and tourist boats. Too often, travelers blithely sign on for brief seagoing excursions unaware that they will be in danger if the boat or ferry capsizes or sinks.

I wrote last week about the decision of YMT Vacations to offer air-and-land packages to Cuba, including 8 nights of accommodations, for $1,999 plus $299 in taxes and fees. I should have added a phone number for booking the bargain: 800/922-9000. And I should have mentioned that Friendly Planet comes in second with an 8-night program selling for $2,799.

Resort For A Day is a new start-up that obtains daylong beach privileges at 14 resorts in 9 Caribbean islands for cruise passengers passing through, at an average cost of $35 a day per adult for beach-and-swimming-pool only and $60 or $70 a day for eat-and-drink-all-you-want at all-inclusive resorts. It guarantees it will get you back to the ship on time, and also guarantees that the resort won't turn you away if it's full up. It also includes round-trip transfers between the cruiseship and resort -- something you can't obtain except for an expensive taxi fare on your own.

Advocates urging the Department of Transportation to require that children be seated next to their parents on airplanes without paying a surcharge for reserved seats, have added the argument that such a rule is a safety step. In an emergency requiring quick evacuation of the plane, what parent would leave without their children, and would they block others from evacuating until their children have been secured?

YMT Vacations is the First Company to Come up with Decently Priced Air-and-Land Packages to Cuba

After an initial burst of enthusiasm over the news that people-to-people tours would be permitted to Cuba, disillusionment set it when the price of those tours was announced. One company after another listed rates as high as $3,500 and $4,000 for a seven-night and eight-night stay, sometimes including round-trip air between Miami and Havana, sometimes not. Though a few packages came in at somewhat less, their prices were only slightly better.

Now, for a start-up in September, YMT Vacations of California -- that cut-rate operator of air-and-land tours for many decades -- has announced its own program costing $1,999 per person (plus $299 in taxes and fees) for eight nights of accommodations (one night in Miami, five nights in Havana, two nights in Santa Clara) in Cuba, including roundtrip air between Miami and Cuba. 

At first glance (only a press release is available to me), it doesn't seem as if the sightseeing features of YMT's tour, or the meals provided, are the equivalent of what higher-priced packages are supplying. But who wants those constant, endless, morning-till-night group tours? The point of going to Cuba should be people-to-people contact on your own, a condition obtained by simply wandering at random through Havana and Santa Clara. 

Departures start on September 4, but reservations will not be taken until TOMORROW, Friday, June 1.  If you'll keep watching this Blog, I'll post a link -- as soon as it is provided to me -- for use in making reservations.  As so often happens, Frommers.com is scooping all the rest of the media (by a single day) in disclosing this program, but the program will not go up online, nor will reservations be taken, until tomorrow.  When tomorrow comes, you can also obtain further information from YMT Vacations (tel. 800/922-9000; www.ymtvacations.com). 

Here Are Some Random Observations on Current Deals, Opportunities, and Oddities in Travel

Why is tourism to Greece down by as much as 30%? It's not because of a fear of civil disorder, say many observers, but because of a massive decline in visits to Greece by German vacationers, reacting nervously to anti-German sentiment on the part of the Greek population. Germany is widely blamed by the Greeks for the enforced austerity that many of them hate, resulting in less-than-cordial treatment of German tourists, including a recent burning of the German flag in Athens. With hundreds of thousands of German tourists choosing other destinations for their vacations, Greek resorts, restaurants, tours, ships and islands have yawning vacancies at good prices... My friend and colleague, Ed Perkins, has recently waxed rhapsodic about the new high-speed train in Italy called the Italo, which twice a day makes the run in each direction between Milan and Naples (via Bologna, Florence and Rome) at speeds of 200 miles an hour. The train is unusually pleasant, says Ed. He points out that in eight out of nine countries recently visited by him--China, South Korea, Poland, France, Turkey, Switzerland, Germany and Italy--high-speed rail is more and more available.
 
On this past Sunday's Travel Show ( www.wor710.com/arthur-frommer ), Pauline and I were asked whether some European countries require that you have 18 months of validity remaining on your passport, in order to come into that country. We answered, resoundingly, No. Where do false rumors of that sort originate?... The remarkable bargains on cruises of the Mediterranean are starting to spread into July and August, and will undoubtedly become even more attractive as we approach those months. Example: On the July 9 sailing of the Norwegian Spirit, spending 12 nights at sea from Barcelona to Venice, inside cabins are now offered for as little as $699 ($58 a day). On the July 28 sailing of Royal Caribbean's Serenade of the Seas, 12 nights round-trip from Barcelona, inside cabins are $799 per person ($67 a day). Go to Vacations To Go ( www.vacationstogo.com ) for more... Another big current travel bargain? It's India, where the Rupee has now plunged to a rate of 55 to the dollar, and will probably go lower... And note, too, that the Euro is now selling for $1.25, reducing the cost of European expenditures, once you pay a high airfare to get there.
 
Where isn't it cheap to vacation? At a Disney theme park, for one. Disneyland has just raised a one-day adult admission to $87 (including tax), and the one-day park-hopper pass for a family of four now amounts to $488 at both Disneyland in California and Disney World in Florida... Exercise extreme caution if you fly anywhere on Spirit Airlines. That generous carrier will now charge (starting November 1) $100 per small suitcase brought into the plane and placed in an overhead rack -- provided that the carry-on luggage isn't earlier declared at the check-in counter. The infamous Ben Baldanza (Spirit's president) has thus done it again... A less expensive means of flying the Atlantic? It's nearly always on Aer Lingus, to any major European capital via a stop in Dublin. Example: a late July flight from New York to Amsterdam, returning mid-August, all on Aer Lingus via Dublin: $911. The same flight non-stop to and from Amsterdam via KLM: $1,286. But note that Aer Lingus flights are filling fast, requiring a quick decision on your part.
 
Finally, readers of this blog who have young children will confirm that it is growing increasingly difficult to arrange to sit next to their children in standard economy class. That's because larger and larger portions of economy areas are being classified as "premium economy seats" requiring surcharges of as much as $39 per seat. So few seats remain in standard economy that parents have difficulty finding adjoining seats for their children. This past week, Senator Charles Schumer complained of the situation to the Department of Transportation, urging that premium economy surcharges be waived for young children. Though it seems inconceivable that the D.O.T. will thus interfere in airline pricing, it also seems possible for the airlines to urge their flight attendants to request of economy passengers that they change seats within economy sections to enable young families to sit together.

Are Hotel Chains and Auto Rental Firms Holding Back Their Best Products from OTAs?

If it had happened only once, I would have thought it an oddity. But twice in the past month, I've been able to obtain better prices and available accommodations by going directly to a hotel instead of to the hotel online travel agencies that claim to represent the world's hotels.
 
To obtain reservations at a British hotel for a trip I will be making later this year, I went to not one but two major hotel online travel agencies, both of which responded that the hotel was full on the dates I had requested. They had also earlier listed rates for that hotel that seemed unusually high.
 
On the brink of giving up, I decided to phone the hotel in question. And immediately, the hotel's reservations staff not only accepted my request for a reservation on the dates in question, but at a price considerably lower than the online travel agencies had earlier quoted. I was left with the inescapable impression that the hotel was closing out the various OTAs for desirable dates when the hotel felt it could rent its rooms without paying the large commissions (sometimes as much as 30%) that some of the famous OTAs demand.
 
Is it possible that smart hotels are working with OTAs only for dates of stay when the hotel is anticipating widespread vacancies? I'm ready to believe that. And henceforth, I will call the hotel directly in place of wasting my time on the internet OTAs.
 
In the world of car rentals, I used to believe that a particular auto rental website was capable of performing near-miracles in responding to my request for a car; that they were finding car rental companies -- including the biggest of them -- that had slashed the rates dramatically for the dates when I needed a car. I am not totally certain about this, and have only conjectures to make (although I have made a couple of test bookings that confirmed the worst), but I have also been told that persons making a recent real use of that website are claiming that the major auto rental companies (Hertz, Avis, Budget, Enterprise, National, etc.) are no longer giving their dramatically discounted products to the internet firm.
 
Whether this is the case will need further tests, but it appears possible that the biggest rental companies are no longer cooperating to the same extent as before with the bargain-seeking website, and that users of the site are being offered cars from secondary firms only.
 
So here's a major turnaround in the ability of internet online travel agencies to produce unique bargains in hotel rooms and auto rentals. It's as if the luddites--the people unwilling to hand over their businesses to those modern, new, electronic services--have decided to do battle with the internet. There's never a dull moment in travel. And it is possible that by going direct--by phoning the hotels or the car renters--you'll often do better in terms of availability and price.

This Week's Attack in Yemen Should Make Us Doubly Grateful for TSA Pat-Downs

All the world is now aware of the Al Qaeda suicide bomber in Yemen who blew himself up this past Monday, killing more than eighty members of a military unit who were rehearsing for a parade, in addition to wounding hundreds of spectators. As the New York Times reported on Tuesday morning, the bombing occurred "soon after the discovery of the third attempt to smuggle a bomb aboard a United States-bound jetliner by Qaeda militants based in Yemen."
 
such an event serves to highlight the point -- as any fair-minded observer will, in my view, agree -- that it is no longer necessary for terrorists to break into the cockpit of a plane to bring it down, as they did on 9/11. And passengers aboard such a plane will no longer be able to subdue a terrorist who enters the lavatory of a plane to detonate the explosives he carries on his person, or who slips through intelligence efforts by the C.I.A. and others to discover such terrorists before they reach an airport. The only remaining line of defense is the TSA, examining passengers before they board the plane and often patting them down, in addition to using explosives-detecting swabs.
 
Those self-evident conclusions, in my opinion, make awfully weak the continuing din of fierce attacks on the thoroughness with which the TSA fulfills its responsibility to keep us safe. Rather than regard the TSA's work as an anti-American, un-constitutional invasion of our liberties, I look upon our cooperation with the TSA as a patriotic act, as an assertion by the thousands of people who go through particular airport terminals each day that they are determined to keep flying despite terrorist threats, that they are engaging in a joint, communal, all-American effort to assist the TSA to defeat the terrorists.
 
You may recall that several days ago, I challenged the critics of the TSA to make positive suggestions, to tell us what they would substitute for the present procedures of the TSA In their comments (elsewhere in this blog), you will note that the majority rely on the work and rhetoric of a self-anointed so-called security expert named Bruce Schneier, author of books on cryptography and digital security, publisher of a newsletter called "Cryptogram" and a similar blog. I ploughed through the two major essays by Bruce Schneier on the TSA and, so help me, there isn't a single reasoned explanation of what he would suggest in place of the TSA, other than to vaguely state that its procedures should possess "accountability" and "transparency," whatever that means.
 
Indeed, at the end of his labored criticism of TSA tactics, he urges us to have a stiff upper lip, to assume that the terrorists will actually succeed in blowing up planes, and to face that outcome with American-style bravery. He ends his second major essay (cited by the critics of my opinions), in which he has fulminated against TSA efforts to keep terrorists off planes, saying that if we passengers refuse to be terrorized, "then the terrorists fail even if their attacks succeed."
 
."..[E]ven if their attacks succeed." In other words, if we go to our deaths with courage, then we win.
 
And by the way, earlier in the essay, he grudgingly admits it was TSA security checkpoints that earlier caused the failure of the Christmas attempt to blow up a bomb on a U.S. airliner. Because of the TSA checkpoints, he points out, Al Qaeda was not able to use metallic detonators, but had to adopt a faulty, awkward use of a syringe setting off a largely-failed twenty-minute effort in the lavatory to ignite the explosives carried by the would-be bomber. "The security checkpoints worked...," he writes.
 
So when you read these continuing efforts by writers we thought were serious, attempting to ridicule the TSA's work and make it into an un-American incursion on our liberties, ask yourself the question that I have repeated over and over: what do they suggest? Should we simply walk onto planes without undergoing security checks? Shall we really revert to pre-9/11 procedures that failed so miserably on the morning of 9/11? Or should we cooperate with the TSA and together work towards the defeat of terrorism.

The Possibility that Greece Might Jettison the Euro Could Have a Major Impact on Tourism

The world is anxiously awaiting resolution of the economic crisis in Greece, a situation that could -- if badly handled -- gravely affect the European economy -- and ours. So please don't think that the impact of that crisis on pleasure-seeking tourists should be a central concern of anyone.

But tourism to Greece is of tremendous importance to that nation, which receives many millions of annual visitors going not simply to Athens and the Peloponnese, or to those cruiseship stops at Santorini and Mykonos, but also to the big Greek islands of Crete and Corfu (where tourism is a giant industry). And the economic crisis could be either devastating or helpful to Greece. It could be devastating if civil disorder were to break out among the Greek population (already, tourism is said to be down by nearly 40% because of tourist fears).

It could be enormously helpful if Greece successfully left the so-called Eurozone and restored use of its earlier currency, the Drachma. That money unit would then be so weak, and so dramatically devalued, as to set off an avalanche of increased tourism by bargain-seekers in both Europe and the United States. Indeed, use of a devalued Drachma is regarded by many as offering a tremendous benefit to Greece.

So we'll have to be watching with careful concern. And if the Drachma is restored, then those bargain-seeking tourists among us might perform a mighty service to Greece by immediately rushing to confer their spending on a newly cheap country. I should also draw attention to the fact that a decision by a new Greek government to say goodbye to the European Union might also set off a similar movement by Spain and Italy. What a time we're living through.

It Would Be Wonderful if TSA Critics Had Proposals for Preventing Terrorism in the Skies

In my former life as a young lawyer, I used to hear the advice of experienced litigators as to what you should do if your case was weak on the facts and weak on the law. In that circumstance, I was told, "You yell like hell."
 
That apparently is the strategy of the several readers who have thus far responded with comments to my blog of several days ago, in which I welcomed the thoroughness shown by TSA agents at airports in fulfilling their responsibility to prevent terrorists from boarding planes with explosives on their person. The TSA's goal and their duty, we should always remember, is to keep the rest of us from dying in a plane crash.
 
The responses -- all but one of them -- have thus far consisted of sheer invective (defined in the dictionary as "abusive language, vituperation"), descending to a level lower than I for one have seen.
 
Rather than respond to such outrage, I should like to suggest an experiment. I should like to ask the critics to do something positive, to suggest how they would replace the TSA and with what. Are they actually suggesting that we should simply board planes in the future without undergoing any security checks at all? (Who among us would feel easy about doing that?) They we should rely entirely on counter-intelligence personnel working away from airports? What about the suicide bombers that aren't apprehended by C.I.A. agents before they reach an airport? Are they suggesting that racial profiling would do the trick?
 
Are they suggesting we replace federal employees with private persons earning the minimum wage?
 
In light of the photographs that have been published of Al Qaeda's earlier use of padded, long-john underwear covering arms, legs and torsos with pouches of explosives, are they actually claiming that pat-downs serve no purpose, and can be dispensed with?
 
What in the world do they suggest we do? Dispense with security checks altogether? Replace caution with sheer bravado? Simply take our chances? Become brave Uncle Sams who simply stroll into airports and challenge the world's terrorists to take down our planes? What are their positive recommendations? Can they compose a comment or two in which they actually set forth how they would replace the TSA with something more effective?
 
So let the critics weigh in with something positive. Let them put up or quiet down.