Fuel Costs and Air Fares Set To Rocket After Hurricane Katrina Punishes The US
It might have taken a month to get fuel supplies in the US back to normal if Hurricane Katrina were a mere run-of-the mill disaster. Hurricane Katrina looks like she's the biggest natural calamity the US has ever faced. It now looks certain that Hurricane Katrina will push fuel prices - and air fares - up through the roof. The immediate victims of Hurricane Katrina are the hundreds, maybe thousands, who have died already. Hurricane Katrina has just killed hundreds of people, and it could well be thousands of people that we don't know about already.
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Moving Troops and Evacuation Strategies
There are many ways to evacuate people from disasters like Hurricane Katrina for instance. Well, this idea might be better used to move massive amounts of people out of a region in an airlift or air rescue mission. If you had to evacuate 1 million people from let's say a coming Cat 5 Hurricane, you have everyone go to an airport and then lay them down, put them to sleep and ship them out to a safe haven and wake them up as you have resources for ground transportation once there. After all it takes some 2 hours to load up a 747 and another 2-hours to unload it and many aircraft all arriving at that same time or near the same time anywhere would over load the airports and over stress terminals and ground transportation. Perhaps we can learn better evacuation techniques from this Hurricane Katrina dilemma? Think on this.
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Flying Blimp Walrus Could Have Assisted in Evacuations
It is too bad we did not have four or five of them to pick up all the people in New Orleans who did not have a ride out of the city before Hurricane Katrina. Boy are they going to be a life saver? Think on this. Why don't we have a couple of squadrons of heavy lifting blimps for such things? Don't worry we will, but it may take a couple of years. You see they have been looking at how to move more for less? Imagine having to move millions of tons of fighting gear to the battle area? Well giant blimps may hold the key, because they are cheap to operate, can carry lots of weight and save lots of money. What is DARPA? Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
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Airbus to Build $600 Million Aircraft Manufacturing Plant in US
Some such as myself feel Mobile is problematic due to Hurricane Season weather although this is a calculated risk for the company in any given season. Think on the global competitiveness of the commercial aviation sector. Mobile Alabama is growing nice and has been moving forward with new housing tracts, retail centers, tourist destination locations and a growing and vibrant middle class. With most of the other major cities in Alabama having large manufacturing plants such as the Mercedes plant in Tuscaloosa and the large auto manufacturing plants in Montgomery and Birmingham it does make sense that Mobile would be next on the list to get some economical development juice from the state. Alabama is quite good at attracting manufacturing facilities such as Mercedes, Nissan and other automobile manufacturers and is known for their tax incentives and pro-business stance.
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