The annual Kennedy Airport Airline Managers Council (KAAMCO) held their annual convention meeting at the lovely Bannf, Canada resort. Prior to the regular KAAMCO meeting many of the attendees and their guests were able to enjoy the multiple venues of this breathtaking area of the world. Air Canada, through the courtesy of Lisa Pierce, Senior Director Airports, Air Canada for JFK and LGA, provided special travel packages to those who attended. Amenities at Bannf are world class; the golf course has the Canadian mountains and a lake as a back drop. Many of the good golfers marveled at how well the course was designed and how it challenged their game. Those who really just chase the little white ball around were compensated with cool playing conditions and the fun of playing...

Lance Corporal Leopold Damas was proud of his uniform, and he had every right to do so. He earned the right to wear it based on his 13 weeks of boot training at Parris Island; from his numerous “tours of duty” as we Marines like to call them, and for his service in a war zone far from his Queen’s home. The uniform has a two hundred and thirty three year old tradition, and the 24 year old Marine wore that uniform for the last time when he returned from Afghanistan via JFK Airport. An honor guard of Marines and Port Authority Police, along with family and friends met Lance Corporal Damas’s coffi n at JFK Airport on a hot and sunny August day,

and escorted him home with the full honors he deserved. The Lance Corporal was killed while monitoring an election in an Afghani city. Voting is a right we Americans take for granted; but which many other people in our world risk their lives to do. May God bless the memory of Lance Corporal Damas, and bless his family as well.

With both air travel and tourism down, New York City tourism offi cials have partnered with American Airlines in an effort they hope

will both fill airline seats and lure tourists to New York. The fare sale will cover fl ights departing to New York out of fi ve cities. Those cities – along with the off-peak round-trip sale fares – are: Chicago O’Hare ($168), Dallas/Fort Worth ($198), Los Angeles ($218), Miami ($138) and San Francisco ($218). Taxes and fees are not included. As usual, there are the typical restrictions, which include a 21-day advance purchase. The cheapest fares are available only Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. Fares on other days are higher. The fare sale covers travel through Dec. 12, though the following dates are blacked out: Nov. 21, 24, 25, 28, and Dec. 1. NYC & Company, the offi cial marketing and tourism for New York City, says it’s the fi rst time it has partnered with an airline on a promotion for domestic airfare deals. Crain’s New York Business notes “the city is expecting a 5% decline in the number of visitors this year and it has developed incentive travel packages to help counter the trend.”

For each of the passengers that Abdel Basset al-Megrahi murdered on Pan Am Flight 103 over twenty years ago, the Libyan served less than a month in prison. However, Scotland’s judicial authorities saw fi t to free the terrorist amidst a growing scandal that implicated current British Prime Minister Gordon Brown with the Libyan Government’s oil barons. It was a kind of deviant trade; 259 American murdered citizens for a few million liters of petrol. Scotland released the former Libyan agent who was jailed for life for the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie that killed 270 people because he is dying of cancer.

Reports say that Abdel Basset al- Megrahi has less than three months to live, and was being returned to Libya on compassionate grounds. PM Brown has never been mistaken as being a strong US ally. However, the overall sense in Washington had been with a “British labor friendly” kind of President now in the White House, the US would get more consideration in our international dealings. But charm can only go so far when the revenues connected with oil projects in Libya began ringing in PM Brown’s ears and the memories of a jetliner plunging to earth were long gone. Wishing death on any man is a wicked past-time; something that none of us should feel comfortable about. But watching BBC video of the big welcome parties in Libya, and the smiling faces of this murderer’s friends and accomplices did not make me feel forgiving; it made me feel anger. If compassion was the reasoning behind Scotland’s decision; then please tell me, where was the compassion twenty one years ago when so many American families were devastated, and a once famous airline died.

Albany International Airport could have upgraded service to LaGuardia Airport in New York City sometime next year following a plan by Delta Airlines and US Airways to swap dozens of landing rights at LaGuardia and at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington, D.C. Under the plan, US Airways would transfer 125 slot pairs at LaGuardia to .