2 Many-

Inteersting you brought that up. One thing we've been seeing a lot of on all of the news channels are reports on El Al security, with perhaps a tacit suggestion that this is what real airport security is. I agree, BTW.

However, does anybody have, for comparitive purposes, information on, say, the # of flights El Al operates per day, and the number of airports they serve, versus the # of flights/airports served by US carriers? For that matter, how much (on a rough percentage basis) of the cost of El Al security is absorbed by the Israeli government, and what would those dollar figures translate to if applied to the whole US system?

While I'm all for tighter security, and agree that there is a certain amount of "political will", as you call it (I'd call it a justifiable lack of political correctness) necessary to restore it, I think an examination of those figures, on a comparative basis, would reveal the virtual impossibility--both in terms of financial and human resources--of a constant El Al type of arrangement here in the U.S.