There's been a big growth in flights over to the US from Britain over the last few years, with airports like Bristol offering flights. The number of Brits heading across the pond has also been kept steady as happy shoppers want to make the most of shopping trips to New York where their pounds are worth more than ever.
This all sounds good for the healthy relationship between the States and the United Kingdom, and it's definitely had a positive effect on tourism. New York, for obvious reasons, suffered a huge downturn after 9/11, but it's since reinvented itself and enjoyed a massive influx of visitor numbers.
However, things aren't looking too rosy for the future, after yet another draconian 'national security' proposal by the Bush administration. The latest measure by Dubya is to press all of the governments in the European Union - that's 27 of them - to sign up for a a number of security measures for travel across the pond, including putting armed guards on all flights between Europe and the US by US airlines.
I read an article in the Guardian about all of this, and I think it's pretty unnecessary. The EU already supplies the US authorities with 19 items of information on every traveller flying from the US, now they want more, including data on people who are allowed beyond departure barriers to help elderly young, or ill passengers to board aircraft flying to America, or even over its airspace.
I think it's increasingly sad that such measures are brought in, because it's not exactly clear if they do anything particularly useful other than make America look increasingly isolationist, fussy and, to some, bordering on totalitarian. It seems particularly strange seeing as the attacks of 9/11 were carried out from flights within the US, not external flights. Fair enough, I get that the authorities want to know who's coming into the country, but there's got to be other ways other than totally encroaching on everyone's privacy, guilty or not.
I hope that the latest measure's don't discourage visitors from the UK heading over to the US. One thing's for sure, you'll be missing out on some great travel adventures when you go. Last time I went back I booked some cheap flights to New York from comparison website - Cheap Flights. I also like Travelzoo a lot, it gets some of the best bargains from the internet, including cheap flights, and sends them to you in a weekly top 20 bargains email.
