We road warriors often grouse about the dumb stuff the airlines do and the weirdness of the TSA.  However, once in awhile, we can cheer about a big step forward in flying convenience.   The latest cheerable enhancement is the paperless boarding pass.  Other airlines have offered this perk for awhile, but US Airways has offered the option for the just the past few weeks.  I gingerly brought both paper and paperless boarding passes for a flight week before last, but today, I didn’t even bring a paper backup.

When checking in online, I specified which email address I prefer, and moments later, a link appeared in my email box, which I could access from my iPhone to display a boarding pass like the one to the right.  I presented the image on the phone and my driver’s license at the security checkpoint, and again showed the image on my phone at the gate.  It works great!

Thanks, US Airlines, for taking this big step in the right direction!

Note: originally published on ILoveFreedom.com.

Have you ever visited Uzbekistan?  Me neither.

I may never go if I need to rely on the Uzbeki (is that a word?) national airline, whose billboard ad wishes us “Good Luck” as an airliner disappears into a dense cloud with apparent snowy weather ahead.

Thanks to The International Business Edge for pointing out this fun example of a somewhat misguided effort at language translation.

By coincidence, I stumbled today across a second encouraging article about this fine country.  The Kansas City FBI office reported today that “an Uzbekistan national pleaded guilty in federal court today to his role in a criminal enterprise involving illegal aliens working in 14 states, including employees at hotels in the Kansas City, Missouri area and in Branson, Missouri.”

Maybe this fellow and his cohorts were so scared by the prospect of the flying Uzbekistan Airlines that they came to the United States and took up smuggling illegal aliens instead.