Flights of Fancy

American Airlines has been fined $24 million for failing to do proper maintenance work on close to 300 planes that flew some 14,000 times in 2008. Southwest Airlines has also been fined $10 million for other maintenance issues. This is a very serious matter, that shows how corporate greed callously puts its profit margin above anything else. Once again, these American companies get away with murder in the supposedly most rigorous and safety-conscious country in the world.

It's all hype and self-aggrandizing publicity. The truth is that things in the U.S. are just as bad as anywhere else.

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