United States outbound travel in 2003 dropped for the third straight year; yet travel to overseas destinations showed a strong rebound during the later part the year according to figures only just issued by the Office of Travel and Tourism Industries, part of Washington's Department of Commerce. Mexico and Canada suffered the worst with the rest of the world up 5%. In 2003, 56.2m US residents traveled abroad for one night or longer. This was down 3% from 2002 and not that much less than the outbound record of 61m in 2000. Mexico was once again the lead destination with 17.6m travelers and Canada the number two at 14.2m. The top five overseas markets visited by US travelers in 2003 were the UK, France, Italy, Germany and Jamaica. Of these, the only markets to experience an increase over 2002 were the UK, which increased to 3.3m plus 1% and Jamaica to 1.5m. Other countries showed large percentage gains but the actual numbers were small. Other statistics issued by the travel and tourism office include top outbound cities, package tourism, decision times and spend. http://www.ita.doc.gov Dec 20, 2004

Airborne Internet problems. Now if there is one quandary that aircraft designers have not overcome is the use of the on board rest rooms (toilets to the English, or "lav" &endash; short for lavatory) as a place to quietly sit and read. With limited facilities on board overindulgence is just not fair. Smoking was banned (don't believe the stories about safety &endash; loo puffers were just taking up too much time) which eliminated some of the waiting period but now we have another problem. It seems that with the emergence of Connexion by Boeing and other airborne Internet systems passengers have been seen taking their laptops into that most private of rooms. New rules and regulations will now have to be organized and no doubt both Airbus and Boeing will come out with stickers (at $100 per sticker &endash; nothing is cheap on an aircraft &endash; and it has to be approved by the joint air worthiness board). "Surfing the Internet whilst in this area is banned! A [pounds sterling]500 fine will be levied and your domain name removed!" Japanese versions as well! Dec 13, 2004