[Fwd: Re: Belize City Airport food and drink]

[Mike Salovesh]

Ooops!

My apologies.  Two things went wrong with my last message.

1) I fell asleep while editing some obscurities in a draft I wanted to improve
before sending.  ("Fell" sure is the right word.  What woke me was falling the
rest of the way from my chair to the floor.)

2) I sent it.

This is what I meant to say:

Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>
> TACA INTERNATIONAL (or, Do You Know the Way to San Jose?)
>
> DRIVER:  Which airline?
> POPIK:  TACA.
> DRIVER:  Take A Chance--oops!

Officially, "TACA" is an acronym for the Spanish equivalent of "Aerial
Transports  of Central America".

Unofficially, TACA is an acronym for "Todos los Años Cae un Avion": "every year
one plane crashes".  OK, it loses something in the translation.  A broadened
paraphrase works better:  "All right, we lose a plane every year, but we make it
up in volume."

Central Americans take perverse pride in TACA's dismal record as one of the
world's worst.  TACA has no satisfied customers.  Their published schedules have
no connection to reality.  (One TACA flight I was scheduled to take was three
days late in its departure.  On that third day, there were  three planeloads of
ticketed passengers hanging around the airport because TACA never told anyone
that the flight was delayed! On the third day, there was a garbled announcement
that an announcement regarding that morning's flight would be issued sometime in
the afternoon. Sensible passengers took any available flight to any destination
at all on any other  airline: there was no hope that TACA would be taking us
where we wanted to go for at least another week.)  There is no guarantee that a
TACA flight will actually land in the same country as its announced destination.

The only good thing about scheduling a flight on TACA is that if you survive you
are sure to have a great tale to tell your grandchildren.

"Take A Chance Airlines" clearly deserves an "oops".

Or three of them, followed by the nervous laugh of the condemned on their way to
the gallows.

-- mike salovesh   <salovesh at niu.edu>   PEACE !!!

        IN MEMORIAM:     Peggy Salovesh
        25 January 1932 -- 3 March 2001