Saturday, November 17, 2007

Controversial post

Given our apparently low readership, I was surprised to find that Ms. Boo's post on Sri Lankan Air was apparently quite controversial. Quoting commenter "Nike" (presumably not his/her real name?):


Fuck off you racist pricks!

I'm gonna fly SriLankan and there is nothing you can do about it

http://www.srilankan.aero

Which begs the immediate question - how on Earth did he/she find our blog?

Or perhaps the more pressing question - is this post really racist? I don't really see how that particular post could be so construed, although I suppose it does display some disregard for non-FAA regulated state-sponsored airlines. Looking up Sri Lankan airlines on wikipedia, it is apparently a well-regarded if somewhat small airline, winning international awards recently:
In March 2003 the Skytrax Research Agency’s worldwide passenger survey voted SriLankan, for the third consecutive year, Best Airline of the Year for Central Asia. In that same year TTG(Asia) voted SriLankan Best Airline in South Asia. In 2001 the UK’s Wanderlust magazine placed SriLankan eighth in its Top Major Airlines travel award category.

However, the incident referenced in The Week hardly makes on feel confident about flying Sri Lankan, and it would be hard to imagine any similar situation happening with a US carrier. That's why I would attribute Ms. Boo's humorous view more to "general queasiness about flying" than to "general ridicule of Sri Lankans." We are, of course, interested to hear from our diverse readership on this important issue.

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