Dear President Bush,
While you and I don't quite get along - in fact, I'm pretty that I sob quietly to myself whenever I see you on the news - I was intrigued by a recent Reuters article which talked about how you were asking your transportation aides for a market-based solution to fix the drastic airline congestion and delays that most of us will experience during the holidays. I just wanted to let you know that I have an idea about that.

Basically, the airline delays come down to too many planes in the sky, right? So the best way to reduce congestion is to not have as many planes in the sky. Still with me? The best way to do that, in my humble opinion, would be to replace some of those planes with airships. Luxurious, beautiful, glorious airships that, importantly for this, would fly beneath the planes that held desperate passengers willing to be packed in like sardines in order to get to their destination quickly. Meanwhile, those of us on airships beneath would be enjoying good food, good drinks, and the ability to stand up freely and even - get this - walk around an actual room instead of up and down a cramped aisle way which half the time is fully of a monstrous drink cart or some two year old stealing some sleeping guy's laptop. After all - why go by plane when you could just as easily stick a fork in your ear and have the same experience?

I see that you're planning on imposing hourly flight caps at JFK this summer (which doesn't sound market-based, but what do I know) and that you're also opening up military air space for airlines - this sounds lovely, but I must emphasize that it's a measure we wouldn't need if you would just promote airships. They certainly sound more appealing than the auction system you're working on to allocate landing slots.

Just one more question, Mr. President - with all this congestion, it seems like there's a lot of flying going on. Why is the government giving these crappy airlines so much money to stay in business again?

Thank you for your time.