This is for my friend, Kelly

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So, my friend Kelly, who also travels all of the time for work, recently became victim of her airline's new baggage vacation policy. It seems her airlines (which shares the initials of Alcoholics Anonymous) randomly selects luggage from their frequent fliers and sends that luggage on an all expense paid vacation to parts unknown. Unfortunately the owner of the luggage does not get the same privilege and is instead stuck heading to their scheduled destination (well, in Kelly's case, I think she only hit one scheduled destination last week) sans luggage.

As this is becoming a more common occurrence, and in light of all of the self help programs out there, I have developed a new 12 step program: Airlines Anonymous:

1. We admitted we were powerless over the evil airline—that our lives had become
unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that an Airline greater than our previous one could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of The Greater Airline as we understood them.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of our luggage.

5. Admitted to The Greater Airline, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have The Greater Airline remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked The Greater Airline to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all flights we had taken with the evil airline, and became willing to make amends for them all.

9. Made direct amends for such flights, wherever possible.

10. Continued to attempt to communicate the personal inventory of our luggage to the evil airline.

11. Sought through meditation to improve our travel karma.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to
carry this message to other business travelers, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.


Kelly, of course, was kind enough to participate in this endeavor by creating the prayer that will be said at the end of every Airlines Anonymous meeting:

"Greater Airline, give me the grace to accept with serenity, the evil airline that cannot be changed, courage to change the evil airlines which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish one evil airline from another"

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