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FLIGHT CLUB
STEVE WEINMAN, EDITOR
I COULDN'T BELIEVE THE FIGURE when I first heard it. Unforgivably, I thought Pat Oates must at least have added a stray nought, so that when she said "nearly 400,000", she actually meant "nearly 40,000". Even 40,000 seemed such a lot.
But I should not have doubted the secretary of the Scuba Industries Trade Association (SITA) - when she said 400,000, she meant it.
I refer to the number of names on the petition which SITA, UK diving's trade body, launched in 2003 to test feeling on discriminatory airline baggage allowances. The latest figure is 409,925 and it's still growing. SITA has been helped in reaching this dizzy number in part by enlisting the help of PADI and gaining access to its membership lists.
Pat tells me that only one rugged PADI dissident raised her voice in protest, "but after we explained why we were doing this, she was happy to sign up". What we are seeing here is a massive display of diver power - SITA has, commendably and very quietly, gathered the ammunition, and now it needs to load, aim and pull the trigger.
SITA contacted DIVER to ask how we had tackled the baggage allowance question during our celebrated campaign some years ago. We explained that we had been fortunate to secure the perhaps unexpected backing of BA. It then put the proposal to have a global standard for divers' weight allowances to two annual conferences of IATA, the influential international airlines' association. Twice, sadly, the proposal was narrowly overturned by sectional interests.
Ever since, we have continued to field your letters on the subject. We have praised helpful airlines, noted promising developments and booed the baddies. You'll see a typical letter this month (having a go at BA, as it happens). The anger is real, because while golfers and skiers strut through check-ins with impunity, for divers it's still a lottery up there.
We see it with our own correspondents, who often have to carry test gear or camera equipment - a flight out to some destination, no problem, then they are clobbered for many hundreds of pounds on a further leg of the journey, often as a result of no more than the capriciousness of a jobsworth having a bad day.
SITA has had its critics, but three cheers to the diving trade for standing up and taking action. It is now contacting the airlines to seek real concessions for you, so if you haven't signed the petition already, visit www.sita.org.uk and download a form.
400,000-plus names should be enough to light bulbs in the dimmest airline marketing exec's brain. That's a lot of bums on seats, with or without a few extra kilos of divegear.
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