You might have noticed that the dollar is not worth so much compared to the Euro. I've mentioned this a few times in the Oz Report. Well, now we find out that it is having another effect other than just sending us Americans to the poor house. Europeans are buying the comparatively inexpensive American goods (like Wills Wing hang gliders) and the airlines (that are always losing money) have realized that they can recover some of those loses by jacking up the freight rates to Europe. So they have tripled them.

This comes at an inopportune moment as I want to take or ship my glider to Nice, France and to the pre-Worlds. It appears to be much cheaper to take it with me in a Nene Rotor travel bag, but it is unclear if it will fit short packed on a Canadair Regional Jet 900. Linda at Wills Wing is checking on that.

I assume that the opposite is also true, that air freight rates going back to the US from Europe are the same or cheaper than before. We'll see.