I've happily been on airplanes in most of the countries discussed. From small airlines who gave me handwritten boarding passes in Myanmar to non-western but wo

I've happily been on airplanes in most of the countries discussed. From small airlines who gave me handwritten boarding passes in Myanmar to non-western but world-class carriers that are still banned from US airspace over safety issues from the past to flights in and out of many of these airports using major international carriers. This is a fascinating article about a lot of aspects of development and parts where different airports are behind, but getting on an airplane in Asia is still one of the safer things I do on that continent. (Or any others I've been on.) I find US media has a habit of doing hand-wringing about other countries safety problems, or perceived safety problems when there's really not a substantial difference in outcomes. Also... specifically in the case of South Korea, I find it funny the article breathlessly implies that since South Korea has only installed two wind down-shear warning systems, that's somehow behind the curve. That almost certainly means ICN has one, which means a shockingly large percentage of that country's international flights are through an airport with coverage. Assuming the other system is either at Gimpo or Busan, that takes care of a large percentage of the remaining traffic. (There's certainly domestic air travel in South Korea, but last time I needed to move about the country, I just took the KTX bullet train. So much more awesome.) WSJ's implication that South Korea is unspeakably behind in deploying these systems seems a little strange. I'm surprised they don't have computerized flow management, but I'd also be interested to understand why. I'd hazard a guess it might be because a lot of the traffic in that country is on either approach or take off, so it's already in local controllers hands and flow control for transiting traffic is simply not a large part of their controllers' duties? I dunno, anyone an aircraft controller who can shine light on this one? :) I doubt South Korea hasn't deployed the technology because they can't or don't want to, Seoul makes most any American city feel like the the past in comparison. I live in SF and coming home from some of the cities in Asia feels like moving backwards a decade.