I was just invited to a conference in Lusaka, Zambia. Barring hitting the PowerBall, I won’t be attending.

The cheapest flight on Orbitz is a BA connection through London for the bargain price of $1,925. The most expensive flight is United to Zurich; Swissair to Jo’burg; and South African Airways to Lusaka. In coach. For $8,262.

You’d think they’d at least have the decency to not call that “economy”.

This reminds me of a conference I attended in Italy in 1999. The ticket cost me what I can bill a client in an afternoon. For the African man who attended the same conference, the ticket cost more than he could make in three months; in real dollars, his travel was five times the cost of mine.