“A complete lack of common sense here.”

Those are the words of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, commenting on the recent “trapped on the tarmac” ordeal of nearly 50 passengers in Rochester, Minnesota.

You may recall that the passengers were heading to Minneapolis on a Continental flight – operated by ExpressJet – when they diverted to Rochester due to storms. But no one let them off the plane.

Meanwhile, the ExpressJet crew has been more or less cast as the bad guys in this saga, for supposedly forcing their passengers to sit on that plane, for nine hours – but, according to LaHood, they were actually very good guys. In fact, they pleaded with people in the airport to let the passengers come in, but – nothin’ doin’. ExpressJet executives also got into the act, with the same result.

The problem, apparently, is that ExpressJet was talking to people from Mesabe Airlines – the only carrier with a staff left in the airport at that late hour – and maybe they’d been appointed official-phone-answerers, I don’t know – but the Mesabe-ites kept saying, the passengers couldn’t come in.

Sounds nuts to me. Where were the airport people? If they weren’t around, why didn’t anyone know how to get hold of them?

How about some new procedures – like, “every airport must have a hotline for after-hours problems” – and every crew member should have that hotline number.

Since I’m no genius, I have to believe someone else has thought of this before, so – why hasn’t it been done?

Simply shocking.

According to ABC, there are baggage thieves at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport -and an unidentified Continental employee claims, the thieves are her colleagues.

The woman goes on to say that she’s actually seen these jerks rifle through bags and take stuff.

That stinks of course, but I’m not too crazy about this unidentified woman either – I mean, nowhere in this report does it say what this woman did with the knowledge that some of her co-workers were stripping peoples’ bags – did she tell her superiors, call the cops? I don’t know. I’d like to know.

Continental naturally, says thefts are rare, but they have security in place, work with the police, blah and blah. And, as ABC points out, plenty of other airlines have had their problems with employee theft.

Tip: Don’t put valuables in checked-bags. Ever.

You heard about that Continental jet that slid off the runway in Denver a few days before Christmas then caught on fire – well, the lawyers are now involved.

Two women who were passengers on the plane have filed suit in a district court in Houston – alleging that the pilots were negligent and/or there were mechanical problems. Continental’s retort: wait just a second, the federal investigators haven’t even figured out what caused the crash yet.

Here’s what I found most interesting: according to a story in the Houston Chronicle, the two women told their lawyer that “they were unsatisfied with the way Continental treated them after the crash.” Yes, one of the women did receive money from the airline to compensate her for her lost belongings, but according to the lawyer, “Continental sent an employee to supervise her shopping”.

That lawyer says, there will be more lawsuits. Quelle surprise.

Naturally, we are talking about the President of Palau (which, as we ALL know, is an island nation about 500 miles east of the Philippines).

Here’s what went down: Mr. President was visiting the Philippines and was about to head off to Guam. It gets a little murky here, but apparently he was told he had to go through regular security procedures to get on board his Continental flight, procedures that include the possibility of getting frisked, and…he didn’t want to! So he left in a huff (most likely, a limo) and disappeared into his hotel.

Confession time: I don’t know where Palau is, but then again, I’m a product of the American education system, but I do know when a guy is a head of state, and Mr. President certainly qualifies so…I would have given him a pass.

Don’t worry, he did get out the next day…on a charter.

No, it’s not what you think.

We’re talking about switchgrass, a sometime ingredient in so-called “second generation” biofuels (“first generation” biofuels had stuff like corn and palm oil in them, which require a lot of water and land to produce so it’s not real “green” if you catch my drift).

Anyway, Continental is getting into the biofuel testing game (Virgin was the first), to reduce that fabled (and utterly cliched) carbon footprint.

Keep reading, because I have more to say.