Well, meeting planning sort of is getting world recognition, anyway. According to ICCA, the World Tourism Organization, which is affiliated with the United Nations, has made a deal with ICCA, MPI, and EIBTM to include meeting industry data in its Tourism Satellite Account, which measures the impact of tourism on the economy.

A forthcoming WTO meeting scheduled for this October in Iguazu Falls, Brazil, is likely to agree the methodology by which meetings data is to be included in the overall TSA analysis, the first step towards achieving worldwide consistency of reporting, but the project has already enjoyed an immediate positive result in the publication of the latest official UN economic classifications, in which meeting and exhibition planning is included as an official category for the first time.

It was announced after the United Nations meetings; Expert Group on International Economic and Social Classifications, 20-24 June 2005 and Technical Subgroup of the Expert Group, 27-28 June 2005, that the profession of meeting and exhibition organising has been recognised by the UN in their “International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities”

One small step for planners, one large step for the profession!

According to this Reuters article, California grand juries “have indicted 40 pilots for fraud after they falsified medical records to hide disabilities like schizophrenia and severe heart problems that would have grounded them, federal officials said on Monday.”

While we don’t know how many were commercial pilots, the statement said there were at least some among the 40. Fourteen have already had their licenses pulled by the FAA; the rest of the cases are still pending.

This does not give me, the world’s biggest chicken when it comes to flying, a warm fuzzy. But then I think of people like my old roommate Dave, a commercial pilot, who is about the world’s most conscientious person, and I feel a little better—though listening to him and his pilot buddies tell their “war stories” is what gave me fear of flying to begin with.