Yoshi Herman, thank you very much for joining us here on The Globalist. Now, the American elections are a week today and we speak of little else. But one of the ways that that's impacting on the team here at Monocle is that many of us are flying off to the States within the next couple of days. In fact, I'm leaving a little bit later today. Chris Chermak is already in Washington. He'll be presenting the briefing from there today. And a lot of our crew are jetting off tomorrow. But woe betide those who try and cut the line. Laura Kramer, tell us what American Airlines is doing about this.

Yeah, I wonder if you do this, Georgina. I'll be very interested to know because I did hear that studio manager Lily Austin is potentially guilty of this. Now, American Airlines is testing a system at three US airports to stop line cutting during boarding. Very important. So the technology alerts gate agents with a sound. If somebody scans their ticket before their assigned group, gate agents can politely then redirect passengers with options to override the alert for exceptions. And apparently, American Airlines says the trial has shown some positive results. I mean, just

how embarrassing, isn't it? I

mean, what possesses, why is this needed? But yeah, so it's three airports. It's happening at Albuquerque International Sunport in New Mexico, Tucson International in Arizona, and also the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Virginia. So

I have to say, rather than cut the line, I tend to sit in the waiting area until the very last moment. That's

fair. A lot of people do that because you know, you're about to be on a flight anyway, you're going to be in the seat is reserved for you. But did here's my question about the whole thing. Is this the best use of technology at airports? Because I can think of about a million different ways that we could incorporate technology to make flying just nicer. You know, for example, you know, monitor checks or lines that give you real-time direct travelers to the shortest queues or maybe helping out with adjusting staffing as needed. Maybe some sort of technology that helps people navigate airports. Sometimes they can be very confusing, especially for people who don't speak English. They're a better use of technology, surely.

Yeah, I was thinking maybe there could be like a special death ray that came down and like zapped anybody standing in the middle of a corridor looking at their phone with their luggage blocking the way. It's

interesting. It seems that airlines are now, with social media, with seeing more people posting about their experiences in public places, we're seeing airlines and airports kind of reacting to some things. And we've heard about many instances where people maybe retract their seats. We don't know if that's socially acceptable or not anymore. There are very passionate debates on both sides, and airlines and everybody who is travelling in the public space are trying to navigate all the nuances of the tech that's available. Absolutely.

Etiquette has changed.

Yes, it has. Absolutely.

And there needs to be a new guide for that. Laura, we're just about our US coverage. And in fact, Monocle is going to be doing a great deal on the US elections. As we say, Chris Chermak is in Washington. That briefing comes from the city today.

It's very exciting because we're going to have a team that's going to be heading to Atlanta as well. We'll have Carlotta Ribello, our US editor, Chris Lord on the ground. They'll be reporting from Atlanta. You yourself are going to Charleston, a very important area. After that, the team will be then reuniting in Washington, D.C. for the big night to see all the coverage that's happening, reporting from different parties, different things that they're hearing. It's going to be really 360 on the ground reporting to hear what's happening. And of course, we'll also be having the team here in London across everything. So one week to go. It's very exciting. We'll have a lot to bring the listeners.

Absolutely. It's going to be absolutely fascinating. And the fact that it comes down to a relatively tiny amount of voters.

Yes, absolutely. And you know, everybody is obviously trying to jump on the bandwagon. I got a PR release yesterday saying that ChatGPT, Georgina, had predicted that Kamala Harris will win the election, but it apparently said that it's going to be a very narrow margin. So we'll see if ChatGPT is right about

that or indeed all the other polls. Thank you very much indeed to Laura Kramer. And that's all for today's programme. Thanks, as I say, to Laura, to our other producer, Carlotta Ribello and our researcher, Sana Jumani. Our studio manager today was Lily Austin with editing assistance from Mariella Bevan. And the briefing is live at midday in London. The Globalist will return at the same time tomorrow. As I said, after that interview with Gabriel Gatehouse, you can hear a full interview with him on Sunday. That's at noon London time on the latest edition of Meet the Writers, where he really goes into what's behind these conspiracy theories, what the theories are, where they came from, and really whether there's any truth in them. So that's something if you're interested in American politics, you might want to bookmark to come back to later. I'm Georgina Godwin. Many thanks for listening. Goodbye.