My worry is that school trips do seem to be proliferating at an alarming rate.

BBC: NEWS | Have Your Say | Should school trips be encouraged?

Expedia.com reports small increases in round-trip flights for June, July and August travel, domestic and international trips combined, but the increase is at a much slower rate than jumps of about 10% the previous two summers.

WSJ: The Best Places to Fly This Summer

With governments on both sides of the Atlantic scrambling to come up with new ways to stimulate their economies, encouraging companies to hire workers and bring the unemployment rate down, I started wondering: how much do our business trips stimulate the economy, and how many jobs do we save every time we take off?

BBC: Saving the global economy one business trip at a time

My main issue has to do with the fact that when I take these foreign trips, it's to get business done, because I also have an economy where the unemployment rate is 9.4 percent.

WHITEHOUSE: THE WHITE HOUSE