Eyebrows were raised when Macquarie, an Australian bank, bought Sydney airport in 2002.

ECONOMIST: Airport privatisation

Qantas planes have become my second home, and I always stop by my favorite spots at each airport, whether it's the 10-minute manicure place at JFK's Terminal B or a coffee stand near the transfers desk at Sydney Airport.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Colette Hume's cabin bag was first scanned after she checked in at Sydney's Kingsford Smith Airport for the QF107 flight to LA and New York on Monday morning.

BBC: reporter Colette Hume boards plane with aerosol can

Just over a week later, on 23 September, a Qantas Boeing 747, carrying 407 people on a flight from Sydney to London skidded off a runway during a tropical rainstorm at Bangkok Airport.

BBC: News | World | A string of disasters

"Bangkok's always been a destination despite rather than because of its airport, " says Peter Harbison, the head of the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation in Sydney.

FORBES: Regions

However, when twenty-three-year-old Sydney Provence, a University of Iowa physics grad student, picked me up in her Toyota Corolla at the airport in Cedar Rapids the first stop on my surfing odyssey I immediately confessed my misdeed.

NEWYORKER: You��re Welcome