Where I daven in Israel we always have people traveling back and forth to the US, either people on business, relatives visiting, etc. Therefore, every shabbos there is a parade of people coming up to bench gomel. I believe that this practice is wrong and is a bad thing. The idea of benching gomel is that we want to thank hashem for saving us from a dangerous situation. Nowadays, flying to the US is safer then driving to work. There is little or no danger and therefore most probably no חיוב to make the ברכה. In fact, IMHO this trivializes the whole thing. If you watch the people who make the ברכה you can see that there is no real emotion there, they are not really thanking hashem, this is understandable, nothing happened to them. What this does is desensitizes people to the idea and meaning of ברכת הגומל and makes the whole thing into a bit of a joke.
On a related topic, R' Shachter in נפש הרב says that the Rav did not say תפלת הדרך when he commuted from Boston to NY to say his shiurim because it was completely routine for him. He explained that תפלת הדרך is based on the idea of תפלה בעת צרה and therefore does not apply to a routine commute. This is not the opinion that is normally held, I heard a tape from R' Reisman who claimed that someone traveling from Monsey to Manhattan every day would say תפלת הדרך every day. The Rav's position on תפלת הדרך would seem to support my position above about ברכת הגומל.
