Gads, what a weekend! I had to take a red-eye flight to Minneapolis on Saturday and back home the next morning on another flight that was so early that I never got to bed and ended up at back at SeaTac after 25 hours without sleep. By the time I staggered out of the arrivals terminal, I was unshaven, still in the clothes I left in, missed lunch and dinner the previous day, and breakfast at 4 AM Sunday consisted of a ham sandwich that cost as much as an entire pig and a poorly-made latte that I later regretted.
What made matters worse was that I'd been booked on one of those budget airlines that charge you extra for breathing inside the cabin and provide you with seats so small that you can't wear even a light summer jacket without it flowing over the arm rests. Worse, the only "free" entertainment aboard was the lone music channel that consisted entirely of Minnesotan artists. Thank God I'd remembered my MP3 player stocked with Beethoven symphonies and a couple of feature films–not that the latter did much good over the roar of the engines. Beethoven can cope with that, but not much else can.
Regular readers will know that I can't stand air travel. At least, I can't stand regular commercial air travel. If I travel by seaplane or some local prop service, I'm happy. But put me in those flying cattle cars that lurch between major airports, and I am miserable.
It isn't just the indignity of going through security checks that make me feel like I've been arrested. That's a nightmare in itself, but at least I get my revenge at the full-body scanner when the junior KGB agent has to look at the outline of my middle-aged body. No, it's mainly the increasing coarseness of it all. I've been flying for over forty years and I recall when air travel was an adventure. More than that, when it was something to be looked forward to rather than dreaded. There was once a time when airlines promised (and delivered) speed, comfort, and service. They weren't perfect by any means, but they at least did their best. It wasn't that long ago that airliners boasted lounges, bars, and proper sleeping berths. True, tickets back then were too expensive for the common man, but even when the age of mass travel started there was enough of a trickle-down from First Class that the coach passengers enjoyed an echo of gracious travelling.
I can understand how things have changed. Once the airlines competed against railways, ocean liners, and even airships. Now they compete against themselves in an environment that cuts margins to the bone, yet doesn't force enough of the weak sisters out of the game to make way for the real innovators. Add in security and government regulations and you end up with a powerful downward pressure combined with a bureaucratic mindset. All of this could be tolerated if it weren't for how a sense of shabbiness has crept into the whole thing. Despite the efforts of some of the better airports to improve things, terminals are more and more like coach stations without quite so many puddles of fresh urine. The depressing thing is that at least with coach travel you get a decent view of the countryside. As air travel becomes more like waiting for a Greyhound, so the passengers look and act more like the sort of people who do that sort of waiting: Men who dress like children, persons carrying frightening looking parcels, and those you really don't want to make eye contact or inhale downwind of.
Add in a service philosophy that treats passengers like cattle and you get flights like the one I was on Saturday where a coffee trolley becomes a source of excitement like an actual second of plot development during an episode of
Game of Thrones. No wonder I was the only one aboard who felt obligated to put on a jacket to travel instead of a shell suit and a baseball cap.
Why has this happened? Why this race to the bottom and why have people responded in kind? I think it's because air travel, at least at the major airlines end, is a bust. True, jet liners are fast and they don't require much infrastructure compared to railways and cars, but getting hundreds of tons of metal to fly through the air isn't cheap and it leaves so little profit margin that slicing an inch off the leg room sounds like a good idea. Can you imagine someone giving the deck chairs aboard the
Queen Mary or the smoking lounge seats on the
Hindenburg a similar treatment? So we've gone from stratoliners with sleeping berths to economy seats designed for midgets. Worse, it produces the attitude that makes the Peter Sellars advert at the top of the article look ludicrous by today's standards.
So, whats to be done? There are some simple things, such as accepting that you get what you pay for and that anyone who flies Ryan Air or Sun Country gets what they deserve, and there are others such as encouraging stronger competition in freer markets, but I suspect that technology will have the decisive role. For example, the development of more sophisticated air traffic control systems will allow true air taxi services to form and for even small jets to operate from local airports. Blended body designs and other improvements may take the pressure off airlines to cram in seats and allow them to work more on improving service to attract people away from older cylinder airlines. And the revival of the airship may bridge the gap between those who wish to travel in a hurry and those who wish to arrive in comfort.
Maybe, but in the meantime, I plan to travel by car whenever my schedule allows me.