Trip notes
I realized during the trip that I lived through and experienced the Golden Age of air travel: a time when airlines were regulated so that all airlines charged the same fares, so that airlines had to compete based on services and amenities. Those were glorious days to travel: the late 60′s and early 70′s, and I actually looked forward to those flights. Prices were perhaps higher then than now, but my company paid for my travel.
Airports were uncrowded, no real security screening—initially, just making sure you had ticket or, initially, just the ticket envelope on with the person at the counter and given you, marked with flight and destination. (They dropped this practice when they found that some were picking up the discarded envelope and using it as a ticket.)
Seats fully reclined—not a problem in those days before laptops and with rows substantially farther apart than now. Food was excellent and often served on a tray with a little tablecloth, cloth napkins, china, and stainless flatware (coach) or silverplate (first class).
Now it seems that we live in an era of hyper-capitalism with enormous databases that collect information on everything that allows the airline companies to trim costs and trim them further and trim them more until they have trimmed away everything that made air travel pleasant and the customers now have a dreadful experience. (Full disclosure: yesterday I got up at 5:30 a.m. to make my flight in San Jose, then my flight out of Philly was delayed for 2-3 hours. We finally left after midnight, arriving at our destination around 2:00 a.m.)
Of course, the TSA contributes to the unpleasantness. San Jose has the new scanners that allow the TSA agents to look through your clothing, so now you have to remove not only your shoes, but also your belt (so that you can’t commit suicide when you are fully beat down by the experience) and take EVERYTHING out of your pockets. I was still thinking of the x-ray days and left my wallet and little pack of business cards in my back pockets and my plastic vial of evening meds in my front pocket. Mistake: the agent had to see them (and he looked through my wallet to see how much money I was carrying) and then had to feel my buttocks. He kindly told me that he would feel with the back of his hands, which of course made this totally okay.
I also had to pay $25 to check one bag. The result of this new charge is that passengers REALLY don’t want to check their bags, so everyone brings their carry-ons to the gate—and some of those “carry-ons” are quite large, but soft sided so that they can be crammed into the overhead compartment. Naturally, most people care little about the convenience of their fellow travelers, so they will put their carry-on in the first empty overhead bin they encounter and then go on to the back of the plane to their seat, so that those boarding later find all the overhead bins full until they get toward the back of the plane: these people then must wait for everyone else to deplane before they can go back and get their bags. And on flights that are 100% filled—not unusual with the constant trimming of costs—there is simply not room for their luggage. Not the airlines’ problem, of course.
And the seats are crammed close together, with the “recline” limited to about 2″. I dropped some foam earplugs—and anything you drop is lost unless you wait until the plane is empty and then crawl under the seats to find it. You certainly cannot retrieve anything from the floor in flight: seats are too close together.
Some things are inexplicable: all seating, in the airplane and in the airport, seems designed for discomfort. Is comfortable seating that costly? or do the airlines feel that they can’t be arsed with that? And though people get tired during a long day of travel while waiting from 7:45 p.m. to after midnight, but the benches are carefully designed to prevent anyone lying down—that would be awful, and if they really MUST lie down, they can lie on the floor.
In other words, nothing—nothing—is done except for the purpose of cutting costs, and the comfort and convenience of the traveler doesn’t show up in the bottom line—especially with ALL airlines taking the same steps to cut costs. And they keep outwitting us: I took an empty 1-liter bottle through security, filled it from a water fountain, and felt quite good until I got to LA and took the shuttle from the remote terminal to the main terminal, where we were left outside the secure area so had to go through security once more: there went the water. At least LA doesn’t have the scanners that allow the TSA to view your naked body, just the now-usual routine.
And, thanks to technological progress, the airport is now filled with people talking loudly to themselves—something one wants to avoid even after spotting the bluetooth device in their ear. (Note to crazy people: Get an old bluetooth earpiece and wear it; then people won’t be so distressed by your on-going conversation with demons.)
I realize that this diatribe makes me sound like an old curmudgeon. So be it.
My friend was coming to visit me with her children, aged 2 and 4, from a small city in the Midwest. She bought tickets for a sleeper car on Amtrak: they boarded at 8 pm, some initial excitement for the kids, but asleep by 9:30 pm, arrived on the East Coast for me to pick up at the train station the next morning, with just enought time to have breakfast in the dining car and pack up before arriving. About 12 hours total travel time, most of it asleep in a nice little bunk in a nice little (teeny) room. Restless children could walk the halls in the train, be taken to the dining car, be taking to the observation car… Diapers could be changed on the bed, instead of across the laps of nearby airplane passengers. And except for her laptop and an overnight bag, all of her luggage and the carseat were checked by the porter at the station and she didn’t have to deal with them again until Baltimore. If she had flown, it would have cost more money, taken the exact same amount of time from leaving her home to arrival in Baltimore, and entailed two changes of plane, plus carrying on the luggage (so it wouldn’t disappear enroute) and carrying on the carseat. She said there was just no way she would possibly consider doing that kind of trip with the kids.
Looking forward to your Amtrak report!
The Eldest
7 October 2010 at 10:06 am
The GOP is determined to fight any expansion of passenger rail service and would love to kill Amtrak (“socialism!!!”). But so long as it survives I think it might be the answer.
I remember when I was doing all that travel during the Golden Age of air travel (gone forever, I believe), we once had to take the train from Iowa City to Chicago: an ice storm had totally shut down local airports and also made driving unsafe. We got to the train station, bought our ticket, and asked carefully about how many pieces of luggage we could take aboard—a question the ticket agent found amusing.
LeisureGuy
7 October 2010 at 10:12 am
You really haven’t traveled a lot by air lately! As you know, I’ve been having similar rants for quite a few years…probably more keenly felt because of my 6’2″, 250 lbs + size.
My wife put it best some years ago: “they used to treat us like customers….now we’re just potential terrorists”.
With the exception of bordellos geared to punishment, bondage, and humiliation, I can think of few other activities for which we pay to suffer such indignities. But the mystery is that we continue to take it, and without a whimper (whimpers are no longer allowed by the TSA as they constitute “aggressive” behavior”).
Steve
7 October 2010 at 7:12 pm
You have the RIGHT to OPT-OUT.
Click on my name above or go to:
http://DontScan.me
for important safety and privacy information as well as actual images, not the propaganda that TSA is spewing.
Wimpie
7 October 2010 at 7:27 pm
@Steve: You’re right: I travel by air very little and now, if possible, not at all.
@Wimpie: thanks for the link. I shall indeed opt out next time.
LeisureGuy
8 October 2010 at 4:45 am
This is all the stuff many of us think. I have flown only during the cheap ages of the past 20 years, never during my younger years. I know from older family members how it was, and remember picking up my aunt at the airport — dressed to kill and fully martini-ed, quite happy to have had the flight.
Now it is just a bus with wings. I frankly will put up with it because I have done NC to AZ by car. Once. In July. Without air conditioning.
My personal approach:
1. Be as nice as possible to everyone, since misery shared is more misery with a negative attitude. I try to live by an old motivational poster at stressful times: Your attitude determines your altitude.
2. Do not react to unpleasantness. Just get all Zen on the TSA kabuki show. Applicable quotation: Do not anger yourself: you will only shorten your life.
3. Look out the window! The view is fantastic, and a thing unimaginable and unobtainable 100 years ago. Night flights have their own special beauty, especially landings at Greensboro, NC, with heavy tree cover making house and street lighting a delightful fantasy landscape. Also, a good airborne sunset is a fine thing to behold.
4. For a moment of mean-natured self-satisfaction, allow yourself about 30 seconds to think of the air-head you know who was going to be a glamorous stewardess. A good thought while observing the beverage cart battle. Not that there are not many very nice flight attendants trying to make the best of a situation they did not create, either.
5. For the quantitative among us, figure out the cost of the trip in time and dollars if you had driven. Your seat will become ever so slightly more spacious when you have finished.
6. Music and reading opportunities are transcendent.
7. Remember one last thing: It has all been done before, in a covered wagon!
bill bush
8 October 2010 at 4:59 am
The customer votes with his feet. If you choose to fly despite being treated like shit, it means you tacitly endorse what’s being done to you. The other option is to not fly but seek out other forms of transportation.
The airlines will of course never get because they don’t have to. There are 5 guys waiting for your seat happy to pay and be mistreated because it’s better than what they ever knew before.
Steve
8 October 2010 at 10:43 am
@Bill: Good advice and I do indeed try to remain centered and calm. But one can’t help but wonder why ALL seating—in the airport and in the airplane—seems designed to be uncomfortable. It’s as though they are actively working against the customer having a pleasant experience.
LeisureGuy
8 October 2010 at 2:04 pm