Flying Into Hell

 

I don’t know about you but I have come to hate flying. A century or so ago, when I was a kid, I flew with my family to many foreign lands and a good deal of this one. It was always an exciting and pleasant experience. Now it’s torture and it’s become that way because the government has stepped back and let the airlines run the industry. Walking into LaGuardia, JFK or almost any American airport is like walking into an airport in Laos only without the atmosphere. They are dirty, dingy, cold and unwelcoming.

I know that as soon as the word regulation is mentioned Republican heads all over the country blow off Republican necks, but the fact of the matter is, any industry that is allowed to regulate itself, immediately begins to make huge profits even as all its service and amenities instantly disappear. Where once we had a dozen or so functioning airlines in this country we are now down to three or four. Mergers have eliminated competition and contributed huge profits to the now non-competitive remainder.

The result of all these mergers is, fares have gone up and service has all but disappeared. The remaining super carriers now feel that they can beat up their passengers for every dime they can squeeze out of them, shrinking seat sizes and cramping leg-room, eliminating human ticket service at the place of entry to most airports, and then charging premiums for normal seats so they can add smaller seats at normal prices. There is no such thing as a comfortable seat in tourist class on any American airline any more.

There was a time when airlines charged a fare to get from A to B and understood that since you were leaving home, you probably had to take a certain number of clothes and toilet articles with you, there was also the possibility that your plans might change and, if the plane wasn’t full, it wasn’t the passengers fault, so they should not be penalized for showing up on time with a ticket in their hand only to find that their flight had been canceled.

I actually remember flying in planes that had empty seats. I actually remember planes leaving on time, and we didn’t have to get to the airport hours before departure for that to happen. I actually remember getting to the airport a short time before departure, getting on the plane, taking my seat and the plane taking off, all in a time frame that did not require a change of calendar.

The airlines still remember all that too, but now they have discovered that they can steal a few extra bucks by charging extra for normal baggage and practically everything else they can conjure up. $200 buck change fees are just another scam and a way to pad the bill. There is always another passenger waiting to snatch up your cancellation. Changing ticket prices for the same seat based on nothing but an airlines whim is another. If the airlines want to charge up to $200 for changing your reservation then they should be forced to pay up to that amount to every passenger when they cancel a flight for any reason other than an engine falling on the runway. Oil prices have gone down but the “fuel surcharge” has gone up. How come? What is that, airline logic?

Of course getting to the cramped, overcrowded boarding area is even more of a problem now, due to the security processes that are dictated by the exigencies of the modern world. Homeland Security people are often quite helpful and courteous but unfortunately just as often, rude, inefficient and brute stupid with an attitude that they are doing you a favor by fondling the underwear in your carryon. We all know that this is a necessary evil but is it necessary to make it worse by having undertrained people conducting the process?

In some kind of strange attempt to make an uncomfortable process somewhat endurable, the powers that be, have decided that those over seventy no longer have to remove their shoes. I guess there are no terrorists over seventy or at least none with the remaining dexterity to pry off a heel and insert explosives. Who knows, maybe it’s just to save the rest of the passengers and security people from having to stare at all those gnarled feet.

The once scorned airline meals have disappeared in all but first class and only then, on the longer flights. They have been replaced by pay as you go fast foods and inedible snacks, the kind of crap that one wouldn’t feed to rats until one was sitting in a cramped airline seat for three hours awaiting a takeoff that has been delayed by “weather,” or a non-functioning part that they never seem able to replace.

Then there are the airports themselves; actually huge grimy shopping malls that pedal class “C” goods at class “A+” prices and food that makes Mickey D’s seem like Sardis with prices to match. Of course comparing these mini-marts to a mall is an insult to any every mall in the country because they are dingy, garish and depressing and to get from any part of them to your flight gate is like walking the entire length of Manhattan. In fact the only thing that is okay about most if not all airports is the availability of restrooms. It makes one think that the twelve year old who designed them must have had prostrate problems.

Having finished your flight you are now faced with getting out of another hellhole and getting home or to your destination.

Baggage takes forever to arrive at the carousel, usually situated in a part of the airport that was obviously, formerly used for garbage truck storage. When your bag arrives, it is, as often as not ripped to pieces. Once you tie it together you get to go outside in either sub-zero or sweltering temperatures and wait on rock concert length lines for cabs that while plentiful are hopelessly misdirected by airport personnel. If a private car is picking you up, these are directed, as far as possible, away from the baggage claim doors by over officious airport police whose only duty is, seemingly, to make the end of your flight experience as miserable as the airlines have made the rest.

The airlines are now making billions in profit each year. It’s no longer the time when airlines were going broke left and right. Any commercial flyer that goes bust now does so because of faulty management. Like all other profitable corporate businesses, management has run amok. They are no longer interested in just making a profit and providing a service. Now their line of success is measured by the space between that place where they can provide absolutely no service for their humbled and humiliated passengers and that point in their search for egregious profits where they face armed insurrection.

American airports have achieved the distinction of being the last place you would ever want to be, no matter how imperative your need to travel.