Enjoy commercial air travel? It's astonishing that we've taken an activity that should be wondrous each and every time we get to do it and make it so miserable.
The biggest problem is the asinine security theatre which keeps getting worse with no bottom in sight. Thank the USA for providing thought leadership here on the reactive, ineffective, outright imbecilic fronts. If that's not bad enough, airlines, airports, and passengers are all colluding to make the experience as bad as possible.
I get perverse pleasure now out of the dismay people experience coming into the brand new heathrow terminal 5. A significant percentage of deplaning happens onto buses. The pilots still tend to be apologetic about that. Should be embarrassing for BA. Even those who are spared the tedium of the buses just delay their dismay a few minutes, once it starts to sink in, after getting off the plane into a terminal building, they are still nowhere close to passport control and customs [five escalator rides and a train trip later....]
Do any airlines enforce carryon size regulations? Every flight I'm on there are more than a few people completely taking the piss with respect to "carry on" luggage. I can't fully blame passengers for being rude, as the airlines both tolerate and encourage this behavior. The encouragement comes from increasingly popular baggage fees. How stupid are airline executives? Appallingly so, based on this logic: all evidence is that baggage fees cause airlines to lose business overall, yet airlines that have them won't give them up because "baggage fee" revenue is up! This would be like a restaurant charging a fork-usage fee, losing half its custom, but declaring the policy a success because year-on-year fork-usage revenue increased from zero to positive.
Despite this, I still get a little thrill every time I get to board something as beautiful as a 747. But the glimpses of wonder from the fog of misery are ever briefer. Air travel industry, please wake up.
5 comments:
massive carryons are a pet peeve of mine. i think they should restructure boarding order to go by "least amount of crap first".
and maybe combine that with "fill from the front", so all the bozos carrying on two suitcases get shoved to the back of the plane.
Maybe if they started charging by total weight (you + all of your luggage) plus volume-in-cabin (you + carryon[s]) it would help.
USAir, headquartered in Tempe (and a miserable airline to fly) got most of it's positive revenue last year by increasing baggage fees, online booking and check-in fees, charging for even water and soft drinks, and they are considering making the on-board toilets "pay per use". They are the role model, forging a path forward, by which other airlines are trying to follow - let them follow USAir right into bankruptcy, and extinction.
As a silver Delta member now, I get 2 free check-in bags, so Friday night, we went out and bought the LARGEST wheeled suitcase we could find, to go along with our other large one, and those will take the yoga mats and snorkeling fins and gear and some clothes, while our small shoulder bags will carry laptops / netbooks and 1 or 2 changes of clothes for when JFK inevitably loses our checked bags. Adaptive strategies.
I still do enjoy seeing an Airbus 340 and it's "better than a 707" design as they taxi past (I've not been on one) and the 747 - though older than us - is a marvelous piece of engineering & art combined. As the planes get smaller, and more economized, they are much less alluring in my perspective. The 757 is downright unpleasant, and ITS over-head luggage racks are the tiniest of the "large aircraft", forcing most roll on bags to have to be stowed longitudinally, instead of "wheels first" due to the taper. Airbus 319 & 320s are not much better, but business class in a 321 can be enjoyable (akin to a 767).
The "total weight" concept is catching on in America, where the obese are beginning to be charged for 2 seats, especially if they do not "fit" in a standard sized seat.
charge for toilet use?!? Won't be pleasant when deposits are made elsewhere.
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