Let’s see if I can remember how that ran “de-regulation will introduce competition which will improve efficiency and increase options for passengers.” So we have ever fewer airlines and flights at higher costs with less service – yes, just like I assumed, the customers get screwed again.
Apparently the only thing they teach at business schools anymore is how to go into debt.
]]>Yet the planes are packed. Well, of course the planes are packed. If they only fly four flights a day when they get enough reservations for six flights, and bump the other two flights worth of people, of *course* the planes will be packed despite the fact that people do cancel reservations… yet another reason why I won’t fly.
]]>Unfortunately, federal rules require me to buy economy-class tickets. I have to rack up enough air miles to earn the upgrades.
]]>We had security because the various terrorist groups were high-jacking aircraft on a regular basis, but it made sense.
Today people travel under the conditions that are similar to steerage on the immigrant vessels of the late 19th century. How soon before conditions degenerate to those of the slave ships?
You are no longer allowed to complain without being arrested. That’s unAmerican! Every American has the inalienable right to bitch, kvetch, scream, and yell about service, especially service that you paid entirely too much money for in the first place.
I’m with you, Jill. Until I have the money to charter a plane, I’m staying on the ground.
]]>Yeah…right. I feel so much safer. I’m staying on the ground. When you hear of Air Traffic Controllers having to land planes by communicating via cell phone and with pilots and air traffic controllers being worked monster hours with no sleep…time to hug the ground when you travel.
]]>Julian Fellowes says, in the commentary on the Gosford Park DVD, that his great aunt (from whose recollections he drew many of the incidents he used in the screenplay for that movie) told him that his generation would never get to experience the pleasures of traveling–by which she didn’t mean the pleasure of arriving in another country, but rather the sense of effortless comfort in which people of her age and station traveled in bygone days when they could afford flocks of servants to make sure that the baggage was properly attended, reservations secured, and transportation engaged. I’m beginning to understand what she meant by that–and seriously wishing we could turn back the clock to her era, at least in that one respect.
]]>Some day sanity will return. I hope I’m around to enjoy it, because I’ve stopped flying altogether.
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