Did you see the recent movie “Anger Management”? If you did, you may resonate with the scene where our hero, the mildest of men, is set up by shrink Jack Nicholson inflight and busted for “air rage” in a scene with an air hostess from hell and a Fascist thug of an air marshal. Our unfortunate hero, who didn’t say squat, was thrown to the floor, ‘cuffed, arrested on landing, convicted of a felony and would have gone to prison had not Shrink Jack stepped in to suggest a court-ordered course of anger management.
If such a scene has now entered the mainstream as to be featured in a Hollywood comedy you can safely assume this touches something fundamental, bloody and raw, in the battered psyche of the travelling public.
Few of us would say that air travel is a pleasure today, if we ever did. We are crammed for hours on end like sardines into a metal tube with air that is unfit to breathe and fed food that is so uniformly disgusting that it would make a dog retch. We are routinely lied to and charged a princely sum for the dubious privilege of it all.
Cruel & Unusual
This cruel and unusual punishment is not confined to the air, but begins long before you get near an airport. The lottery of buying a ticket at a decent price; trying to get through to an airline reservations clerk (if you’re silly enough to try to book direct); the angst of packing, so you won’t get swagged mega bucks in excess baggage; the abominable traffic getting to the airport, the interminable waiting, the queues, security procedures and delays in the airport itself; check-in times that get ever longer; not to mention check-in staff who hate passengers like poison, who can’t wait to zap you with any new rules the airline has just made up and not bothered to tell you about, leaving your wife repacking her frillies in a panic on the concourse floor.
Post 9/11 and the US Patriot Act the world got a lot worse. Now every jumped-up little Hitler or Beastess of Belsen working in airport security, immigration, customs, or for the airlines has carte blanche if not orders to ‘take no shit’ from the travelling public.
You don’t even want to look at these people wrong or they’re gonna git’cher.
What you have to understand is they hate us. How else could they treat us so? We are viewed and treated as cattle, not really human at all. If we are passive and accept the treatment dished out to us in mute misery, we were once tolerated. If we dared complain they hated us, but had to pretend they didn’t. Not any more. Now they don’t have to pretend, the law is on their side and the gloves are off.
How did we come to this?
As a passenger some may say I’m biased. I don’t think so. I recognise there are some really swinish passengers. Who hasn’t suffered in flight from some of these? Who of us hasn’t cringed at the hectoring and bullying tactics of a fellow passenger at check-in, trying to get an upgrade or take the family farm aboard with him. Some of us, if we are honest, may have employed such tactics ourselves. Drunks inflight are a real pain and travelling mobs of them a genuine menace. The thing is, there are already means in place to deal with such behaviour. Genuine security precautions are one thing and most of us recognise the need and willingly put up with the inconvenience. But the pendulum has swung way too far against the consumer. It is time for the flying public to stand up. Collectively we are bigger and stronger than they are and we don’t have to put up with it.
There is no real reason why flying has to be such an ordeal.
It can be stressful, but it doesn’t have to be gratuitously so. There’s lots of things that could be done to make it easier. The reason it is so awful is because everyone in the air travel and associated industries are organised. From government regulatory bodies, to airport authorities, from security staff to the airlines themselves, they’ve got it rigged to suit themselves. But nobody effectively represents the travelling public.
In other words it’s our own fault. If we don’t stand up for ourselves who will? How can we expect to be treated decently if we accept treatment that is inhumane? We, the travelling public, have become an unrepresented and barely tolerated commodity. But, without us the whole thing comes crashing down. Our persecutors would go bust or would be out of a job. Without them, it has to be said, we couldn’t get from A to B.
We need each other, we need to talk.....
Revolt of the Travelling Masses
Why not an international passenger’s union? A multi-national body with chapters in all major countries that would represent the interests of the travelling public at every level. Such a body could have real clout. Governments would have to really listen, or pay the cost come polling day. If the airlines didn’t listen, they’d go out of business, and quite right too. If only Ralph Nader would stop farting about running for President, he’d be perfect for the job.
Best of all we wouldn’t have to put up with the usual self-serving bilge from the established airlines. The success of low cost carriers like South West and RyanAir have really shown up how we’ve been stiffed by the major carriers all these years. If we want to get from A to B cheaply then it is reasonable not to expect any frills and to commit to a fixed travel plan. If you want more, then you have to pay for it. That’s fair,....... within reason.
Let’s have an honest comparative league table of all the airlines and how they really measure up in terms of value, what they provide and what they charge. None of that ad-driven grovelling from the contemptible travel press. That would stir the pot alright!
What doesn’t work is to charge the earth, advertise flying as one of life’s sexiest and most pleasurable experiences, serve up filthy food, operate a monopoly if you can, pack us in like a slave ship and generally treat us as travelling livestock. Not to stiffing us for inflated fees for excess baggage and any change of travel plans.
Just like the pharmaceutical companies the established airlines will tell you they are doing it for us. They need to charge these huge amounts if they are to maintain the level of service we, the public, demand. That is just so much owl dippy, as we’ve seen, whenever there’s been market de-regulation. Soundly managed airlines do well. The others are incompetent, provide lousy service, overcharge and still manage to lose money. Given half a chance they’ll go bleating to government for a bailout from the tax payer. Let ‘em go under, and good riddance. As for their employees let them go find a job with an airline that works, maybe that’ll help their attitude. Have you ever had a good experience with an airline that is employee-owned, operating under Chapter 11 or government-subsidised? Not unless you’ve had a lucky break or you’re part of the nomenklatura you haven’t....
Asia Blown Wide Open....
Finally, I’m so happy to see the situation in Asia has been blown wide open. In the old days Asian national carriers really did offer better price and service, way superior to the dreadful US and European IATA carriers of the day. But that was long ago. Now, they’re just as bad as the rest of the sorry bunch. Today, with the advent of Asia Air, Virgin, Air Paradise, Lion Air and others, we can now fly some routes at a fraction of the cost of what we had to pay before. Suddenly we find a dozen other low cost start-ups coming into the field. Who are these guys? Lo and Behold! None other than the likes of much-hated Qantas, scalpers like Cathay Pacific, SIA, and Thai, who all “discover” they can after all fly us where we want to go a lot more cheaply. Not only that, it seems they can offer us prices so low that the number of passengers in Asia, people who have never been able to afford air travel before, will triple in the months to come. Guess that means an even bigger cattle class.....,and more quality airport time......
