Why flying has become a pain in the back seat

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This was published 6 years ago

Why flying has become a pain in the back seat

By Lee Tulloch
Cattle class: Blighted by not enough space, bad air quality and grumpy passengers and flight attendants.

Cattle class: Blighted by not enough space, bad air quality and grumpy passengers and flight attendants.Credit: iStock

Some airlines can't take a trick. United Airlines, which suffered a battery of negative publicity when a passenger was bloodied after being forcibly dragged off his flight at Chicago's O'Hare airport, is now accused of killing the world's largest bunny, Simon, who recently expired on a flight from Heathrow to Chicago.

Poor Simon was going to his new owner, former model Annette, who has undergone surgery so that she looks like Jessica Rabbit from the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

I know this sounds whimsical but sometimes modern air travel reduces one to tears and a bit of levity can't go astray.

Flying as a commercial passenger can feel utterly dehumanising these days. Those long queues at check-in and security can make you feel like a can of soup on a production line.

Add to this the delays with little information, the long, aching hours in confined spaces, the overhead-locker luggage wrangling, poor air quality, misbehaving fellow passengers, sullen flight attendants, and all the ways airlines have worked out how to fleece us (charging for seat allocation and blankets) and it's no wonder some passengers come away feeling they're of no consequence at all to the carrier.

There's the further insult of the class system, whereby those who shell out the most get the best attention. Who doesn't feel smug as they've turned left when boarding the plane? I admit to this appalling instinct, even though my egalitarian spirit tries to quell it.

There's nothing wrong in this business model provided all passengers are treated respectfully. Many airlines do try to make the flight experience as comfortable as possible, if only because a planeload of irate passengers is not something they want to have to appease. The trouble is, you can't be sure of your treatment, as much as you can't be sure you won't have a child kicking the seat behind you for the entire flight. Some cabin crews are just ornery. Some passengers are just feral.

Flight attendants, who often work under immense pressure from an airline bent on economising, sometimes go rogue, as did the American Airlines staffer who last month hit a mother when he wrestled a stroller from her. From the flight attendant's point of view, the passengers are just getting worse, their air rage inflamed by sardine-can seating, fewer and fewer amenities and more and more bureaucracy from airlines and airports. Crowded airports and bolshie security people mean that passengers are stressed before they even take their seats.

Even The New York Times editorial writers felt the need to discuss the parlous state of contemporary air travel after Dr David Dao was dragged off United Airlines. "This is an oligopolistic industry that has become increasingly callous toward customers as it rakes in billions of profit thanks to strong demand and low oil prices," they wrote sternly.

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Air travel to the US, although by no means reserved to America, seems a very expensive way to be reminded of your essential worthlessness. In Australia and Asia we're well served by award-winning airlines, although even the best have lapses. The test for an airline for me is how they handle delays, mistakes and disasters. Surely it's easy enough to treat passengers like people, not seat numbers? Not so easy apparently.

And then there's this – flying frequently can be bad for us due to several factors including exposure to cosmic radiation, which damages tissues and DNA. Those carbon emissions are bad for the planet. Gulp.

So, are we all masochists?

Well, air travel is cheaper and safer than it has ever been, so in many ways we are all victims of commercial aviation's success. The democratising of air travel now that it's more affordable, the larger planes, the number of airports that have opened up and the ease of purchasing tickets online are some of the reasons why flying is now like taking a bus. And as no-frills as taking the bus.

And it's wonderful. I think in all the complaints we lose sight of the fact that air travel is a privileged freedom that would not have been possible for those on average incomes 70 years ago. I think about this and am grateful every time I step on a plane, every time I look out the window as we soar through marshmallow clouds.

I just wish that, when the crunch comes, I were more to the airline than the money-making unit in seat 55A.

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