Today we shall briefly steer away from our usual exercise in political commentary, instead choosing to offer a public service announcement for those considering travelling by air in the immediate future: Don’t do it. Air travel, for those of us unable to afford chartered jets or who don’t have their own Gulfstream, has been reduced to nothing more than a painful incentive to procure a subscription to NETJETS. Miserable, would be the most obvious descriptive. As you may have surmised, I have recently flown domestic and wish to share my experience, because, well, I’m a sharing kind of guy. Obviously….. I pay taxes. But I digress. For travelers old enough to remember the golden age of air travel where well-dressed people possessing manners and some sense of decorum flew in relative comfort would be horrified to see the ill-bred, slovenly miscreants that now stalk the concourse, jockeying for position in their boarding groups to cram their carry-on baggage into the overhead racks in an attempt to avoid additional charges. Thirty bucks per bag is now the going rate for checked luggage, a move by the airlines that hasessentially trained the public and the luggage industry into producing bags of suitable dimensions to satisfy airline requirements on what you can bring aboard. Consequently, boarding the aircraft has become a mad rush to the gate to secure your space in the overhead bins. Instead of casually strolling aboard, we now have the added stress of a line backed all the way up the sky bridge as passengers search for a spot, then attempt to fit their square peg bag into theround bag hole. The passengers already seated in the aisle seats are thus subjected to a face full of someone’s exposed overweight midsection or worse yet, their backsides, as they huff and puff to lift their overstuffed case into the overhead racks. Studies have shown that in this, the age of Covid, the greatest potential risk of contracting the bug from a fellow passenger occurs on entering and exiting the aircraft, when all the animals are crammed into the chute exerting themselves getting their bags into and out of the racks while the aircraft’s HVAC is not running at peak efficiency with the plane idle. Hilariously, the second highest risk of exposure occurs when the flight attendants distribute beverages and snacks, and passengers are allowed to remove their masks. Thus 184 passengers(Boeing 737 Max8), crammed into what is essentially a flying cigar tube, all remove their masks in unison, because everyone knows that Covid can’t be spread when you’re seated eating pretzels. It’s all about the science, you know.
And checking your bag, interestingly, subjects you to a weight limit where 50 pounds is the maximum allowed for your $30 surcharge. Over that limit and you find yourself humiliated with the rest of the animals, hands-and-knees on the floor pulling brassieres and shoes out of your checked luggage and madly stuffing them into your carry-on bag to meet the weight limit. All of this, of course, is a preposterous exercise in shifting weight from one bag to another, presumably to save the union baggage handler from straining his back while saving no weight at all onwhat is ultimately loaded onto the aircraft. If you are unable to distribute the weight more evenly, you do have the option of paying an additional $100 penalty, and they end up taking the bag anyway. The hell with the baggage handler’s sacroiliac. And it amuses me to no end when a 300-pound passenger skates through with his 49-pound bag while the 110-pound elderly woman gets dinged for her bag being a pound overweight. Clearly this isn’t about weight at all or they would require both the passenger and the bags to get on the scale. Weight translates into fuel consumption and shouldn’t you pay your fair share? Now that would be fun.
And flying with Gen Z is always entertaining; as apparently these woke 20-somethings suspect that rules are made for somebody else. Yes, I am an old curmudgeon, but to employ your own boorish vernacular: you guys suck. With cellphones firmly in hand, masks casually protecting their chins only, or at best allowing their noses to remain exposed, I witnessed three of their ilk in a two row radius ignore the instructions to place their phones in airplane mode. Instead they could clearly be seen texting, shopping, surfing instagram and streaming video while we taxied for takeoff. The woman in front of me, her perfectly manicured nails highlighting her pudgy, uncalloused, unblemished hands, obviously unaccustomed to work of any sort, danced on the keyboard with the attention span of a fruit fly. Another young couple, he replete with trendy beanie, piercings and tattoos, was unable to sit still, sorting through the overhead rack three times in a two-hour flight, until he was finally treated to a flight attendant lecture on appropriate mask wearing and remaining seated. Idiots.
And all this after receiving the militant recorded message on accepted masks that has been added on to the traditional, yet incredibly instructive, pantomime on how to buckle a seat belt. Amusingly we were also told to remove our face masks prior to donning those yellow oxygen masks that magically drop from the ceiling when, as comedian Billy Connolly once said, we likely go into the ground like a [bleeping] dart. The mask instructions were repeated multiple times, specifically addressing the need to cover your nose and mouth, like we haven’t figured that out by now, with guidance as to the exclusion of mask types such as cloth, bandanas and mask that have valves. So many rules. And that was just on the airplane. In the terminal, we were treated to a continuous loop every 15 minutes advising that federal mask mandates are in effect on airport property with a first offense fine of $1500 followed by a second offense fine of $3000. Yet amazingly by comparison you can shoplift up to $950 worth of merchandise in San Francisco and it’s all good. Any bags left unattended will be confiscated and searched. You must comply, comrade. And speaking of complying, have you tangled with TSA recently? Oy. I am convinced that they purposely have no standard set of rules from one airport to the next just to watch us take our belts and shoes off like good Pavlovian dogs, then tell us we don’t have to. In an attempt to avoid this fiasco I actually enlisted in the TSA pre-check program where they suck $85 out of you, get your finger prints, photograph you, and run a background check, supposedly to allow you to whisk through the TSA checkpoint with minimal hassle. It worked like a charm at my local second-tier airport where I was allowed to remain clothed and wasn’t scanned or otherwise violated, but it went right out the window when I hit the big leagues. Miami International, an airport that makes you feel like you’re in a third world country without ever having to leave the continental United States, has no pre-check at all,instead subjecting everyone to the canine sniff test. Passengers are placed a certain distance apart and have to walk a runway while the dog and his handler walk around you in circles. Proceed through the doggie zone at too brisk a pace and you get hollered at to return to the start and do it again. They are militant and unpleasant in that Beirut airport style, absent the machine guns. And even after you get sniffed by Rin-Tin-Tin, you still have to go through the metal detector so off with that belt anyway. They do however throw you a bone by letting you leave your shoes on. Thank you so much.
And in this era of equality, why exactly do we still have a first class section on the aircraft? The very name implies a caste system, class distinction and inequality doesn’t it? If they’re first class then that makes the rest of us second class, doesn’t it? You know, those in steerage, the peons, serfs, proletariats, and riff-raff. Choose one of the above. Whilst the rest of the cabin is crammed in cheek-to-jowl in 25 rows, six across, these elitist pretenders are luxuriating in four rows of four with a curtain between us so we can’t see how the other half lives. Economy class seats are thinly padded affairs and are a mere 17 inches wide. First class seats are a well cushioned, 21 inches wide with greater leg room and 7 degrees more recliner angle. And to make matters worse, part of the package is that they get to board the aircraft first, so they can sip their martinis out of a real glass while they watch the cattle get herded into the back in the walk of shame. Further, the first class cabin has its own restroom for a ratio of 16 passengers per one toilet. The steerage cabin has two restrooms for 168 passengers, a ratioof 84:1. You better hope the norovirus is not flying along with you. A passenger on my last flight asked the flight attendant what kind of beer they served. We don’t serve alcohol “back here”, she replied. Her tone implied the unspoken “you peasant”. But they have to pay more for those seats, you may reply. Really? Well I pay a helluva lot more taxes than 61% of America (you know, the 61% that pay no taxes at all) and I’m still waiting for my benefits.
And while on the subject of equality, have you taken a brief survey of the racial makeup of the crowd on the concourse? I had the misfortune of flying through Philadelphia, Washington Reagan and Miami and I’m here to tell you that anyone who suspects this country is lacking diversity, hasn’t been traveling by air. Granted, Spanish is widely recognized as the loudest spoken language on the planet, which may contribute to the perception that everybody seems to be speaking it, and nobody seems capable of using their inside voice anymore, let alone put the damn phone to their ear rather than scream into the speaker held at arm’s length, but English was not overwhelmingly represented, and was well in the minority in Miami. Further, Black and Brown, as the current liberal trend pigeonholes us into colors, were represented in numbers far exceeding their demographic, and certainly cannot be said to be oppressed based on their opportunity to travel by air. And airport workers, those in custodial positions and service jobs, were overwhelmingly Black and Hispanic, reflective as one would suspect not of the country as a whole but perhaps more reflective of the urban communities in which airports are located. Opportunity for people of color also extended well into the gate attendants and flight crews where less than half of the flight attendants on my four flights were white. Yet I haven’t heard the cry from the left that airport workers are not diverse enough and white folks appear underrepresented. I can’t comment on the pilots because nobody gets to see them anymore, barricaded in the cockpit as they are. But some of you may recall that there was a recent outcry that people of color were not adequately represented in the pilot’s ranks with calls to cast a wider net for applicants. United Airlines announced that it “aims to train an incoming class of pilots in which enrollment rates of women and people of color equate those of white male students. Our flight deck should reflect the diverse group of people onboard our planes every day. That’s why we plan for 50% of the 5000 pilots we train in the next decade to be women and people of color.” Uh-huh. Conservative author Brigitte Gabriel summed it up best when she responded:“United Airlines is now prioritizing race and gender over qualifications for hiring future pilots. They are literally putting the lives of their customers at risk in the name of being woke”. Bingo. That could be the reason why United failed to make the list of the top 5 domestic airlines according to Travel + Leisure magazine. Even more telling is that precisely zero airlines from the US made it onto thelist of the top 10 international airlines.
On the last leg of my flight home, two members of Congress, both Republicans, were aboard the aircraft, checking in for a 3PM flight on a Friday afternoon. Nice to know that they put in a full day at the office doing the people’s business. Naturally, they were seated in first class. That got me thinking. Who pays for this? Well, we do of course. Senators and members of the House get an annual expense account with Senators receiving a budget close to 3.3 million dollars while their colleagues in the House are allotted $900K for staff expenditures and an additional $250K for travel expenses. As pointed out by the Motley Fool, “I’m not aware of any business out there where all employees equally get at least $1.2 million in expenses at their disposal.” Chuck Schumer (D-NY) spent $140K in the first half of the fiscal year on travel alone, much of it through private charters, earning him the nickname “Charter Chuck”. In the interest of equality, it is important to note that he was equaled by Senator Cornyn (R-TX) who spent $38K alone on a Maryland retreat for his 59 staff members and the remainder on chartered flights in his home state of Texas. Naturally the excuse is, that to make themselves accessible to their constituents, particularly in large states, they are required to extensively travel and cannot always conform their schedules to that of commercial airlines. This despite the majority of Schumer’s trips destined for points less than one hour from a commercial airport. Citizens for Government Waste stated that “Charter flights should be the choice of last resort. It shouldn’t be used like a cab. It’s the most carbon intensive and expensive way to fly.” Keep that in mind the next time Chuck lectures you about the existential threat of climate change. So with all these perks, their salary of $17400 per year, $223500 for the Speaker of the House, remains virtually untouched. Additionally the Airport Authority reserves 92 parking spaces next to the terminal at both DC airports free of charge for members of Congress. And they obviously need those parking spaces for long-term parking. After all, in the last year there were only 126 scheduled sessions of Congress and not one of them landed in a five-day workweek. That leaves them 239 days off including all of August to meet with their constituents, tend to another job or just go on vacation.
So for those of you who wish to bask in diversity, I urge you to seek your nearest major airport, stroll the concourse, and interface with your fellow mask-clad humans while packed into a sardine can as you hurtle through the skies at 400 miles per hour at an altitude of thirty thousand feet. Go for the full experience and overpack your bags to 51 pounds and try, just try to bring more than two carry-on items aboard. Skip through the terminal with your mask resplendent under your chin, whilst consuming a bag of Cheese-Its, content with the knowledge that Covid won’t infect you if you’re eating. Taunt TSA with a pocket full of quarters and give that hard working, bomb-sniffing canine a Milk Bone and scratch him behind the ears. Learn to speak Spanish. Really loud. Don’t sit in first class, but use their restroom. Change your seat and sit with the Gen Z crowd and finally learn how to use that damn iPhone. Post a selfie while you’re taking off. Do try to catch a flight with a member of Congress just to see your tax dollars at work. And perhaps you will be really lucky and get a pilot from United Airlines’ woke, and presumably dumbed down pilot training program. As for the rest of you, save yourself some aggravation and drive there.
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