In just over a week, three U.S. flights have made unscheduled landings due to passenger conflicts, all of them involving reclining seatbacks, and objections on the part of the already cramped reclinees behind them.
These are people who knew, or should have known, the conditions they were accepting when they bought tickets and boarded the planes, and they should have known better than to let themselves get so exasperated with each other.
That said, the American airline industry is doing precious little to prevent such incidents; indeed, it seems to be doing everything its bean-counters can think of to make them inevitable. For all except the few who can afford the gold-plated price of first class, commercial air travel in the United States has become a miserable, stressful and claustrophobic experience.
Cramming (and that is not a figurative term in this context) a few more passengers into a cabin to get a few hundred more bucks into the airlines’ coffers clearly trumps even minimal consideration of passenger comfort; and customers are coming up against the limits of their patience with a level of abuse for which they are paying hefty sums of their hard-earned money.
According to Associated Press air industry reporter Scott Mayerowitz, United and Southwest took away an inch of space from each row in some of their jets to squeeze in six more seats; JetBlue did the same … to make room in the first-class cabin for lie-flat beds. On some of its Boeing jets, American is adding 10 more seats.
It’s not just passengers who are concerned; so are airline service people, for obvious reasons.
“Seats are getting closer together,” Association of Flight Attendants President Sara Nelson told the AP. “We have to de-escalate conflict all the time … We haven’t hit the end of it. The conditions continue to march in a direction that will lead to more and more conflict.”
Air travel is already a stressful experience for reasons that aren’t the airlines’ fault. In a post 9/11 world, flight security means long, slow lines and sometimes intrusive screening; travelers have to add hours to a travel day to account for the delays. But most of the money-driven stress of flying is eminently avoidable and, frankly, inexcusable.
Southerners who are old enough might remember the old Southern Airways TV ad that satirized Haves/Have-Nots air travel by depicting the “other” cabin as a kind of airborne ghetto, with chickens pecking at the floor and peasants huddled over a bucket of gruel.
That is, we think it was satire.