Denied Boarding

May 8, 2017

Greetings from the aisle seat,

In the 1800’s people would climb into a stagecoach and travel from one place to another.  The conditions were less than ideal; bone jarring ride through cold and heat, dust in the air, packed in among strangers who may not have bathed in weeks.  It was hard, but it was better than walking, and usually safer than traveling alone. 

And things happened.  Highwaymen ranged the stagecoach routes and raided the passengers for their possessions.  Rattlesnakes spooked the horses.  Wooden wheels broke.  The drivers sometimes got drunk and fell off their seat.  Or got lost. 

What didn’t happen was this: no one pulled out their cell phone and videoed the calamities and posted it in on social media for everyone in the universe to watch.  Mostly because cell coverage was so bad in the western territories at that time.

If aliens were watching YouTube recently they might get the impression that the people running our flying machines are engaged in a contest with the people who are trying to fly.  They lure us into these magical tubes with promises to transport us anywhere in the world, but first we have to pass certain tests.  If we fail, they get to beat us up and drag us back off the plane, and another contestant gets to try.

Yes, times have changed.  Now when we fly across the globe, we have to submit to all manner of arcane rules that are capriciously applied by a bunch of surly or inept people whose sole purpose seems to be to ruin our plans.  Well, while that might be one perspective, it is not the entire truth.

First, let me share with you that I have been That Guy.  I have been the person whose flight was cancelled, whose bags were lost, whose gate was changed.  I have been angry and lost my temper, berated hapless gate agents, threatened to sue, wrote vicious diatribes to the executives of now defunct airlines.  I never got dragged off of a plane but on a few occasions I would have deserved it. 

I am a frequent traveler on planes, enough now to know what to expect: the unexpected.  I have also been guided into maturity by friends who have been kind enough to share that what I lost in my ugliest moments was far more valuable than the price of a ticket. 

Most people I have talked to about the recent spate of hostilities on airlines have similar opinions.  The passengers were usually treated poorly.  There is plenty of blame to go around; crazy policies, poorly trained staff, heavy handed law enforcement.  And of course we have all the answers for the airlines.

Well, the answer is simple: don’t overbook your flights.  Or just make more planes.  Get more pilots.  Have more flights to the places we want to go when we want to go there.  Don’t let weather interfere with your schedules. 

But, keep us safe. Make sure our pilots are well trained, well rested, and if possible, attractive and of a certain age that inspires confidence.  Make us comfortable and above all safe from terrorists.  Without inconvenience.

Airlines rely on business travel for a good portion of the profits they need to function.  They compete for this travel by offering incentives, a hierarchy that we don’t all have access to.  Airlines have to move personnel around, and that takes seats.  Planes break down and that means someone is getting shuffled to new seats on other planes.  This is just the tip of the iceberg in what goes on every day that leads up to someone getting bumped.

We don’t want to be inconvenienced or have our vacation spoiled, or arrive late for a convention, or miss our daughter’s graduation.  Along with that, to the greatest degree possible, we want things to be fair.

So you know my opinion, it is not fair to come on a plane and tell someone sitting there reading Skymall that they have to leave the plane.  That practice has to change or there is going to be more rebellion on flights and one day it is not going to end with just bruises.

In truth, ‘denied boardings’ have decreased over the years even as air traffic has increased. 

But be aware, it still happens 40,000 times every year.  If you are one of the 900 million people flying somewhere in the US this year, and you leave for the airport not knowing that these things happen,  you open yourself up to becoming That Guy.  It is the reality of travel today.

There are some really unfair, unpleasant things happening in air travel, and some of them are avoidable.  Frankly I think they will change because of the YouTube pressure.  But as human beings, not consumers, we have to regain some perspective.  This isn’t the old west, things have gotten better; it doesn’t take months to get to San Francisco, it takes hours, and we probably won’t get an arrow shot into our neck. But there are still challenges to traveling. 

The comedian Louis CK had a message that included these words: ‘..everything is amazing, and no one is happy.’  When it comes to air travel, he said, we have forgotten how incredible it is.  “You are sitting in a chair…in the sky…and you are flying.”  And yet what we talk about was how slow the high speed Wi-Fi was on the plane.

This won’t be news to you but sometime in our day plans are going to be spoiled by circumstances beyond our control.  How we respond to that interference is what determines the quality of our lives.  I, for one, intend to respond in a way that does not prompt people to pull out their cell phones to capture and exploit the worst in human behavior.  And I am going to remember to be amazed.

Hope this finds you in first class,

David