OUR WONDERFUL AIRLINE SERVICE: 1957 vs. 2007

By Dan Rattiner

In the wake of the Jet Blue meltdown last week, I have been thinking about how air travel has changed. Not too long ago, if an airline had to cancel a flight due to bad weather or if a passenger missed a connection because a flight was delayed, the airlines would put you up in a hotel for the night and pick up the check. If your luggage got lost and they could not get it to you before the day was out, you could go out and get a whole new outfit and, as long as it was within reason, send them the bill. Of course, on board was breakfast lunch and dinner. But you knew that.

It really is a shocking state of affairs that we passengers meekly accept today. If you get to the gate late (dragging your bag of food), you find they have sold your seat to somebody else. And by the way, as you recall, there are no refunds. So the money you paid for your seat is gone.

Flight delayed an hour, or maybe ten hours? Too bad. Could leave anytime. You did get here in time. Now stay here or lose your seat (and your money). Curl up on the floor if you have to. The weather could break at any moment. You never know.

Flight cancelled? Too bad. Our next flight is full too, but if we have any cancellations we’ll have you on standby for the flight, after that. When we call your name, if we call your name, you have to be here to come forward instantaneously. But don’t get your hopes up. After all, the people going on these subsequent flights all have paid for their tickets in advance just like you did. And they came in time for their flights. So we have to honor them before we honor you. I’m sure you can understand that. But perhaps before the day is out, or the week is out, we’ll find you a seat on a flight.

Did you pay for luggage insurance? Too bad. Well, you still have the clothes you’re wearing.

Of course, there is no need to put you up in a strange city. You aren’t going outside the airport. Not when you’ve paid for your ticket and you need to be here for when we call your name, or whatever. The floor isn’t too hard.

Man, has this service sunk low.

One of the most telling things about this Jet Blue debacle, I think, has been the “Passengers Bill of Rights” that David Neeleman, the founder of Jet Blue, has just put out. He has thought long and hard about when a wait on the runway turns into being held hostage on an aircraft. And he has declared that that happens after three hours. The logic is so weird about this that in a certain way, it helps define why it is that we simply act like a bunch of cattle heading hopelessly for the slaughterhouse when it comes to getting on an airplane.

The bill of rights states that after three hours on the runway, a wait turns to being held hostage, so a passenger is entitled to something, which Neeleman has decreed is a $50 credit against future flights on Jet Blue (so you can do it again.) If the time on the runway exceeds four hours then you get a full round trip ticket on a future flight, (so again you can do it again) and if the time on the runway passes five hours then it is mandatory that the plane take you back to the gate because this is beyond being held hostage and is entering extreme cruelty.

On the surface, this looks ridiculous. Would people really be willing to sit on an airplane for four hours and fifty-nine minutes staring out at the tarmac? Even though by Neeleman’s own calculations this is already almost two hours into a hostage holding situation?

The answer, of course, is YES. Neeleman has realized that every day, dozens of times a day, people sit on his airplanes for six hours traveling from New York to California and don’t consider it hostage holding at all. Below them are the clouds. The plane is puttering along. They are getting there.

“And there on your right is the Grand Canyon,” the pilot says. And so it is.

What Neeleman has missed is that when people sit on an aircraft on the runway staring out at the tarmac, they are automatically adding on the six hours in the clouds to the time they have already spent on the tarmac. So what he is really saying is that people will put up with eleven hours and fifty nine minutes of sitting on an airplane to get where they want to go, and if you think about it, if it’s New York to Rio or Johannesburg or Moscow, that is EXACTLY what people are willing to do. And they do that many times a day, although not yet on Jet Blue because they don’t yet fly these routes.

On another level, however, I think the whole thing is ridiculous. Our airlines have gone from a proud, elegant and wonderful service with gleaming white airplanes to, well, the other day I watched a man across from me in an aisle seat unwrap an entire turkey leg and begin chomping away at it as the stewardesses were in the middle of taking a head count of those on board.

Reminds me of the days years ago when I was in Central America waiting for a bus to take us to Chichicastenango and you’d hear it coming from far off, heralded by the clucking of chickens. The bus would pull up, come to a halt with brakes screeching, gears grinding and feathers flying from the live chickens in wooden crates strapped down on the roof, and, enveloped in the musky live chicken smell, you’d get on. And you’d be very happy about it.