The Boeing 757 seats somewhere in the neighborhood of 225 passengers, crammed in groups of three, on each side of the aircraft aisle. Leg room is minimal. Service is even less. On a six hour flight, the airline we traveled created the impression that it was being magnanimous to serve us "complimentary" soft drink beverages and 'snacks' (peanuts, cookies, or pretzels). Let me point out here, before the diatribe gets worse, that these drinks are technically not 'complimentary,' in that the cost of them has been included in the price of my ticket. Therefore, I have already paid for the drink. Once the "service" was completed, the flight attendants disappeared into the plane, hiding behind a curtain in the galley, thereby discouraging any contact with us passengers.
Having just spent the better part of this last year studying the steerage conditions in which my grandparents traveled to arrive in this country, I was struck by the parallels between their excursion and my flight: crowded conditions, indifferent staff, inadequate bathrooms, and lack of policing of other passenger behavior.
On one particular flight, a passenger in the row in front of us had managed to conceal her alcoholic beverages as "3 oz. liquids" in the quart-sized plastic bag that can get through security. She spent the better part of the six-hour overnight flight getting up and down to get more ice and clean plastic cups. Why the otherwise disinterested flight attendants couldn't smell this passenger's breath and figure out what was going on - and put a stop to it - is beyond me. When the flight attendant came by, at the end of the flight, to clean up remaining trash, she merely laughed and said, "I wished I could have joined you."
A few months ago, columnist Peggy Noonan wrote in The Wall Street Journal that we pay people to treat us poorly. How right she is. A woman can get drunk on-board, mutter insulting things to passengers soto voce, and be allowed to remain on the flight. Whereas, had I fully expressed my frustration and anger at the treatment I was receiving from the airline, I likely would have been removed from the boarding line. I paid the airline to cow me.
I will acknowledge that air travel carries with it a set of anxieties that are wholly unique to this mode of travel. In addition to the normal risks that accompany air travel, there are the unexpected issues related to mechanics, hydraulics, and weather. There are increasing tensions as terrorists continue to find ways to use airplanes to conduct their attacks. And there are the dangers that an on-board passenger, or passengers, will put an entire aircraft at risk.
All the more reason, then, that airlines ought to be pushing customer service, care for every passenger, and passenger comfort to the forefront. We know that the FAA demands safety, and that airlines can skirt those regulations at their own peril. Since flight safety should be a given, airlines should treat each of us with dignity and respect. Most of us are flying because we have traveled to see loved ones, taken a vacation, or may be looking for a new place to live. We want the entire memory of our collective experience to be positive - not marred by the unwarranted hassles and indignities that seem to be the stock in trade of some airlines.
We are not "the huddled masses," as were our ancestors. Unlike my forebears, who never planned a return trip across the Atlantic once they arrived here, most of us, myself included, hope for another opportunity to travel again.
I guess I was mistaken in thinking that the indignities of steerage ended when the door to mass immigration closed in 1924. I guess I was wrong. The practice of demeaning passengers has now been transferred to the airport.
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