Saratoga News

Point of View

Carl Heintze

The 'friendly skies' are no longer friendly

It was somewhere over Bloomington, Ind., that I asked myself: Why am I doing this? "This" was flying economy class across the country, approximately 5 1/2 hours of exquisite torture. It's not the longest distance I'd flown, nor is it the shortest, but still, it was long enough.

Short or long, over the years, flights have become more and more uncomfortable, less and less fun, more and more torture. Nor does there appear any prospect of their getting better. Despite what the airlines say, the skies are no longer friendly.

They are overcrowded, cramped, not on schedule and sometimes overbooked. At least that's my observation. While I could hardly be classified as a frequent flyer, I do make at least two trips of some distance each year. Each time I'm impressed anew with how flying has gotten worse and worse.

Flying has become a subtly exquisite form of personal torture. This trip was no exception. As soon as we were securely airborne and the seat-belt sign had gone off, the man in the seat ahead of me lowered his seat to its ultimate lean-back position so he was, in effect, sitting in my lap.

When I pushed against the back of his seat with my knees to keep circulation in my toes, he turned around and glared at me but said nothing.

I suppose I could have done the same thing to whoever was behind me, but as it turned out, it was a mother and child. The child stood on her mother's lap for a good part of the trip, occasionally bopping me on the head with her rubber toy.

Somewhere over Cleveland, or maybe Pittsburgh, I had been advised by the flight attendant to pull down my window shade so the other passengers could see the movie. So I saw it, too, without sound, of course. I'm thankful I could at least avoid listening to it because it was a real turkey. Much of it was about a helicopter flying through the Chunnel, chasing Tom Cruise as he hung from the roof of the Chunnel train. I did notice that the helicopter lost, and Cruise cruised safely to France.

I should not have minded because there was nothing to see outside except clouds, anyway. But I would have felt a little less like a captive in a KGB prison cell if I could have seen the sky.

Somewhere near the climax--if I can call it that--of this miserable flick, the in-flight "meal" arrived. It was what the airline calls a "blimpie," a very small roll shaped like a blimp and about as digestible, filled with a very small piece of not very young ham. Oh, and one small cookie. This is what airlines consider a meal these days. I wouldn't even consider it a snack.

Following that and my free half-can of soft drink, there arrived the major challenge of flight: going to the bathroom. I crawled--no other description fits--over the persons in the middle and aisle seats, woke up the guy in the seat in front of me (for which I got another glare) and then lurched down the aisle to the tail (Toilets Aft, as the sign kept telling us), there to fidget nervously in line. Just about the time my turn came we were, as the pilot said, "expecting a little turbulence." The seat-belt sign went on, and harried by flight attendants, we were directed for safety's sake (but certainly not for comfort) to return to our seats.

There, I reflected on who designed economy airplane seats and what twisted childhoods they must have experienced. Maybe it was the Marquis de Sade. No airline seats are built to fit any human shape. They strike you directly in the middle of the back no matter what your contour, making it impossible to rest your neck in any position adequate for sleep. Indeed, sleep, barring complete exhaustion, is impossible.

You can doze; you can become numb; but you can't sleep.

That's when I asked myself: Why do we put up with this? Why do we arrive at the airport at least an hour before the plane takes off (Or two hours if we are flying overseas)?

Why do we submit to body searches, fumbling with the metal keys in our pockets lest they set off the electronic alarm? Why do we engage in long waits for battered bags at luggage carousels, only to find they are on the next plane, not this one?

Why do we put up with all the long hassle to prevent bomb threats and hijackings? The risk, it seems to me, is infinitesimal compared to the effort spent in trying to thwart terrorists, but we've been conditioned to put up with it.

The answers to all these questions are, of course, simple. Airplanes take us long distances in a relatively short time at rates we can still afford to places we would never see otherwise.

With them, we own the world. And in doing so, we are not unlike our ancestors who traveled long distances under even worse conditions to reach the New World. Their economy class was steerage, and to the discomfort we now endure is nothing compared to what theirs was. But they knew the reward at the end of the journey was worth it.

So now do we, for much the same reasons, accept personal discomfort to go back to the lands we came from. And we get frequent-flyer miles besides.

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