Warum ist das Reisen mit dem Flugzeug so ein miserables und elendigliches Erlebnis geworden? Weil das Quälen der Passagiere offenbar Teil des Geschäftsmodells nahezu aller Fluglinien geworden ist. Sie haben Standards künstlich gesenkt, um aufpreispflichtige Zusatzleistungen verkaufen zu können.
In order for fees to work, there needs be something worth paying to avoid. That necessitates, at some level, a strategy that can be described as “calculated misery.” Basic service, without fees, must be sufficiently degraded in order to make people want to pay to escape it. […] degrading basic service provides a partial explanation for the fact that, in the past decade, the major airlines have done what they can to make flying basic economy, particularly on longer flights, an intolerable experience. For one thing […] airlines have crammed more seats into the basic economy section of the airplane, even on long-haul flights. The seats, meanwhile, have gotten smaller – they are narrower and set closer together. Bill McGee, […] who worked in the airline industry for many years, studied seat sizes and summarized his findings this way: “The roomiest economy seats you can book on the nation’s four largest airlines are narrower than the tightest economy seats offered in the 1990s.”
…und dann noch das obligatorische „mindestens zwei Stunden vorher einchecken“, um vor lauter Langeweile zum Einkauf des gleichen Mülls animiert zu werden, den man überall auf der Welt bekommt. Ich frage mich ohnehin jedes Mal, wer diese Menschen sind, die diese 1,5kg-Tobleronestangen kaufen.
Ach ja: Fliegen in den Siebzigern.