Recent travel-related news items caught my and a lot
of people’s attention: the fight between passengers over leg space and
reclining seats. See, for example,
(Two
incidents between passengers on American flights over the right to recline
their seats resulted in two diverted planes, one arrest and a heated, global
debate.)
Please now allow
me a short diversion, or circling of our destination, before I get to the topic
of reclining seats.
I had been sitting
at my keyboard trying to think of a eureka moment (or is that an
eureka moment?) so I could write about it to enter a contest in a women’s
magazine. Unfortunately, I've had no recent eureka moments. But thinking about
the contest did cause me to think about my last true eureka moment, which came
at about age seven.
I still remember
the feeling—as if I’d been struck by lightning. Or by the seat back on an
airline when the person in front of me reclined and smacked my knees. Anyway, at the age of seven or so, like a
sudden smack in the knee, it dawned on me that what adults were saying was not
meant literally. I may have been a little slow until that point. Maybe I still
am.
But at least since
then I've know that God is not “up there” in church behind the stained glass
windows. And when your guests say they are going “to hit the road” they are not
going to go outside and slap the pavement. I've even progressed to the point of
knowing that when someone tells you “the check is in the mail”, at best, they
only mean they have an intention of paying you--sometime.
Getting back on track to our destination, the
reclining, or not, of airline seats, I’m firmly on the side of both travelers.
I hate being squished in a seat where you can’t put your seat back. And I also hate
having the person in front of me recline his or her seat. I've come away with
bruises on my knees when a large passenger in front of me abruptly reclines the
seat. Did I mention I have only moderately long legs? But they usually are
touching the seat in front of me, even without the seat back reclined. No doubt
because most airlines have crammed so many seats on their planes.
The only party in this little dispute with whom I do
not sympathize is the airline industry. I expect they may use this recent
incident to steal the “bright idea” of an economist who says we should
negotiate for money over this space, essentially have the person behind us on
the plane pay us to not recline.
I think the party
who will make money from this idea is the airline industry. I can easily see
them imposing another fee, as if there are not enough airline fees: an added charge
for passengers who want to recline and/or to sit behind seats that do not
recline. The airlines may even present this as a “safety fee” to keep
passengers from fighting about the bit of space offered by reclining or not.
In addition to
charging more fees for everything from checking to or carrying on luggage,
food, drinks, pillows, headsets, WiFi, you name it, the airlines also are in
the process of trying to squeeze more and more passengers into less and less
space. Soon they will have us all standing up as we fly shoulder to shoulder
and hip to hip. Such a “seat pattern” has even been proposed by some airlines.
Why not just strap us to the roof of the planes? Mitt Romney did that with his
Irish setter on his car. He says the dog loved it. Maybe we will too.
In our haste to
our destination we should not overlook there is a eureka moment here. Probably the
revelation hit the two arguing passengers, the pro-and con-recliners, sometime
around the time the pilot announced he was landing in Chicago and they were tossed unceremoniously
out on the tarmac.
What does one do
then? Try to book a new flight to your destination? Will TSA let a passenger
who just caused a plane to make an unscheduled stop back on another plane? Or
does the still-angry passenger need to stand in line and try to rent a car? I
wouldn't want to be in line with him or her at the car rental.
Maybe the
kicked-off-the-plane passenger stands in another line for a restroom, looks in
the mirror, and has a revelation. As miserable as air travel now is, it’s
certainly got to be worse, stuck in Chicago ’s
O’Hara airport when that was not your intended destination.
Knowing that most
of what adults say is not meant literally, even if they use the word
“literally”, is still one of the biggest breakthroughs of my life in dealing
with other people. When the airline says your plane will be on time, the
airline hopes you enjoyed your flight, or that TSA security is keeping you
safe, you know it’s a lot like saying “the check is in the mail”. Good intentions at best.
But please,
airline industry, and I do mean this literally, don’t come up with a plan to
make all of us passengers stand up through the flights or strap us to the roof
of the planes. Good intentions will not be good enough in the event you try to
squeeze even one additional passenger or bag onto my flight.
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