trollololol



http://www.newsweek.com/trump-cabine...-russia-624683

LAX is the only airport where Delta has a dedicated business-class check-in entrance, and it's actually gone now since they moved from T5 to T2/3.

FWIW, flying up front isn't really less soul-destroying. Read flyertalk sometimes, the most elite travelers are usually the most wretched. There is literally no sympathy for the people in the back, just contempt. There's also tons of contempt for the other elite flyers.

FWIW, flying 8 days in a row is just unimaginable. I had six flights last week and I was pretty pissy. Part of that was from missing my connection Friday night due to delays at EWR to make room for TRUMP.

this is probably fine

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-40248366

*Actually*, flying is fine. You go to the place you're told, you wait in some lines, then you sit in a seat for a few hours reading a book or watching a movie, then you show up at your destination. It's lovely. Occasionally things go wrong and you show up later than you expected. Very sad, but not really the end of the world assuming you planned appropriately.

The real problem with airlines is the other passengers, who are gross animals who do stuff like:

I've been on way more than 8 airplane flights and I've never done any of this stuff, except sitting on the floor because I wanted to charge a device. Also, why is having to sit on the floor on this list of lies and *******ry anyways? It's probably some kind of deep insight into the awful passenger mindset that being the perpetrator of various acts of antisocial monstrosities is somehow grouped with being the victim of minor inconveniences. "It was so awful: I had to lie to another passenger for no reason, then I shoved my neighbor, then I yelled at this airline employee who was trying to fix a lost bag situation, and THEN I HAD TO SIT ON THE FLOOR."

Here's some backstory on this particular situation. In basically every airport, the X-ray machine at security feeds into a very long roller belt. The purpose of the roller belt is to accommodate passengers who need some time to get their belongings together after the security screening process. These passengers are supposed to slide their bags down the rollers to the long, empty area after the X-ray machine so that the people behind them in line can access their own bags as they roll out of the machine. Absolutely 100% guaranteed that what happened here is that the author was futzing with her bags right by the X-ray machine and blocking everyone else, someone asked her to move to the area provided for futzing and she was "inexplicably drawn into a passive-aggressive contretemps," which means she was an ******* about it. Basically guaranteed she was one of the people standing on the moving sidewalk like it's a ****ing ride, with her bags carefully arrayed beside her to make sure no one can walk around her.

But my point all along was that flying is a modern marvel and kind of nice in one respect, but that the conditions of the trade between passengers and airlines and the environment it creates, in particular the airlines strategy of Calculated Misery, is what turns people into horrible barbaric animals.

Flying --> nice
The conditions created by firms and consumers --> terrible

Seems like an obvious market problem.

I'm always civil and respectful of other people's boundaries when I fly.

if people wanted to pay anything at all for comfort they would get it. but most dont, so airplanes would be standing room only if just the authorities would allow it

Or to expand on this, the Calculated Misery thesis rests on the premise that what makes people unhappy while flying is things in the control of the airlines: seat pitch, meals, checked bag fees, etc. If it's a Huis Clos situation where the problem is just enforced long-duration proximity to other human beings, all we can reasonably do in response to the horrors of airline travel is buy noise-cancelling headphones and renounce populist politics.

Also illuminating here is the fact that the reporter mentioned that she went a week without washing her hair, no further explanation. Why? AFAICT she wasn't sleeping in the terminal every night. Take a shower for god's sake.

If I never fly again I won't feel as though I am missing anything.

I admit it, I laughed.

I don't fly much so this isn't worth much, but I've never not liked it except the one time my 2yo was throwing up all over the place. I'm very tolerant of these kinds of problems in general though (lines, crowds, delays, etc.), I like traveling in general (just driving or w/e irrespective of destination), and flying is cool.

Just to be clear, and my point is definitely a glib attack on capitalism, but I don't see it so much as class warfare. I'm not suggesting the proles in coach are contemptuous of business class and vice versa, or that firms have monopoly power and are preying on consumers, although there's some of that.

I'm saying something closer to what ChrisV is saying: the market and its incentives are creating conditions that degrade human dignity. It's not just firms and big airlines that are guilty, and it's not first class passengers sneering at people in coach, but all of our collective actions in trading and how we all behave in this environment with extreme downward pressure on fares while firms simultaneously get consumers to pay to escape misery.

In the end it's not solely class warfare per se (but I think you can say some interesting things about that when it comes to air travel). And I leave it to the people with a deeper background in economics than me to articulate it. But my point is more along the lines of "the current incentives that exist in the commercial airline economy actually contain a bunch of hidden negative externalities like mass deterioration of the human condition" -- like the anecdotes in that article you posted goofy.

If you could save a thousand dollars on your taxes by filing them in the nude (in person at a post office), how many Americans would do so?

Flying is like an absolutely perfect encapsulation of why regulation works and is needed even within highly competitive industries. I would argue it is a great example of how intense competition and robust regulation can coexist to the benefit of all parties.

Counterpoint: Flying is an absolutely perfect encapsulation of how a wrongly-regulated market leads to consumer abuses.

fyp

I mean, I totally agree, the current situation is terrible. Honestly, you could go either way. You could re-institute a higher level of regulation, forcing airlines to compete on service rather than price, but you can't just pretend like fares won't be massively higher.

Flying is an absolutely perfect encapsulation of my previously held views, and this series of carefully selected and misleading examples explains why.

https://twitter.com/SHSanders45/stat...24794557333504

I assume this is sarcastic and that you didn't smoke a giant bag of crack before writing it.

Misery is a cross country trip by Greyhound.

Unless you're young and meet a manic pixie dream girl along the way, or maybe the devil at the crossroads, something that leaves an impression.

I didn't get any.

I did blow with a stripper once in the backseat of a greyhound.