The airline industry is taking a beating these days, not only with higher fuel pricing but also with a greater awareness of safety issues that have slipped under the radar of the FAA. It’s all rather unsettling for someone like me, who has to take a big dose of courage to get on a plane in the first place.
Today I returned from a forty-eight hour visit to New York City. Having taken four planes of various sizes in that time period, I was aware of the industry’s shortcomings. At the same time, I noticed an interesting trend in the behavior of the passengers and crews. Rather than becoming more surly, those who shared flights with me seemed more pleasant. Go figure.
Nobody whined about having to plane-side check a piece of luggage that couldn’t fit in an overhead bin. Nobody talked loudly or otherwise disturbed those in the nearby seats. Everyone smiled as they disembarked, and one man even offered to retrieve my luggage from the overhead bin without being asked. Another woman who accidentally bumped me apologized profusely, and a third complimented a jacket I was wearing.
Not to be outdone, the flight attendants and crews all reeked with niceness as they told us there would be no beverage service or that the ground crew forgot to provide ice or that there were twenty-five planes ahead of us taking off on the one open runway at LaGuardia. The captain practically sounded bereft for having to keep the seatbelt sign on due to the “chop” in the air.
None of this changes the problems airlines have today. In fact, when I arrived home I learned that many travelers, particularly those booked on American Airlines, spent the day stranded as flights were cancelled. So I felt lucky that my trip concluded on time and even luckier that it was an unexpectedly pleasant experience as far as the travel portion itself was concerned.
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