The Pain In Flying Today

How bad is flying on a commercial airline today? Today's typical plan is filled with rude, dirty, inappropriately dressed people, with their ill behaved broods of even worse behaved children. They board planes everywhere and cause a stir nearly every time they take a seat, from dragging on oversized carry-ons (and the airline is at fault for allowing that) that prevent many passengers from placing their regulation sized carry-on aloft to abusive behavior toward fight attendants..flying is now more an ordeal than a convenience.

You can also lay plenty of the blame onto the airline industry. They keep making seats and personal space smaller while cramming as many people as they can cram onto the plane. Packed into the plane like sardines, charged for luggage, charged for snacks, charged, charged, charged....it surely doesn't lend to civil behavior by passengers.

I can recall flying years ago when there were people dressed as grown ups, there was a sense of calm and mutual respect between passengers and passengers and passengers and crew. Sadly, those days will never return. It used to be that it was a treat to fly and that flying was expensive and not amass transportation mode. Today people say it's a cattle car on a subway. And people are getting more obnoxious as a result.

Are you as disgusted as I with the loudness, abusiveness towards flight attendants, violation of passenger seat space, pushing while entering and leaving the plane, cell phone abuse on aboard...ahhhhhhhhhhhh It makes me long for the days when flying was for the wealthier citizen. Sometimes bringing product to the masses isn't a great idea. Perhaps airline travel is one such case. If people could only afford to fly infrequently, and had to use alternative methods the rest of the time, perhaps civility might return to air travel.

Ah, but I am dreaming...The rudeness in air travel is merely an extension of the "me, me, first" attitude that permeates our society today. The idea of politeness and manners has been relegated, for the most part, to the trash heap of the past. And, for that both our airline experiences and our society are worse off.

Makes me just want to "fly away" from it all....