White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

Lament of the Airline Coach Passenger

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By Llewellyn King

The vice president for mollifying irate customers of one of the great airlines — there are only four left, and by the time you read this it may be down to three — has written me asking how I “enjoyed” my last flight. I wonder if this jokester even knows what that word enjoy means? Do they have access to dictionaries at Big Air? I couldn’t even get a second cup of coffee from a surly flight attendant, who only wanted to sit in the back of the plane and kvetch about the latest merger.

Definitely, asking you about the quality of your flight is in dubious taste: Have any Big Air executives ever walked back to coach, where we sit like rowers without oars in a trireme.

My missive from Big Air asks questions like, “How did you enjoy your reception at the check-in?” It said I should evaluate my level of experience from “very satisfied” to “very dissatisfied.”

How can you relate in those terms to a machine called a “kiosk”? As it so happens, my kiosk had serious socialization problems. It’s the seventh kiosk from the left at Washington Dulles International Airport, and it’s determined to prove its recalcitrance from the get-go. It rejected my credit card; it didn’t know my frequent flier number; it told me I wasn’t flying anywhere, as I didn’t exist because it couldn’t “get my record.”

It became quite civil, though, when trying to sell me a larger seat, take a fee for my baggage, and offering to sell me more frequent flier miles. What for? Does Kiosk No. 7 know they have 304 blackout days a year?

Having secured my ticket, I moved on to security — where some TSA worker any day now may be nabbed by a casting director for the archetypal role of a terrorist – which took a grim view of me. I stood bereft of shoes, belt, wallet and all identification so that I could put my hands in the air in a glass contraption. Another incipient movie bad guy examined the screen. Not good enough. I got wanded. Of course, if someone had made off with my plastic tray of possessions while this is going on, I’d have become stateless: undocumented, illegal.

Then I found that I was in Zone 4 for boarding. I’m always in Zone 4, no matter when I book my flight. I suppose I was pre-selected for Zone 4 on account of some library book I never returned. This means there wouldn’t be any room for my suitcase in the overhead compartment, and it’d be taken from me as though I’d been apprehended doing something I shouldn’t.

At least I’ve been saved sitting in a seat too small for its designed purpose for 20 minutes more than necessary. The seat that was too small for me, too small for smaller people, and very much too small for the enormous man who sat next to me.

Did you know they’ve got new seats now without a place to put your book or magazine? They have slim backs to reduce comfort and so more seats can be jammed in.

Then there was the toilet. You must use the one at the back because the people in first class – actually they’re not people, they’re corporate lawyers, a subset of homo sapiens — cannot be expected to share their spacious commode with the likes of coach travelers, who have a social disease: less money.

Here’s a tip you’ll appreciate if you’re a man: Decide which bodily function you plan to execute because there’s no room to turn around. No. 1, walk straight in; No. 2, back in. Women always have to back in.

The pilot came on. He sounded as though his last job was playing a trail boss on radio. You know, that special kind of speech that Easterners think Westerners actually speak: all about “critters” and “dudes,” and how we’re going to “canter over to LA.” 

It was going to be five bleak hours of discomfort.

But the good news is passengers won’t have to endure seats much longer. Coming to an airline near you: standing room only and meat hooks for safety belts. — For InsideSources

The Invisible Hand Is in Your Pocket Now

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Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” describing the efficient operation of markets, has morphed into a something else: an invisible hand in my pocket  and yours.

This woe comes now at every turn. Corporations — possibly egged on by the battalions of MBAs they employ — have discovered that they can con you by price legerdemain. They do this by imposing fees.

Airlines, banks and utilities play the fee game. Luxury resorts have joined in: You'll pay so much for the room, so much in taxes, and pay special fees if you want to do anything other than sit in it. Bottom line: You'll have pay more than you'd expect. The advertisements that lure you are disingenuous.

Take airline fees. You find an airfare and brace for the taxes. But — Oh, surprise, surprise! — you'll have to pay a hefty fee if you want more than one change of clothes at the other end. Want to board comfortably? Pay up. Want a seat where parts of your body don’t meet other parts of your body in unnatural ways? Pay up. Have to change your flight? There’s a change fee. Just pay up or stay put.

You could take the train, but you might not know that the only corridor of the national rail network that approaches international standards is the Northeast, running between Washington, New York and Boston. The trains aren’t bad at all, but the ticket pricing is predatory and opaque. It puts the airlines to shame.

Amtrak train fares are priced according to minute-to-minute demand. On the no-frills train, a ticket from Boston to Washington can cost around $100 to $400, depending on when you buy your ticket and who else wants to travel at that moment. The result: Amtrak – with a $1.3 billion annual subsidy from you and me –operates a railroad for the well-heeled. Between Washington and New York for corporate lawyers; ditto to Boston with the addition of academics plying the consulting trade.

If you just need to get around the Northeast, take a bus. Or play airline roulette, where the fare fluctuations are held down by JetBlue and Southwest.

Then there is the new trend of companies partially shifting the burden of paying workers from themselves to you. Hotels are urging their luckless guests to tip the chambermaids. (I've always tipped them. But I fear this corporate move is designed to reduce their responsibility for paying their workers a living wage.) Fast-food outlets now have tip jars (begging bowls, really), so the poor servers behind the counter can be paid less because it is becoming a tip-calculated wage.

Now, take a look at the unmitigated scandal of interns: free labor. The government and Congress, the media, think tanks, accounting and consulting firms, and many others, have found the best-and-brightest will work for free, primarily in the summer, to learn the trade.

Fair enough? Not so. Unpaid interns get a leg up in their careers on their peers who can't afford to take those great jobs. If you worked hard all summer, serving ice cream to pay your tuition, your resume will be deficient and you won't make the important contacts. Interns ought to be paid the minimum wage, so all can start resume-building at the same starting line.

We are witnessing a vast change in the way we pay for things with tipping subsidizing companies, fees fattening airlines, banks and hotels against the interest – and often the foreknowledge — of the customer.

Adam Smith — so beloved by the people who are changing the nature of commerce with fees, concealed charges, predatory pricing, tips and free labor — was a canny Scot who liked to know what he was getting for the money he was paying. He must be restless in his grave.  — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate