Kevin Drum laments our flying ways:
So flying sucks because we, the customers, have made it clear that we don’t care. We love to gripe, but we just flatly aren’t willing to pay more for a better experience. Certain individuals (i.e., the 10 percent of the population over six feet tall) are willing to pay for legroom. Some are willing to pay more for extra baggage. Some are willing to pay more for a window seat. But most of us aren’t. If the ticket price on We Care Airlines is $10 more, we click the link for Suck It Up Airlines. We did the same thing before the web too. As usual, the fault lies not in the stars, but in ourselves.
Flying is the ultimate denigration of the journey as the purpose of a trip – it’s all about the destination, where the journey itself is nothing more than an inconvenience that has been bought away. We substitute a few hours of uncomfortable, loud, bad air flying for a few days of loud, uncomfortable, but possibly interesting driving, for weeks and weeks of riding a horse or even walking.
So of course most people won’t pay extra for it – get there and start vacationing.
Just part of our hurry-up, 24 hour online culture.
