One of the many things that I am grateful for now is that I did not get the flight attendant job I went out for in 2005, four years ago now. With everything that has happened since and all the things I know now about how the airline industry has changed and the likelihood that I would have been laid off my life is better for not having gotten that job.
I did not see it then, but the airline industry that I loved growing up was dead and gone by 2005. It may have died even before the 2001 hijackings without anyone noticing and the paranoia of the west since then only accelerated the changes. Now the airlines are greyhound buses in the sky. Miserable cramped unpleasant places with next to no standards. I miss the days of dressing up in a suit to fly. I miss when young children would be called up to the cockpit to see the controls, and not necessarily just airline brats either. In short I miss travel being as pleasant and interesting as getting to your destination. It cost more, but I would rather pay for that. This is why I no longer travel.
I don't want to be a piece of meat packed into as small a space as they can make the average person tolerate. And I'm glad that I'm not part of that. Flying is now and is for the foreseeable future something I will only do if absolutely necessary, not something I do by choice.
This does cut me off from certain options, but that's what life is about. There are infinite possibilities and you cannot choose them all.
THIS is important!!!
11 years ago
2 comments:
The airline industry was changing well before 2001. The seat configurations in coach got smaller and more tightly placed. They cut and eliminated travel agent commissions.
Of course airline travel is predicated on the existence of cheep oil :)
Airline travel does not depend upon cheap oil, actually. Full jets are actually hugely efficient, way more efficient that driving a car the equivalent distance unless it is something like a Civic hybrid and there are four people in it. I think they don't quite match up with trains unless you also consider the energy needed to lay the rails. Then airlines are at par.
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