Fly By Night

Good evening and welcome to Flight 1658, with overnight service to Detroit.  At this time, we’d like to offer pre-boarding to any passengers requiring assistance getting down the jetway and any active duty military personnel.

My son Nick and I are rabid college football fans.  We have a tradition of traveling to a game each year in one of the “Cathedrals” of college football.  Last year, we visited Tuscaloosa and watched Alabama play Tennessee.  We saw Notre Dame another year.  This year, Nick chose Michigan to see the Wolverines play Wisconsin in The Big House.

We will begin our Premium Boarding and now welcome on board our First Class passengers.  Our Premium Platinum Members are also invited to board at this time.  Please proceed to the First Class Red Carpet on my left.

To minimize time away from school and work we take Thursday night redeye flights.  This gives us the opportunity to tour the university and experience the towns on Friday.  It’s a bit exhausting but we find so much to see and do that it keeps us going.  This year, we did the official university tour in the morning and had a ball roaming around Ann Arbor all afternoon.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we are not ready for General Boarding.  Please move back from the gate or return to your seats as we continue our Priority Boarding.  We now warmly welcome our Glittering Diamond Bonanza members, our Scintillated Soaring members and the Silver Circle of Platinum Amigos. You may also use the Red Carpet line.

This is a boy’s trip so we don’t exactly go all out on accommodations.  I book a basic hotel, checking online reviews just to confirm the place is clean.  For airfare, I selected the “Basic Economy” fare from one of the major airlines.  It’s the cheapest and good enough for two guys flying overnight, right?  I didn’t get seat assignments but was told we could choose them prior to the flight.

We continue boarding and invite Roaming Minstrels and Giggling Puppeteers to board.  If you happen to be traveling with a physically challenged imaginary friend, please come forward.  We will also now invite our Zone 1, 2 and 3 customers to board.

I called the airline a couple days before the flight and eventually reached a human.  It seemed.  I explained I’d be traveling with my son and, while it doesn’t seem I can select seats yet, we would like to sit together.  “This isn’t a full flight, you should be able to sit together but your fare doesn’t allow you to select seats yet,” she declared.  It was further explained that I could upgrade our tickets but it probably wasn’t necessary.  We could always change seats at the gate.

Twenty-four hours prior to flight time I was at last able to “select” seats.  “Basic Economy”, it turns out, allows the traveler to choose absolutely any middle seat in a row that doesn’t recline.  We did get seats in the same row so sign language or throwing things to each other remained possibilities.  Fabulous.

Since you refuse to leave, we will now allow you, our least profitable customers, to line up to my right in the “Chute of Shame” to have your boarding documents checked for authenticity.  You should be thankful the FAA doesn’t allow us to seat you on chicken coops in the cargo hold…

I’ve paraphrased a bit here.  The absurdity of the boarding process had the two of us laughing.  In fairness, I have to say that once on board the flight attendants were among the friendliest and most accommodating I’ve encountered.  But something is getting lost in the airline’s effort to grab the last dime.

The point of air travel is not simply flying people from one place to another.  It’s the opportunity to bring people together.  It’s visits to see family, trips with friends, flying to business meetings, even traveling alone to experience a different culture.  In the end it all comes back to one thing:  people, brought together.  In separating people purposely, you’ve failed before the wheels leave the tarmac.  As a practical matter, boarding all middle seat passengers last means that every aisle passenger has to get up to allow another person to access their seat.  This is the airline clearly saying efficiency is less important than getting a thumb in the (perceived) cheapskate’s eye.

To the airlines and service providers in general:  charge me more.  Whether it’s an airline or any other service.  Charge all of us more.  Charge whatever it costs to treat us like people.  I understand you need to reward your most loyal customers – and you should.  That means sometimes I won’t get the seat or exact service I want.  But next time I’m squeezed next to a mustachioed man-bun with an apparent deodorant allergy, I’d just like to know you cared, that you tried.  I might even choose to fly your airline next time.