My Personal Gripe with Airlines

Allow me a first-world complaint, please. Such complaining comes with privilege.

A day after members of congress grandstanded their scolding of airline execs, word slips out that American plans to squeeze seats even closer together than they already are on the major airlines. The space between seats is already too small for "normal" sized humans, and virtually impossible for 6'6"-ers like me. I fly with my knees wedged against the seat in front of me, or with one leg snuck into the aisle. They don't like that much. I know because they crash their food carts into that leg when they can.

It's all intended, of course, to make us pay extra to purchase a seat we can sit in, which should be a minimum acceptable standard, a Creator-endowed human right. I should not have to pay extra for size beyond my control.

Then there are the glossy, full-page ads for the wonders of first-class, so generous that there's not a crumb left for the peasants. And boarding procedures that prioritize the lucky few in a thousand categories far above most of us . . . how do they ever dream up all those upper-crust categories? It's humiliating and it's silly.

There oughta be a law, and there would be, but we don't want to over-regulate the airlines, do we?

It was good optics to bawl out United's President for the unfriendly dragging of a passenger off one of his planes. But ordinary, day-in, day-out indignatives affect 90% of airline passengers. These corporate-generated indignities heighten the stress and frustration which the cabin crews have to manage as best they can. 

Despite it all, I will no doubt fly again. May the cameras roll when they drag me off, felled by a blood clot in a leg I had not been able to move for hours. Maybe someone "up there" will notice. Or even care.