I recently flew on Contour Airlines, a small company with government subsidies to run less-serviced routes. It was a plane with only 30 seats, and was the only option for Paducah, KY, to the hub of Charlotte, but the price was $69 each way. Flight attendants were funny and laid back but professional, and they had a full basket of all kinds of snacks offered to everyone, as well as drink service. The flight back was delayed because of a mechanical issue, and they were the only airline at that airport, with two daily runs to Charlotte -- that was it. If they didn't fix the plane, no one was going anywhere. We didn't have to ask what was going on -- they kept us fully informed the whole time, ordered pizza for everyone, plus snacks and drinks in the tiny airport. Then they pointed out to us that they were test flying the plane after the repair, and we watched them take off and land three times, before they were okay with making the flight. They were so good to us on there, and it was a great experience.
@@axelolsson341 ...I think that's exactly the point Mr. Reich is making. The tricky thing is that it's hard to get airlines to break up while at the same time promote a free market system. With regards to Contour, I realize most people here are not familiar with this, so I'd like to share a little info. Contour is a part 135 charter airline. So, they don't have to follow the more strict safety rules like the part 121 major airlines do. They can hire pilot with less hours of experience, fly them longer, give them less rest and pay them much much less. An average FO (First Officer) makes around $36,000 a year at Contour. So, as a commercial airline pilot of over 24 years, I respectfully reply to you and would say, I really hope we don't turn into a bunch of small part 135 charter carriers. Having said that, I would agree that the service the major airlines give is at times unacceptable and needs to change.
@@BGCflyer My comment was in response to someone saying that airlines should follow Contour. I was drawing attention to the fact that Airline's wont willingly do so, therefore they need to be broken up a-la Reich's point
As a flight attendant myself for a big airline , I want to thank you for this lovely message on being nicer to each other. Yup...in my airlines , we haven't seen a pay raise in 13 yrs..and just think how much money the company is saving by not paying us during boarding , which is the hardest part of the job. Thank you for this wonderful video. 💖
@rhymereason3449 Of course not , but because we have a union , it is a topic that has to be threaded carefully through the right channels , in the right way. I can only say that my company has been amongst one of few that recently picketed at several airport locations. We had plenty of coverage by the news.
I was not aware you guys were not getting paid for boarding. That is completely ridiculous. You guys are helping some of us load our carry ons into the overhead bin. Another issue I have is why do the airlines seat front to back instead of back to front like they did years ago. You clearly have noticed the traffic jams in the aisle when the second to last group (4) boards and go back to their seats only to turn back toward the front to find an available overhead bin for the carryon. Latam Airlines does the back to front boarding and they start one hour early.
@darlinnikki9514 I completely agree 💯 with you in EVERYTHING. We asked several times to change the boarding to the " pandemic " levels when they used to board back to front. Once the flying went bck to normal, my airline changed back to the original way: front to back which according to all of us flight attendants makes zero zero zero sense . Hence creating jams in the aft cabin and annoyed passengers stuck with their suitcases. Also there is another myth : we can no longer place your suitcase in overheads compartments. Of course we help little old ladies or minors travelling by themselves but placing and lifting bags cause too many injuries to flight attendants. Thank you for your comment. It was such a great observation under so many levels.
Not paying you at boarding and deplaning should be illegal - you are expected to assist passengers and, I'm betting, ready the plane again when everyone is off. That's *working*, and airlines shouldn't be allowed to pretend that's not part of your job.
"Try to be a little nicer to service workers and your fellow passengers - on planes and in life. After all, we're all on this journey together." -- Robert Reich Amen to that Professor.
I flew to NYC on a TAM (Brazilian airline) flight in Dec 2014. The flight attendants were like something out of a horror movie. It was the worst flying experience in my life, and I had flown quite a lot, in all sorts of companies, even in Soviet era Aeroflot(domestic!). Fortunately, TAM is now defunct, merged into something else; I vowed never to set foot on their planes again.
I was raised as an "airline brat." (Both my parents worked for United Airlines.) Mid 60's through the 90's Until the 80's, when we traveled on their flight benefits as a family, we had to wear our best clothes as a matter of employee policy. In the early days, flying was sexy - and fun! The 747-400 was amazing! Once in flight, the "stuards" would come by and ask if we kids would like to take a look at the upstairs lounge - and occasionally even visit the pilots in the cockpit (*sigh - pre 9/11*) Generally speaking, there was lots of room, pillows, blankets, meals, a movie and even a deck of playing cards (and toys!) on request. Heck, the attendants would just offer them. All of it free! And we would occasionally laugh at the meals, but they were really great (by comparison to today). United even maintained its own food service division back then. These days, I take the train if I have a choice.
Thanks for the reminder, the train is a great idea! And I just watched an interview with Pete Buttegieg, and he has already made significant, needed, positive corrections and upgrades to the system, with many more ahead for 2024.
I'm always sorry that I never got to fly on a Pan Am 747 with the piano bar upstairs. Pan Am to me was the queen of the sky. I took a class trip to Idlewild Airport in early 1963 when I was a kid. We toured the Pan Am terminal and a Boeing 707. We had to wear booties on our shoes and every boy got a junior pilot pin (which I lost, damn it!) and the girls got junior stewardess pins. We all of us got a Pan Am coloring book, which I still have. I was 8 years old on that trip. I also recall the gold painted with blue trim 4 engine propellor plane that was lettered for Panagra, a merger between Pan Am and the Grace shipping company for service to South America as I later learned.
Sucks that you had to get all dressed up for nothing. The only advantage I see nowadays compared to yesteryear is that it is socially acceptable to dress as you will. So much more comfortable.
I genuinely don't understand how not paying flight attendants isn't wage theft. I was shocked when I learned that they are not paid for sooooo much work.
...I totally agree with you on this one. Just some FYI stuff, Delta just recently started paying the flight attendants at the time of boarding. The American Airlines flight attendants are asking for this in their new contract, which I think they will get. So it's happening, albeit slowly.
I was an avid flyer for most of my life. i loved flying when i was little, and never dealt with any fear. Even served in the USAF, worked on planes, and got a few rides in them. A few years ago i decided not to fly anymore. Not commercial anyway. it is too expensive, too inconvenient, and now, too unreliable. I'd rather drive or take the train, and I'm not alone. trains that used to be sparsely ridden are now frequently full, and reservations are becoming mandatory, and further in advance. We need to stop subsidizing profitable corporations (welfare queens), and invest in public transport infrastructure. Amtrak should be everywhere, all the time.
INcluding the subsidies the govt. pays Oil companies, the most profitable ones in history? All the while giving more tax cuts to the rich and then calling for cuts to Soc. Sec.!
You're so correct. In a 42 year career I lived it. Started with the phone company, left after divestiture. Went to work for a regional airline that was merged twice. Started my own shop that I sold after nine years and it was merged. Retired from one of the four telecoms left after several more mergers and acquisitions. Glad to be out of the game. P.S., being a union steward saved me on several occasions.
I agree with everything you said. My last flights on Southwest and then Spirit were really quite miserable, particularly Spirit. They didn't even offer a drink of water and everything was an extra cost. Fortunately I flew Delta recently and, while the snacks were smaller, at least there were some and I didn't have to pay extra for my carryon bag.
He sold it.. What they did with it once they owned it has nothing to do with him. He doesn't control the company after the sale - so what you're trying to do is called "shaming the little guy, for the sins of the big guy"... Like trying to blame product suppliers for Walmart being anticompetitive. Go back to your troll bridge and stomp those tiny feet some more.
@@Frank-sm9ylHe has a point. You are feeling its effect with Big Techs… they gobble up competitors and they will control how we live our lives. Those that refuse to will fall behind.
I was flying from San Jose to Omaha with a layover in Denver. During the layover in Denver Southwest delayed my flight by 1 hour pushing the original departure time of 5pm to 6pm. They continued to delay the flight by 1 hour until midnight when they cancelled it completely, saying the next flight they could get me on to Omaha would be in 2 days (well after the family reunion I was trying to get to). I decided to just fly back to San Jose because I was going to miss the family reunion regardless of what I did. I found a flight back to San Jose that night (which I had to pay for) and was assured that my bags would make it back to the airport I flew out of. I get back to San Jose and they have lost my bags. At this point it is around 2am and there is no one in the airport to talk to about it so I decide to drive home and have them ship my bags to me. There is a mixup at the long term parking because they didn't expect me back so soon and it takes them an hour to find my car and it is a 1.5 hour drive home. I get home at 4:30am and go to sleep. I call Southwest in the morning and explain what had happened. They tell me it will be $100 to ship my bags back to me and deny any requests for compensation aside from 4 drink vouchers and no apology. In the end I ended up spending almost 3 times what I had paid for the original tickets, I didn't get to my family reunion and had one of the worst days of my life.
I played the delayed flight game with United at Chicago O Hare. After a few hours, I just took the train back to my son's place. If they don't have an airplane, they should just tell you so. I missed a day at work and the pay I will never see .
I retired from American Airlines five years ago. When I was a kid a coast to coast ticket cost a months pay of the average worker. Deregulation led to a price war to the point where it is cheaper to fly than to drive. Then when they canned all the travel agents everyone searched the internet. The number one factor in making a ticket choice is price. That’s why they have all those add on fees. Your $30 ticket to Vegas winds up costing $300 in additional fees and the public just goes along with it. I don’t fly anywhere anymore even though I can do it for free. That’s how bad the industry has become. Excellent video and commentary on the state of our country. UNION FOREVER! I will never cross a picket line. Keep up the good work.
@@grandmaida7819 If the high fuel cost is an issue, then how can the profit keeps going up every year, regardless of the fuel cost? What company was closed because of the strike? That's pure BS.
@@LCamp-cr7fs Watch The video about HSBC that "Frontline" did a piece on. Also read up regarding the massive levels of criminal fraud that has occurred repeatedly at Wells Fargo. That will give you the scoop (answer to your question). At least, in part.
@@LCamp-cr7fs the public demanded it. Everyone wants a Rolls Royce at a Costco Hyundai price. Before Saint Reagan and the deregulation of everything, the government set the prices according to what the airlines said it cost to operate. Thanks to the robber barons of the 1980s prices dropped to less than it cost to do business. Each company tried to starve out the competition. Now there’s no competition or any reason to compete. They all charge the same for the same crap service. When I was a kid, comedians used to joke about lousy airline food. Now there’s no food. There was even one company entertaining the idea of pay toilets! The same company that will charge you for water unless you say you need it to take your medicine.
The fact that he was able to summarize so much of what’s wrong with our economy and by extension our society right now in six minutes is amazing. Pay attention to those solutions he suggested and support businesses that are taking a better approach wherever you can.
Yet he's fundamentally wrong. The reason airlines suck is because people go for the cheapest seat. Period. Airlines have worked this out and changed behaviour to suit. But of course, pointing out that people are making poor choices isn't a great way to be popular - not if you can blame some other "big business" person.
@@joshduthie3401 Well, if you are on a budget, you have to get to a funeral quick smart, and the plane is the quickest way to get there, you certainly don't want the added expense of an expensive seat...of course you are going to get the cheapest seat possible. If the airline wants to upgrade you in the meantime...airline can do it at the airline's expense. You just want to get to the hotel interstate or a loved one's home, freshen up and go the funeral and then first flight home possible. That's what I had to do. Those who can afford more expensive seats, leave the cheapies for we pensioners. You are grieving for the departed as it is, don't want anymore misery added to the journey.
The airlines refer to it as 'calculated misery.' So if you're uncomfortable, then you will be willing to pay more for 2 inches of extra legroom. They make you as miserable as possible so that you'll pay for relief. By the time I'm done booking my flight, the total cost is close enough for me to go first class. The cost of a bag, the privilege of being able to choose your seat, the cost of interacting with someone at the ticket counter, the cost of printing the damn ticket, etc. So I scrap the economy ticket and upgrade to first class. Sometimes the cost is about the same.
I am old enough to remember when flying was a pleasure. It was elitest then, and was limited to the richest portion of society. Economy then cost as much as business now (adjusted for inflation) and had about the same services. Low cost airlines undercut the majors by offering lower levels of support. The majors had to respond in kind to keep their customers. The result today is that a much larger proportion of society flies, and most of them receive less attention. Robert Reich is free to start his own airline and “do it right” but I suspect that he finds it much more profitable to pontificate.
I assume you are buying a first class ticket from now on. For you it may make sense, for others not. That's what is great about capitalism. We have choices. maybe not the choices we want, but still we have choice, which is better than having to pay an overpriced ticket because the government decides to regulate the heck out of airlines.
@@DonaldMains While I would like to buy a first class ticket on Singapore Airlines and try out a suite, sadly I can’t afford it! But basic economy is now for children and short, thin people without luggage. I am neither a child nor thin. Premium economy is for taller people (more legroom) but still favors skinny people. It does allow one suitcase in many places. Business class was designed for normal people which includes the mildly overweight and people who have two pieces of luggage. Anyone who doesn’t fit the design standards has to move up a class or two, pay a fee, or suffer.
Never fill out the questionnaires they send. That is just what they use to calculate even less leg room. Not that many people complained, hah tighten the screws.
Had a horror story just last month. I’m a manual wheelchair user, which makes flying challenging at the best of times. For those of you who don’t know, the Americans with disabilities act (ADA) mandates that there be a place onboard to stow a wheelchair, called a wheelchair closet, for planes above 30 seats I think. I was boarding a cross country flight on a plane with 200 seats, so there was indeed a wheelchair closet. I was a good disabled person and informed the airline that I was coming and would need the closet ahead of time and was told that it would be available to me, but when I got to the edge of the jet bridge a flight attendant took one look at me and said “Sorry, you’re going to need to gate check your chair because it won’t fit.” Now, I knew this was BS. I’d literally made the same flight on the same aircraft type six days previous and had stowed my chair in the cabin with no issues. Another important piece of information here is that my chair costs $3400 and wasn’t covered by insurance. The idea of it being manhandled in any way scares the crap out of me, and I’m not leaving my _crucial mobility device_ in the hands of baggage workers unless I absolutely have to. So I looked at this flight attendant, and looked at the wheelchair closet. It was, of course, full of flight crew luggage as it tends to be whenever there’s not a chair onboard. Ah. Mystery solved. I pointed at the closet (which had a wheelchair symbol on it) and said “This one?” She said yes and that she was sure I wouldn’t fit. I said “I made this flight a week ago on another aircraft of the exact same type, and it fit. Let me show you.” I stood up (yes I can stand, not all wheelchair users are paralyzed, I myself have a neurodegenerative disease) and began disassembling my chair. There was some grumbling while the luggage was removed, and I stowed all of my parts except for my seat cushion neatly in the closet. When I finished, I looked at the sour faced flight attendant, smiled, and thanked her for accommodating me while seething internally. What happened to me should never happen, but it happens to wheelchair users and mobility device users all the time. Flight crew, of course, need a place to stow their stuff, and the airlines need to do a better job at cabin design to make sure disabled people and hardworking employees alike all have space, not even to mention regular passengers.
This is indeed a horror story and happens FAR too often. What if your chair were damaged?? How would they accommodate you then? The airlines and aircraft designers/outfitters all need to do a better job in accommodating the humans that are in planes. I’m so glad you stood up for yourself. Hopefully you made the road a little easier for the next person that comes along.
And he's pointing out the diversion that business owners are doing when trying to explain away the higher prices for everything. All businesses seem to have attended the same seminars.
It depends how much the foreign carrier (and by extension its country) relies on cross-customs travel. Middle East and SE Asia ones tend to top the list; ones that cater to a large domestic customer base like China, India, Russia, or EU carriers aren't so impressive.
Yes. And politicians who think the same. The Economy shouldn't simply be measured by wealth alone and should really be an overall measure of the quality of life of citizens (happiness, accessibility to good and cheap health-care, sustainability, median incomes, homes, access to green spaces in cities or wilderness areas outside, cost of quality food, etc.).
It's not just shareholders, I don't think. House owners, for example, expect property values to also go up in value exponentially, to be their retirement funds. The house my late parents bought for less than $30k about 50 years ago is now assessed at about $4M. Aaaand, how many today can afford that? What about 50 years hence?
I worked as a flight attendant from 1990 through 2002 (and then took a leave of absence before I separated from the company in 2007). It was my dream job as a little girl, and I am eternally grateful for the many years of global travel I was able to do. It's a different job now, and I don't miss it at all, but I sure do miss the way it was.
My family and I were going on vacation and had tickets to fly into a regional airport. We had one stop to change planes. Got off the plane in Charlotte and found that the second leg was cancelled for no apparent reason. I asked the guy at the service desk what we were supposed to do and he held up his hands and shrugged. We had to rent a car and drive the last leg. They wouldn’t give us a refund or pay for the rental car, just gave us a voucher for a future flight.
I wonder if they ever got exposed for having a foul reason for cancelling that connecting flight. By not revealing any discernible reason, they must've had something worse to hide.
We had this happen with Frontier. We couldn't get home from vacation because they delayed the flight for 8 hours...and then just cancelled it...and we were traveling with children! I couldn't believe it! They tried to give me a voucher also and I wrote a letter to their disputes and said that I would open a new dispute with a case number every freakin' day until they refunded my money. It only took a week.
I hate to distract from the message about consolidation, but I just want to say this video is phenomenally well-produced. It looks very clean, you and your team make these topics super entertaining.
That’s just another reason why I prefer Amtrak. It may in most cases be the only choice for train travel in the US, but it’s not trying to pay stockholders, so the money goes into the operation. No charge for up to two checked bags, two carry-on bags plus a personal item allowed. Plenty of leg room, wider seats, nicely reclining seats, and leg and toe rests in coach. Of course, the main reasons are the scenery and the potential for chatting with others.
It's like what happened at Boeing. Boeing used to be an engineering company that focused on excellent engineering, quality manufacturing and passenger safety. The workers were listened to and they had a say on how the company was run. Then the executives, MBA's, beancounters, financiers, business types and investors took over and turned it into an ATM machine. It's the same thing and its happening all over.
My father-in-law was a Boeing engineer in the late '70's and '80's and proud of it! Whenever my wife and I flew she was happy to be on a Boeing plane, but if we were on an Airbus she'd sneer, "ugh...we're on an Airbutt!" 😂 When Boeing moved it's corporate headquarters from Seattle to Chicago, moved construction elsewhere and the recent scandal with the 737 Max she says her dad is spinning in his grave right now. It all comes down to Corporate heads bowing to shareholders... When we can my wife and I fly British Air, they've mostly taken pretty good care of us (there are hiccups now and then, but hey whaddaya gonna do?) but as we get older (and arthritis etc gets worse) we endeavor to upgrade out of coach to the next level to at least get a few more inches of legroom, at least when we can afford it!
Speaking for all flight attendants; thank you for making this. I fly charter and this includes military as well. Our company is doing amazingly well, but it doesn’t trickle down to us or the pilots. The pilots still have some thing better than we do. After 30 years in the air, I’m grateful for the experiences, but saddened at what has happened to our industry.
Not sure who you fly with but if you are flying legacy airlines then I'm sure you and the pilots will be well compensated. Not sure many industries pay someone $500K/year to pilot a vehicle that has autopilot and with the lowest accident rate and fatality rate of all transportation options.
@@JW-cx8tg unfortunately, I don’t fly with the legacy airlines. I only commute on them. Flying military contracts, and we are nowhere near that pay scale.
@@merrilew Quit. Not being harsh but quit and go corporate. I flew Mil contract for about a year then woke up one day. Now Im making almost triple, working half the days and staying in WAAAAy nicer hotels. MIL/Gov contract flight pay very well. You company is screwing you over.
Thank you Robert for addressing a pet peeve of mine. I am old enough to remember a better flying experience on so many levels. Recently on my last flight, a TSA agent was yelling at 2 older people who were not doing something properly. It was very uncomfortable to hear her yelling and I could relate to the elders moving too slowly. Flying used to be an adventure, now it’s a nightmare. You have hit the nail on its head! THANK YOU!
there is, demsoc is just too much equality for these greedy nutcases to handle, they love a world where money can buy them anything they want @@l.m.stewart
I didn't know flight attendants don't get paid during the boarding process. Wow that is terrible. I remember being delayed on the tarmac for 2 hours. Yikes
Why haven't the flight attendants' unions filed a joint grievance to the DOL and the NLRB? If an FA is in uniform and on the airliner, they are on the job. They should be getting paid, whether it's moving or not.
My family was flying back from a trip to see relatives. The day before our return flight, I checked us in and confirmed the four of us were seated together and printed our boarding passes. The next morning, I went to the airline website to check that our flight was on time and see what terminal we were flying out of and discovered they had moved my family from our confirmed seats and stuck us in single seats all over the plane. My oldest is disabled and my youngest was around 7 at the time. I called the airline and they said "Sorry, we had to change planes and the seat configuration is different." I asked why they made ZERO attempt to seat a family with minor children who were all on the same reservation together and they didn't care at all. I went to the ticket counter at the airport and got the same "Whatever..." response. My husband said "We're just going to have to ask people on the plane if they will swap seats." So frustrating. And if you read Reddit subs dedicated to travel and flying, they are full of angry stories about "entitled Karens" who need to swap seats to be next to their children. Other people are blaming the families being "too cheap to buy adjacent seats" or "too stupid to plan ahead" when 99% of the time it's the airline's fault for making last minute switcheroo and forcing passengers to work out a solution.
And aside from the inconvenience and other issues related to being separated from your small children, you often have to pay a higher fare for the "right" to select your seat. So you select a window or an aisle seat and pay $50 more for your ticket. They then cancel your flight or switch planes and stick you in a middle seat with no credit or refund of the premium you paid for seat selection. How is that not theft? What other business could get away with this?
Yup! This has happened to my family before as well! They switched to a different plane with fewer seats, so no one got the seats they paid extra for and everyone is angry, trying to switch seats because basically every party got split up. Luckily everyone was mad at the airline for that one not each other, so we all tried to work together to make sure everyone got a seat set up similar to what they paid for.
@wendwllhickey6426 Many places in the US aren't serviced by a reliable passenger train. I live about 2 hours from Chicago, and my family was traveling to Colorado. Changing our airline tickets to an Amtrak trip would have meant swapping a 2 hour flight for a train journey that took more than a day and didn't actually stop at our final destination. The sad fact is that most trips in North America require air travel.
I flew for TWA in the 70's and 80's . We weren't paid after we checked in initially for the trip. After the flight took off we were on the clock. The pay was very good, benefits were excellent, especially dental. (got to keep the smile looking good). There was a cap on hours flow per month/ per trip. Management was strict about weight, make up etc. No extreme hairdos. I didn't have any complaints about the job. I did struggle with jet lag flying overseas for a while. I was a zombie till i figured out what worked for me. You couldn't get me on a flight nowadays free.
It's crazy to me that a flight attendant has to be at the airport like an hour before their flight, deal with 30-45 minutes of boarding passengers and don't get paid until the doors close. I do agree that people need to be kinder to each other. Flying is stressful for everyone these days.
I remember this one time when I was traveling home on leave. I got upgraded to first class because I was in uniform. I sat in the seats and thought, " wow this is pretty nice." A gentleman across from me noticed that I was impressed and asked if it was my first time in first class. I told him it was, and he said economy class used to be this. That first class had all these other luxuries that you can't get anymore. Ahh the Pan Am golden days I guess.
I got upgraded to business class for free in 1997 because my flight was delayed 2 hours due to weather at another airport. Business class all the way to Frankfurt Germany from San Francisco!...sat next to the CEO of Greenpeace International. We had a great conversation most of the way, so much so that the time flew by...and the food was fantastic and the stewardesses kept delivering those mini bottles of wine to me without me having to ask once!
Not likely. No seats that covert into beds. The meals were decent, and you had real flatware, glasses and dishes. And lots of legroom plus, Americans weren't so fat!
Nowadays a lot of what they pass onto customers as "first class" is a joke. So they have an even more posh class with made up foo foo fancy sounding names and only on certain routes.
@@drdr76I have been a conscientious supporter of Greenpeace for its gutsy environmental activism. Now I wonder how much of my donated money is going to CEO salary/salaries there. Is flying first- or business-class a legitimate perq or not?
This is SPOT ON! And it reminds me of another pet peeve. These days, many services (Dr.s appt, on-line or phone purchases, etc.) are followed by surveys asking me to rate my experience. I've even seen automated machines in public restrooms asking me to push a button to rate cleanliness, etc. What they really mean is "help us dominate the grossly underpaid worker who helped you." There is NEVER a question about the CEO or the company's policies. I either give a great rating or no rating at all. I don't work for the personnel department and I'm not going to help them keep their employees in line. They can do their own dirty work!
For employed physicians part of our compensation is tied to those survey responses. So if the small percentage who fill out the survey don't rate us excellent, then we are paid less. It's a way for them to decrease our pay and blame us because we didn't satisfy the patient (even though they may have been put off by something totally unrelated to our service)
@@tbillroth Just as I suspected. I'm sorry it's set up this way -- I've had excellent doctors with less-than-stellar personalities. Medical care isn't a popularity contest -- it should be about outcomes, only. Hang in there!
@@tbillroth You mean like instances where a tweaker is faking something to try to get a prescription for opiod pain medicine and you don't give him one?
One thing that irritates me is something of a similar subject. Reviews of things on Amazon. If a review is a legitimate review, good. But when there's a 1 star review for something and the person said "the mailman dropped my package", it's like how in the hell is that the fault of the product or the company? I HATE that type of thing.
Oh wow, I could join you on this video. I'm 45, flown a lot both commercial and small planes as a kid, and a lot of commercial planes as an adult. Flying used to be almost like the ultimate version of "the customer is always right", which has morphed into them yelling at us and dragging us off planes. I get that this is a two way street, but it went from being a king to being cattle, something has to give. I now have only flown twice in a decade, meanwhile I have over a hundred flights in the previous decade. Some of that is work, but my wife and I now actively avoid trips that would require flight.
It took less than eight hours to fly from Amsterdam to Newark with United. Then it took me more than eight hours to get to my final destination of Rochester NY, because of several screwups in domestic air travel. Next time I'll take the train to Rochester.
I remember choosing an empty row in the back of the Red Eye and stretching-out for a nap as we flew across the continent. Flying used to be fun. For the last couple of decades, I've been driving my business trips instead of flying whenever possible; the time is often similar and I can carry my pocket knife, stretch, eat, and _whatever,_ pretty much when I want and in far more comfort.
Oh, the pocket knife. I had a 3" long nail file in a cute little red plastic sheath, which lived in my cosmetic bag. It was confiscated when I went to Australia in '12, and now lives in Hong Kong airport or environs.
In 2017 I had occasion to travel across the United States from Boston to visit Seattle, and I found I had a choice: air or rail. To fly to Seattle I could pay $1,700.00 for a first-class ticket on Delta, and deal with all the issues you describe so well. Or I could pay $1,700.00 for a first class ticket on AmTrak's Empire Builder line, and spend three days relaxing in a private compartment reading, thinking, or just watching America roll by, all while enjoying three delicious (free) meals a day, plus cheap and plentiful coffee and booze in the bar car, chatting with my fellow passengers. As I wasn't in any particular hurry, the choice was pretty obvious to me. The trip went more smoothly than any airline flight I've ever been on, going all the way back to my first flight in 1976. The only passenger-related incident was when the conductor halted the train in the middle of the night at a whistle stop somewhere in the deep wilds of Montana to put someone off, for the offense of smoking in the stairwell of the bar car. At this point I think the only justification for flying is either a) you're in a big hurry, or b) you're a masochist.
Or c) there is no train to where you're going. I'd love to be wrong, but as far as I know there is no train from Alaska to the lower 48 states. My husband and I both have elderly parents in Alaska. We have to take a 3 hour shuttle from our mid size city to a larger city, then a flight from there to Alaska. My husband is retired, and would love to take a train instead. Your travel experience sounds lovely, and I hope to have one like it sometime. But it won't be going back home to visit my dad :(
@@OneTraveller Hmm. Turns out you're absolutely right: while there seems to be plenty of rail travel within Alaska, there is in fact no through route from the lower forty-eight. I blame the airlines. 😁
@@aceous99 You have no idea. Being the nerd I am, I'd brought along a scanner set to the railroad's radio channels, so I got to listen to the whole conversation between the conductor and the engineer. After it was all over the conductor came on the PA system and explained what had happened, and he was definitely in "You will respect mah authoritah!" mode. 🤣
I have chosen not to fly anymore! The experience is so dehumanizing that I just can't bear the discomfort anymore. I live in the southwest of this country and will drive to New York for the Thanksgiving holidays rather than face another degrading experience of a holiday crowd in an airport and an overcrowded plane! This country is full of wonderful people and they are very willing to be kind to strangers when you meet them in their natural habitat. When you get crammed into a too-small seat next to them the experience is very different. Thank you Robert for putting together such an amusing and to-the-point video!
I agree. I've probably flown over 2,000 plane flights. In the 1990s, I was elite on 4 airlines. Yet I now choose not to fly if at all possible. I drive a car I love at my own pace. Fewer hassles (except sometimes all area hotels sell out). I've gotten to love truck stops which are fancier than airport shops or airline service. So I can actually eat while traveling without having to worry about hours open. So much better and free-er feeling! My family doesn't get it. Even after I picked one up at 3:30 am after multiple delays. Or others had cancellations, sometimes without flights the next day. I got sick of the bad customer lines where you can write a book before rebooking a flight.
Yes, there are consequences associated with each and every decision we make. This is true for me and it true for the airline executives. Without doubt if I wanted to go to Italy my choice would make that difficult. The point is that commercial air travel has become so ugly and uncomfortable that I am willing to make other adjustments to avoid it. If you are in the business of selling seats on a plane that's not what you want to hear your former customers say!
I think the underlying issue is that we have allowed sociopaths to rise through the corporate ranks to become the executives of nearly every corporation. They also occupy most political positions, which is why the laws support the corporate greed and lack of empathy. This will not change until we, as a people, decide that empathy has value and that ruthlessness does not. I'm not holding my breath for this to happen in my lifetime...
Stuck on the tarmac in Vegas for hours, the heat on the plane was getting unbearable, nerves were fraying. I’m a bad flyer as it is due to phobia, this was my worst case scenario nightmare. They pack you in like sardines, and give you peanuts, and wonder why people are mad.
Airlines don’t control tarmac delays. That is ATC, controlled by the FAA. The FAA is an administration, which means they answer to…the President. Complain to Joe, not your captain.
When I was a kid there was actual food on planes. I was invited to tour the cockpit and even sat in the pilot's chair. Today it's like taking the Greyhound, I have to show up hours early to mitigate the airport's lack of organization, and even though I'm an honorably separated Army veteran, *every single time I walk into an airport* for the last twenty years, I get treated like a potential terrorist by someone with four weeks of education in security who looks like they couldn't get hired at the cable company. I don't fly anymore. Amtrak is a better deal and far less stressful. Yeah, I mean, when I travel for work, they have to pay me for two more days.. but they're saving a ton of money on the airline tickets I don't buy anymore. If that's what the big airline corporations' CEOs wanted, fine. Maybe they invest their dividends in Amtrak stock instead of their own companies to avoid the SEC's attention. What really hits me about all of this is how much it changed in half a lifetime. I hear stories about what flying was like in the fifties and wonder if they're understated so people won't immediately reject them as lies.
The Train is *CHILL.* If you have serious-level “social phobia,” dealing with the TSA is like facing the Nazi *Secret State Police* - the *Gestapo.* Then there’s the absolute crush of people, their noise… Riding Amtrak, in contrast, was *quiet* and *peaceful* from start to finish. Stayed in the Roomette almost the whole time - in May, 2021. Oh, and the Virus was a lot stronger and more troublesome then, too. I wasn’t that worried about getting it myself, but I was *really* worried about catching it and *THEN* giving it to my aged father.
Flying in the fifties was a whole different experience than today. There were no security lines, you had plenty of leg room, the food was excellent, the service was wonderful, everyone was on their best behavior, and everyone dressed up. Air travel in the fifties was an elegant experience. Today, air travel is just a Greyhound bus ride in the sky.
I am 51 and think flying was great up until 9/11 happened in 2001. Security wasn't so stressful and I never got felt up, you could greet your loved ones right at the gate as they exited, there were no fees for bags, and meals were still given if I remember correctly, without paying fees. Now it's just on international fees you get nice food and wine but the cost is astronomical.
So well put! We all have horror stories. I live in Montreal, which was the home of the only Grand Prix Race in North America for decades. One year I travelled on business from Toronto to Montreal on Grand Prix Friday! What a mistake. With overbooking and near riots at the airport. The poor counter staff were trying to rebook people. Despite having purchased an assigned seat, I could not get on my 5pm flight and ended up getting home at 1am! I do not understand how selling a seat to 2 people is not fraud!!!!
American Airlines flat out stole $200. I accidentally booked a flight for October instead of September (senior moment) and didn’t realize the mistake until a couple of days laterlater. I cancelled and rebooked but no refund. When I called the customer service they said “you agreed to the terms and conditions. Since you didn’t notice the mistake within 24 hours there is no refund.” But I caught the mistake more than a month from when it was (accidentally) scheduled How is that not illegal? They have more than a month to fill the seat (and probably will)
That's illegal in several states. There airlines have to give you 24 hrs to change your mind or fix a problem. They won't tell you, but check with your states AG's office.
These people are there to win and keep your money even if you want to reschedule. That is why they have regular tickets and flexible tickets. Flexible tickets are more expensive, but that is why they give you the luxury of cancelling and rescheduling for a later date as long as you use the voucher they issue for you to use. Regular tickets don’t have that and they were refundable for a while during the pandemic until they weren’t. Trust me I know. What I wish is for tickets being refundable regardless of ticket prices. Only then I consider traveling comfortably and cancel if something arises that may ruin my trip.
Retired airline pilot here .. I take Amtrak nowadays. I have yet to encounter a single delay. I don’t have to go through the TSA checkpoint, I eat good food in a dining car like a restaurant, I have a private room and there is a shower available if I want. Write your congressional reps and demand more train service!
You may not have ever had any issues with Amtrak, but my train was so delayed once that I missed my connecting train even though I had a 5 HOUR gap between the two trains! Got stuck in DC for 20 hours waiting for the next connection to come and had to fight to not be charged double for it since it wasn't my fault I missed the second train and I refused to pay for a new ticket because the damn train was delayed!
Here on the west coast, the freight companies own the tracks and Amtrak is often delayed. As I understand it, if the Amtrak train is even 1 minute delayed, it loses its priority for use of the track and will have to pull over any time a freight train is coming. On a recent trip to Klamath Falls OR, I thought we were going to arrive on time, but then we had to pull over for 30 minutes because a freight train was loading cars. I still prefer traveling by train when I can, but it would be even better without having to pull over and wait on nearly every trip of an hour or more. And if we could get high speed rail ....
The one time I missed a flight was with United. I showed up to the airport more than 2 hours before the flight was scheduled to take off, but when I got to the airport, there was a huge line to check bags and *nobody* at the counter. After about 45 minutes, a single counter opened and by the time I got in the front, I had missed my flight. I literally missed a flight because United was so severely understaffed that it took over 2 hours to check a bag.
Hmmm...seems like everyone else got on their flight fine. If an airline is having this issue with so many pax missing due to TSA or check in issues then they would hold the flight. You probably should plan better.
@@JW-cx8tg Seriously? How early should I arrive before a flight? As it was, I arrived 45 minutes before the checkin counter even opened. The airport wasn't even busy that day -- just United's understaffed baggage check.
Consolidated Airlines. True words were never spoken Robert. Thank you for this excellent video. I'm 64 years old and I remember the days when people would dress up just to fly. And more importantly, people were civilized to each other.
I get to go to Europe for about a month every year. Great accessible and inexpensive trains and buses. I book my flights as far in advance as the airlines allows.. Having nearly 7 decades of commercial flight as a passenger, I remember the "way it used to be."
Can confirm that we’re not imagining the seat shrinkage. Last year I flew on an old plane (How old? The armrests had ASHTRAYS) and it was like being in freaking business class. I’m a bigger guy, and other than the rare occasions I’ve lucked out on an upgrade it was the first time I’d been comfortable on a plane in decades
Would love to see gov't action on hidden fees. Last month scheduling flights for my upcoming trip, it wasn't until the checkout page in an obscure barely visible place it highlighted that there was a separate charge for carry-on bag (not checked, carry on) and then I had to dig around their website to see how much it was: $45 for a carry-on bag each way which made it more expensive than the alternative and wasted a ton of my time. Needless to say, I went with the alternative both to save a bit and on principle. Same nightmare trying to book hotels too--hidden fees galore making it take hours to find what's actually a deal and what's a scam in disguise looking to pounce an extra $100+ on you when you check in. It's just ridiculous. Robbing us all blind through obfuscation.
My airline horror story: Back in 2007, when I was a broke 19-year-old, I needed to make my way from New England back to my home in the Pacific Northwest on US Airways, with a stopover in Philadelphia. My flight to PHL was uneventful, but the flight out of PHL was overbooked...by quite a bit. They asked for volunteers to go on a flight the next morning, offering hotel and travel vouchers. But because I was broke and had a terrible job, I tried to stay on that flight so I could be at work the next day. I'm guessing that a lot of people were in a similar situation, because about a half hour later, I heard my name along with about 10 others over the PA. Lo and behold, I was kicked off the flight and put on the one the next morning. When I asked for my hotel and travel vouchers, they said they didn't have to provide them because I didn't volunteer to be bumped. I slept on the terminal floor that night because I literally didn't have enough money for a hotel room that day. By some miracle, I actually made it back to my home airport with maybe about an hour to spare before I had to clock in for work. I was stinky, tired, and I got an earful from the general manager because "I obviously pulled an all-nighter and didn't look professional." I tried tirelessly to get some kind of compensation from US Airways, but they went and got gobbled up by American a little while later. Good fkuicgn riddance. (I haven't flown American in well over a decade, but I can't imagine that they treat their passengers any better.)
How the F is this even legal, they basically stole the ticket you paid for. I would have never got off the flight without knowing what hotel I'm staying at. PS I also slept in a terminal but for different reasons. It's bad.
I used to fly every three weeks for work from 97 to 2018 and I remember when they didn't charge for checking bags or a least one bag. Then 9/11 happened and slowly throughout the years things began to change like the things you mentioned in your video. One of the things that pissed me off the most was that sometimes I would get to the airport several hours early for my flight and in the past they would allow you to change your flight to an earlier departure time if there were empty seats available at the time. But they eventually changed that and wanted to charge you to change to an earlier departure time even if the flight had empty seats available. It never made sense to me that I was willing to fill an empty seat on their plane so that they could have more seats available on a later flight.
After 9/11 the so-called "Patriot Act" came out in no time. That thing on paper is around 7 inches of stacked paper. Nobody can work that fast. The USA is sh!t now. "Freedom" my ass!
It’s revenue management and profit maximization by software algorithms. The airline is gambling that it can sell those empty seats at the last minute for a much higher price and it has the historical data and computing tools to estimate how much extra money they can make with those decisions that seem absurd.
Thanks so much for these facts. I was just telling my family recently that I didn’t understand why flying was so pleasant when I was younger and is a TERRIBLE experience nowadays. It all comes down to the twin ogres: greed ( airlines) and complacency ( customers). I’m going to follow your excellent suggestions about stopping both.
Canadian. The federal government cracked down on poor customer service here. When I flew home from the US, in January/23,my flight was cancelled. I was rebooked the following day. Air Canada reimbursed me for my hotel and meals, plus they paid me$1000. for the inconvenience ( approximately $100/ hour, if the delay is caused by the airline, and is 3 hours or more).
We flew Air Canada recently and it was OK. Just OK. Our flight had a layover in Toronto that should have been 2 hours, but that flight was cancelled and our next leg was changed to a 8 hour layover in the airport. I spent more time in the Toronto Airport than I did flying the Atlantic Ocean, but I got there and back home OK. Service and food were good, on-time performance -- not so much.
@@eaglechawks3933 we had company in NS this summer. His return flight stopped briefly in Toronto. There is just barely enough time to catch the second leg to Florida. Unfortunately, the NS- Toronto flight was slightly late, so he couldn’t make his connection. He rushed, but couldn’t get aboard the flight. He could see the plane still parked, but the access was shut off. That was not his fault, since his flight arrived late in Toronto due to winds. Airlines have no business scheduling flights so close together it requires a favourable wind, and running, and customs being efficient and in a good mood in order for a customer to make their next flight. This guy knows the airport, and was highly motivated to catch his To- Tampa flight, as he had one more day of vacation at home before going back to work. Through no fault of his own, he couldn’t make the flight. Not only was he stuck in To because his incoming flight was incapable of landing ion time, but the counter person was hateful to him, told him he had time to make the flight, when he clearly didn’t, and told him so in a condescending, very rude manner. He was not compensated. He was lectured. Oh, he was given 2 vouchers for food, which had to be used in the airport. So in his case, the airline was as unreasonable as ever.
Great video. My wife and I are under 5'8" and we have very little room when seated in the plane. Taller people are absolutely jammed into their seats. We quit flying due to the lousy value and poor reliability of flights. Your info about when flight service staff are considered on the clock was informative and galling at the same time. When I flew overseas to Europe, Asia, and Africa on foreign airlines, the difference in the overall experience was like night and day - foreign airlines were much better in all regards.
Foreign airlines also pay their employees much much lower and they charge you similar prices. Their human capital costs and real estate costs are much lower than US, so they can afford to splurge on other things. A top of scale pilot from Taiwan makes around $150K/year. Sounds great at first but then you compared to pilots in US who makes around $500k/year. See the difference? The US airlines pretty much run the company to pay it's Frontline employees, foreign airlines run it for it's passengers.
You'd be surprised how little flight crew actually make. Its true that some high seniority legacy pilots are well paid but entry / generic is really bad, if you take into account the training costs you end up having to pay them to fly. (...and they do the 'if the plane's not moving we're not paying' trick like they do with the cabin crew). This notion that workers are highly paid based on a few outliers turns up everywhere, its one of the tricks to turn people against each other.
Thank you Robert Reich for your wonderful and informative efforts to educate the American public and promote public decency. We are all in this together.
But we aren’t. We are hopelessly divided and the people with power who running this country and the entire world into the ground are NOT suffering any consequences.
@@nettewilson5926 That is the problem. So many issues affect us all. We are all in the same boat whether some like it or not. If we cannot make agreements, reach some compromise, when we need to, we are all doomed.
This summer, my wife and I were flying from Aruba to Asheville with a layover in Atlanta. An afternoon thunderstorm caused such a problem for the airline that our flight was canceled. We had to drop hundreds of dollars on cab and hotel accommodations which they wouldn’t reimburse us for because the delay was “weather related” despite other planes flying out that night. Long story short, they booked us on a second flight the next day which also got cancelled and we ended up driving the final leg of the trip. It took an additional 2 days after that to get our bags. Did we get any money refunded? Nope.
@@johnp139 They can't control the weather, but they often use weather as an excuse while other planes are going in and out of the airport before and after your flight was cancelled. I've had that happen as well.
On my trip home for Xmas to see my wife, the flight from Iceland (where there's an active Volcano & gusty winds regularly up to 100km/hr) to Amsterdam left on time & arrived early. My connecting flight from Amsterdam to Vienna was cancelled "because bad weather"...... if it was so bad, how did I fly in? & how is bad weather (nowhere near as windy or any volcanoes) in Holland such a problem? Compensation for my 22hr journey - denied.... because hey "airlines can't control the weather!" These days I will literally drive up to a couple of days to get somewhere instead of flying, because in the end, it's not more expensive, or much slower, or less convenient. I have my car at my destination, I have my own time schedule, & I have my own comfort.... more importantly I have my sanity! No security checks, squashy seats, screaming kids & lame excuses from ridiculously rich corporations.....bad weather my a#%*!
Airlines have no control over the weather. Had you been patient they would have complied with the contract of carriage. You elected to default on the contract, not the carrier.
@@buckmurdock2500 if you'd bothered to read the comment in its entirety, other flights took off & landed (as in my case) airlines just use it as an excuse so they don't have to pay. Why do you feel the need to justify the airlines actions? You a shareholder? Or just work directly? Either way, that's part of the problem, & as ol' mate says, this lot have us arguing with one another so the focus stays away from their abuse of the system & others. The system is broken..... I really hope we are truly stuck in the Matrix
#5 is such an important point. (They all are, but this one seems to be least obvious to a lot of people.) There are so many discussions of "plane etiquette", which isn't a conversation you can have without talking about *why* we're having these conversations. Plane trips need not be so miserable nor expensive. As long as we're fighting with each other, they can keep changing the rules of the game and get away with it.
I’ve checked out of those conversations altogether; I was getting too frustrated by how conservatives and centrists talk about it. I live in a country with a high-ranking airline so I’m just doing what I can for the parties here who want to prevent things from getting as bad as they have in the US.
The worst I had recently was an American Airlines flight being delayed almost two and a half hours when I had a connection. There were 11 people on the same flight with the same connection and even though (most) people let us off first and we ran through the airport we all missed the flight. What was infuriating was that the connection was also American Airlines, so they knew we were coming, but also that the connecting flight left 10 minutes early. The gate attendants and customer service tried to tell me the flight did not leave early but I took pictures of the time they closed the door which was shown at the gate. We had to wait 11 hours for the next flight and “the best they could do” was one meal voucher per guest for the food court. It was a $10 credit which is barely enough to get a coffee in airports. I will never fly American again.
I like what you said about corporate monopolies getting us to blame each other for the excesses of rich companies and individuals. I also see people blame themselves for doing poorly in a rigged economy. I picture a sheltered workshop system that would benefit 3 populations: seniors who can’t afford to retire, the disabled who need special accommodations to be able to work, and single parents. All three of these groups could thrive (and by extension, increase our GDP, productivity, and individual prosperity). We need something like a sheltered workshop system (funded by the 15% corporate minimum tax), to insert prosperity at the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid, and balance the poverty Out of society. Thank you for shining the light in the distorted places. 💙🦋☮️
We are so desperate for re-regulation of industry, blocking further mergers and stipulating what private industry can do with government monies...for a start. Thanks, Dr. R. for your valuable videos to raise awareness.
Thank you for relaying that 8” of length & 2” of width has been removed. On my flight back to the U.S. from Switzerland, I literally had to keep walking down the aisle & do stretches near the lavatory the entire flight because the cramped seating was so unbearable, especially if you’re tall.
The 2 inches of width statement is misleading. On narrow-body jets (like the Boeing 737), seat widths are the same as they were in the 1950s. The 737 has the exact same fuselage width as the 727 and the 707 (which entered service in 1958) before it. All of these aircraft have the same 3+3 seating configuration, and the same average seat width. You can even look up seating charts from the 1960s for comparison. On the other hand, seats on some widebody aircraft (777, 787) do vary by up to 1.5 inches in width. For example, an economy seat is 18.5 inches wide on a United 767, but only 17.1 inches wide on their 777s and 787s.
@@rosco0101except the exit row of a A321 tons of space but they have those arm rest tables and the hip room is tight on those. It is true they have used the same fuselage width across the 707,727, and 737 I bet the seat framework has been reused for decades. Ever get on a plane that still has blanked off ashtrays? Was quite common until a little while ago.
Thank the Lord it was a 2 aisle plane. You are not allowed to do that on single aisle narrowbody planes. I have the same problem and usually wait until the crowd have deplaned before moving to take my baggage out of the overheads and make my way in one movement to the exit and out towards the gate. I cannot stand for long periods due to knee trouble.
Reagan broke the air traffic controllers union and replaced them with new people. In the past, air traffic control had a steady flow of new people coming in and old people retiring, so they had a mix of experience levels that the new people could learn from. By hiring new people all at once, Reagan created an age gap. People are retiring in droves with lots of new people coming in, who won't be able to learn from those who are more experienced. Yet another reason why Reagan was a disaster.
I wondered about that age gap when all those controllers got fired. I was in a National Guard aviation unit (helicopters) at the time, and several of our ATCs left for other parts of the country to work at civilian airports. Nice folks, but I don't know if I'd trust them to manage swarms of airliners.
Airline deregulation was a good thing. Before deregulation, governments created a lot of concentration and inefficiency by regulating who was allowed to fly where and for what fare price. Deregulation made flying much more affordable to more people. Air fares have dropped precipitously in real terms since the 1970s. Sure, flying was more glamorous back then, but it was also a lot more expensive, less safe, and less accessible to the masses.
I'm so tall that for most flights, I wish there was a standing option because the seats are just too painful. Each generation is getting taller, but airline seats are getting smaller.
I am 6'6" and even though I paid for an exit row seat on a flight this year, I got stuck in a regular seat. My legs had to be scrunched up and I had to lean forward for a 5 1/2 hour flight. A true nightmare. But at least my tiny plastic bottle of water was only $3.
I remember when people used to dress up for flights, and the 747 (I think) had an upstairs lounge you could walk to and walk around in. Then they filled it with paid seats, then with more and smaller paid seats. Flying did improve in some ways, as they used to let people smoke away in the plane, and sold people more cigarettes in flight….so everyone’s clothes reeked of cigarettes after flying.
I've been flying since 1969, and flew a lot from the 70's into the millennium........and yes, it was wonderful!!! And in all those years, I might add, I never saw bad behavior, or anyone wearing pajamas! I won't go near an airport now.
It was a different time back then when airfares started at what we pay for business class today, so of course it was more pleasant with the lack of plebes.
Thank you for alerting passengers that FAs are NOT getting paid during boarding OR when there is a delay while the boarding door is open OR if we haven't even boarded yet. And you think passengers hate delays. We are 😡😡😡 too!!!
Because it’s not true. Their separate salaries cover boarding and such, and they also get an hourly per diem. These facts were conveniently left out of this video!!!
In the States these days, I always travel by train. Yes it's slower and old fashioned, however, it is a very pleasant and convivial way to travel. You get to meet a lot of interesting people and see a lot of interesting places along the way. That more than makes up for the time.
I do the same! I live in NYC and my family are all in Florida and I always take the train. It's about a 24 hour trip, not bad. Gives me time to unwind after leaving the city and I arrive relaxed.
Spot on, from a Flight Attendant! Though you left out the big one..."SECURITY". Yes, we need security, but there must be some way to achieve it other than the universally- hated one we endure.
We spend untold time and money on airline security where there is an infintissimally small chance of "terror" but nothing to prevent the daily mass shootings.
In 1952 I boarded an airliner at Chicago Midway Field. I was in the ‘cattle car’ section. It was roomy and comfortable and as soon as we were airborne coffee was served. Wonderful flight. Those days are gone forever. As long as I am traveling inside the continental United Stares I will drive myself.
Same. I drive all over Europe because I detest flying. Many people look at me like I'm crazy but I can live without the misery of modern flying - especially since I'm tall!
hear you. After a prior flight - where I was in the business section...I got scrunched in the window seat - next to a "refrigerator perry" size guy that took up tye other two seats. He fell asleep and his arms were flailng so badly I was terrified he was gonna punch me. Talk about becoming claustrophobic. I couldn't even think of trying to get out to use the restroom. When I finally got off the flight ...I immediately upgraded my next flight on Air Seychelles to FIRST class. Talk about a paradigm shift ... I couldn't even touch the seat next to me - it was only 2 on each side and about double the width between rows. I WAS IN HEAVEN ❗
This post nails it! I too remember when flying was a pleasure. I accumulated well over a million flying miles during my working years but now I loath even thinking of planning a trip. However, I don’t see much that we as individuals can do other than not to fly.
I remember the airlines giving out "points" for frequent flying, but then we couldn't use the points while booking a flight without paying extra money for their nonsense reasons.
What an excellent video ❤! When I lived in the USA, i used to fly on Delta, TWA, etc. but now, I never travel with any American airline. I am lucky because I live in Japan. When I go overseas, my airline of choice is Singapore Airlines. Excellent service! Failing that, I will fly on either ANA or Japan Airlines, also great, but not as wonderful as Singapore. Last year I also flew Lufthansa in Europe. I have never ever encountered the horrible service and lack of customer courtesy I see on RU-vid, that American airlines have. Just awful and unbelievable! This video explains why the airline service industry in the USA is in the pits! Thank you for this!
I've been flying, on my own, from the Toronto area to Winnipeg to visit family since I was 5 years old. When I was a kid, the flight attendants would make a fuss of me, we were usually served a snack or small lunch, even though it was only a 2 hour flight, and it was overall an exciting, fun experience. I just took my son on the same trip just over a month ago. We flew out of Hamilton, but had to pay nearly $100 for one checked bag (our shared suitcase), another $100 for one carry on (I purposely didn't pay for my son's little backpack and no one said anything), and the total cost of both our tickets together with all the add ons and fees was almost $1000! For a two hour flight to Winnipeg, hardly the tourist capital of Canada! They honestly have better seats on the local commuter buses, and while even a couple years ago they had in-flight screens on the backs of each chair so you could watch tv or track your flight's progress, they're all gone (again, something offered on commuter buses now). They also charged $3 for a bottle of water, and wouldn't accept my debit card, even though that was more than enough to pay for the flight itself! A kind fellow passenger bought my son some water (not even water given out, not even to children!) I felt so ripped off, but tried to keep positive for my son's sake, since this was the first flight he's been on that he's been old enough to remember. Still, I miss how things were when I was a kid. They can't keep using 9/11 as an excuse to rip people off!
@@hael8680 Swoop. They're going under. I'm not surprised. I only took them because they were the only airline flying out of Hamilton, and I didn't want to deal with going to Pearson.
As for travel horror stories, it would be a 3- way tie. 1). Plane was too heavy 2 days before Christmas so they took people off the plane and left the luggage on. Imagine rebooking a family with children. 2). On a 6:00 am flight i had to get up super early for, I once flew into a city and could see the airport there, just as it had started snowing hard. The pilot announced we were going back to their hub city an hour and a half away. Because they wanted the plane to get sruck there in the approaching blizzard rather than in the city that was our destination that we were currently over. Then they wouldn't release our luggage. We were trying yo get to a wedding with formal gown and tuxedo packed. 3). I had to fill in for my boss who had to make a keynote speech at a large event, but was stuck in a blizzard. The only flight i could find on such short notice connected with a half hour between. The airline didn't even suggest the flight. I figured out both flight legs would probably work. They fiught me on it because it eas an illegal connection. Hoping all the way that we weren't late and the gates weren't far apart. Turned out the two flights were on the same plane and the airline didn't tell me that.
THANK YOU!! Robert for this important video. I too am old enough to remember the “before” flying experiences. Flying now is extremely anxiety causing. God forbid you have a connecting flight. And, if you don’t move quick enough, you cause delay. All the items you addressed could be changed and improved…but, good grief how horrible would that be that the owners and their board of directors wouldn’t get their big buckets of cash. UGH!!!!!
As a tall guy, I now greatly prefer busing between Denver and Kansas City to flying. In a bus, the absence of knee pain allows me to actually get work done.
I had a connecting flight from Dallas to Austin. It was 107 F in Dallas that day. When I got onto the plane at DFW, I noticed it was very hot. But then when we started moving, I noticed that the A/C was not working. Just a trickle of warm air coming out. It was a short flight, ~35 minutes in the air, but I thought older or younger people were going to die from the heat! I sent American a letter. I got a response from a computer, sorry your flight was delayed. I guess they didn't have a "sorry we [allegedly] baked you" response. This was in 2006. I haven't flown American since. Airlines are still baking passengers today. Horrible.
As a former flight attendant for American who worked my last flight in late November of 2022, that isn't the worst danger American Airlines has put an entire flight of passengers in. Flying was once my passion. As a little girl, I would put my toys and PJs in my older sister's slumber-party suitcase and go room to room in our house, with each room representing a different city. I knew I was going to be a flight attendant, and I knew it was going to be for American. I turned all the other airlines who hired me first down, waiting for my interview with them. A couple of friends of mine still work for them, and they say it's gotten even worse since they merged with US Air, which we called US Scare when I lived in Manhattan because they always seemed to end up in the East River when they took off or landed at Laguardia because they left one step off the pilot's checklist (and only used the FFA minimum pilot checklist, that did not include "flaps up" right before take-off). Don't get me wrong, I am eternally grateful for all the world travel I did while I worked for American. I am also eternally grateful for being able to live in Manhattan for 10 years when I was based in NY before I chose to move to LA. Yet, I also believe in holding companies accountable when they put hundreds (or thousands) of people in danger. I used to trust American Airlines with my life...almost daily. I stopped doing that in 2002, and it was NOT due to 9/11, although that made it that much easier to leave. I very much miss the airline industry I knew from 1990 to 2000. It was not perfect, but it was better than what we have now. I'm sad to say it, but deregulation was a huge mistake for the overall safety of the industry, but it did make air travel more "competitive" and thus more affordable for the working class (and it never was before then).
@@le_th_ Thanks for the reply. You should post that as a top-level comment so more people will see it. I loved American in the 1990s when they advertised "More legroom in coach". American actually did have more legroom in coach then, and it made a big difference.
@@le_th_ The American Airlines you worked for no longer exists. US Air bought American Airlines, ceased all operations of American Airlines, and changed their name from US Air to American Airlines. When you fly American today you are flying US Air!
Hi Robert the other issue is that US is a closed market, non-US carriers can only do international flights in this country. Would it be nice if the US airlines had to compete with everyone and no colude with each other.
What's stopping foreign carriers from operating (and competing) in the United States domestically is actually the policy of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which is part of the UN.
If foreign airlines had to compete with domestic airlines then both would try to outcompete each other in screwing passengers and offering bad service for more money. A system based on competition does not always work to better service or solve problems. Sometimes it's a race to the bottom!
Each country decides how much freedom of movement to give to foreign carriers, from simple overflight to how many landings they're allowed to perform based on where the plane is headed next. US airlines likely won't be given multi-stop landing permissions in large domestic air markets like China or India either.
They don't teach the deadly sins in schools anymore. The world has not adapted to the modern realities of commercial decisions which more and more tend towards unreliability, lower expectations and pitting one set of customers against the other.
Recently my fiancé and I were being asked extra to “sit together”… even though we could see plenty of open seats at the time we bought. The whole thing was ridiculous. It’s literally insane. This kind of thing is happening on many businesses for sure. When your choices for work as a professional are literally three companies without leaving the state where your family is, suddenly these companies have a lot of power over us. I believe this is why some of these Managers and Bosses have become as bad as they are, and on some cases they get away with downright illegal behavior because people don’t know where to go. “Just leave and go work somewhere else” doesn’t freakin work anymore.
RR is absolutely right. We've been convinced that 'competition' makes for a better and richer consumer experience. Meantime billionaires utilize a tax code that is rife with loopholes such that the "One Percent" have never been so rich. Down with 'trusts'.
That's the right attitude. If you want to know why we had so many good unions in the past, it was because people fought - I mean that literally- for them.
I admire this guy’s positive outlook. Especially when you look back like 20-30 years ago when he was literally preaching and warning what the country would turn into if we didn’t take what he said serious. And literally everything he warned came into fruition. Most people would be frustrated but he continues to just keep laying out the facts calmly.
Thank you for this video Robert! Once again, you hit the nail on the head! I really hope we can get people to see what's truly going on and start getting back to the way things were, economically, before 2000. That's really when it all started going downhill.
You believe this? Haha Let's stop subsidized food like corn and soybeans, stop oil subsidies, stop pay pharma to do their own research, stop all the subsidized companies. But how are airlines subsidized? Oh CoVID? Oh, that time when the government told the airlines to shutdown and cannot operate but also cannot fire anyone and continue to pay their employees or else! How do you expect a company who makes a few pennies for each dollar you give them to survive a few years of not operating and keep paying people to do nothing? Do you call that subsidies? Subsidies are for all those other industries I mentioned above when the government pay people not to grow soy or corn or give them additional money for growing those things, or give big Oil and Pharma free research dollars to find oil and develop drugs then turn around and ask you to pay for gas and overly priced drugs that your tax dollars help find and develop in the first place. If airlines were subsidized by the government like Oil and Pharma, then it would be like the government pays for the airports, equipment, and fees and help develop new routes for the airline...taking away all risk of operation and growing the business. And then the airline charges you far higher than the price of foreign carriers and we do not allow any foreign carrier to enter our airports so domestic airlines monopolizes US airports. Oh...we don't do that...I guess we are not really subsidized huh. Think before believing this type of videos made to wild up the public against an already struggling industry. the politicians are using these videos to blackmail more money from. Using these videos pushes companies to "donate" to their political campaigns which they don't fully spent and then just pockets. See my other comment on pay for airline employees.
@@wa1ufo Specifically, he was a Reaganaut. One of the Trickle-Down Gang. That's why he knows so much about the workings of the actual economy, not just the prettied-up version they pitch at us. He had enough intellectual honesty to force himself to admit that his economic theories didn't produce what he believed they would, when the data came in. And now he's gone state's evidence. If you get a chance to see him talk (or read his writing) about those days, when he was one of the small army of young capitalist economists in skinny ties hired to make Reaganomics look plausible, I recommend it. I have endless respect for him. It would be so much easier to keep insisting he was right back in the 80s and just claim the opposition was responsible for the failures.
I remember stretching across three seats for a midnight snooze on a cross country flight as a college student. Stewardess had three leftover chicken dinners and offered all 3 to me, as I was young and going so far. Very long time ago…
Flying the way Robbie refers to was in a highly subsidized industry back then. There was an entity called the CAB which he fails to mention that compensated airlines for unprofitable routes among other things helping to insure their bottom line. Ronnie Reagan did away with that and forced airlines to sink or swim. All of this ultimately creating our current state of airline travel.
