Time to re-regulate the airlines

Ever since the Supreme Court decided that
money is "speech," airlines have been able to
"speak" to Congressmen in a language they
understand: Campaign payola for screwing
the passengers

The proliferation of “incidents” involving airline passengers arguing over reclining seats is growing. Over at Earthbound Misfit, "Comrade Misfit" has a few astute things to say about that, which I commend to your attention.

To my amazement, some commentators are blaming the passengers. Some blame the reclining passengers for reclining. Others blame the people who bring aboard anti-reclining apparatus and use it, or who simply go batcrap crazy when the passenger in front of them reclines into their space.

Who is to blame?

Let’s blame who is really at fault: 

The greedy airlines. 

It’s self evident that the more human beings the airlines can crowd into the same space, the richer they’ll get and the fatter their senior  officers’ pay checks and bonuses will grow. The principle of crowding human beings into spaces suitable for dead sardines was invented by the Nazis, who shoved human beings into cattle cars and transported them to concentration camps. When the cattle cars arrived at the camps, some of the passengers inside were already dead. The Nazis didn’t give a damn. Neither do the airlines. This isn't just a metaphor. Read the next paragraph.

Cramming so many people into tiny spaces for so long that their superegos explode isn’t the only danger. In case of a fire or emergency landing, more people will die – burning to death, or drowning – simply because they can’t get out of their seats, down the aisle, and out of the airplane in time.

There was a time when

we had a real government

The U.S. Government used to have regulations about things like that. Are you old enough to remember when the U.S. Government actually governed?  But then greedy lobbyists wormed their way into our completely corrupt Congress and convinced the lawmakers to heavily deregulate. The airlines were among the first to taste this new-found “freedom.” The promise to the rest of us was, when airlines could compete on matters like passenger comfort and perks, and prices, then the prices would get cheaper.

And so, to the best of my recollection, they did for a brief while. Prices got so cheap, in fact, that some airlines went broke, and others got swallowed up in mergers. Bye Bye Eastern. Bye Bye, Pan Am. Bye Bye, TWA. Bye Bye, Republic. Bye Bye Braniff. And on and on. And hello near-monopoly airlines who give less of a hoot for their passengers than they do for geese sucked into their jet engines.

Welcome to the Big Squeeze 

Now, with fewer choices of airlines, and with flight crews already squeezed for their once reasonable pay and benefits, the only people left to squeeze are the passengers. You and me. 

So unless you’re willing to pay a ransom well into the five figures for Business Class or First Class seats from A to B, you are squeezed, starved, screwed, and generally treated like something flushed out of the air toilet at 30,000 feet.

Regulations about minimum leg room, regulations about not imposing extra charges for “luxuries” like taking a bag or two while you travel (the unmitigated nerve of you!), not to mention regulations requiring edible food aboard flights lasting longer than four hours  – all these regulations need to be restored, and need to make sense.

Somebody is about to pipe up, “B-b-but that will raise the cost of air fares!”

Uh, yeah, probably. But the "cheap" fares currently advertised are total phonies. Consider:

By the time you factor in the extra charges for bringing baggage with you when you travel, the charges the airlines impose if you try to book a flight on the phone, or if you try to change or cancel a flight,  the the price of food you have to buy on your own, the price of losing precious hours when your plane is forced to land owing to a passenger dispute – not to mention the value of your life when you burn to death inside an airplane because there’s no way all the sardines can get out fast enough – you’re already paying far higher than advertised prices. If a single price covered matters like food and baggage that used to included automatically, and if Congress keeps an eye on fares, prices aren’t likely to rise so much that you’d wish you’d gambled your life instead.

Your spineless Congressmen who

regulate this stuff. Here's a list:

So who on the House Subcommittee on aviation has the spine to stand up and say, “Yes, let’s re-regulate the airlines so they can’t treat passengers like filthy cattle?” Who among them isn’t so corruptly in the pockets of the airlines they supposedly oversee? Let’s start with the Republican majority of 16, who could make it happen, if they wanted, without a single Democrat’s vote:

How about you, Chairman Frank A. LoBiondo, of New Jersey? How about you, Tom Petri,  of Wisconsin? How about you, Howard Coble,  of North Carolina? How about you, John J. Duncan, of Tennessee? How about you, Tom Graves, of Georgia? How about you, Blake Farenthold, of Texas? How about yo u, Larry Bucshon, of Indiana? How about you, Patrick Meehan, of Pennsylvania? How about you, Daniel Webster, of Florida? How about you, Jeff Denham, of California? How about you Reid Ribble, of Wisconsin? How about you, Thomas Massie, of Kentucky? How about you, Steve Daines, of Montana? How about you, Roger Williams, of Texas? How about you, Mark Meadows, of North Carolina? How about you, Rodney Davis, of Illinois?

No, I didn’t think so.

While the Republicans on the committee outnumber the Democrats 16-13, rendering Democratic votes impotent, there are still things the Democrats can do. Your Republican colleagues most assuredly have pet airport projects and other goodies they’d like to secure for the patrons who pay them off. So by delaying and obstructing expenditures for their pets as long as you can, you might be able to get their attention and the attention of the nation.

So how about a minority member revolt, Democrats Rick Larsen of Washington, Peter A. DeFazio, of Oregon; Eleanore Holmes Norton of DC; Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas; Michael E. Capuano of Massashusetts. Dan Lipinski of Illinois; Steve Cohen of Tennessee; Andre Carson of Indiana; Rick Nolan of Minnesota; Dina Titus of Nevada; Sean Patrick Maloney of New York; Cheri Bustos of Illinois; or Corrine Brown of Florida?

No, I didn’t think so, either.

But maybe we can give all these corrupt and near-corrupt Congressloafers a kick in the butt. You might start by copying this piece into an e-mail and addressing it to one of the committee members in your own state.  You can find their e-mail address here. 

Meanwhile, for your delectation, a performance I've embedded once before in this blog. Enjoy it again: