The Short History of Air Travel

The year was 1979.  I was barely seventeen, and using some savings, and my parents’ money I purchased a round trip ticket from Tel Aviv to New York.  I didn’t sleep for days before, excited, thrilled.  On the night of the flight the entire family drove to the airport to see me off. I stood in line for check in.  Security back then was much less strict, as the threat was not as significant as today.  The ground crew was courteous and nice.  I asked and was assigned a window seat (I changed my preference since, and much prefer an aisle seat these days).   I boarded a TIA (Trans International Airlines) DC-9 aircraft and we started our long ten hour trip to New York.  It was a night flight, the entertainment system was rudimentary, a large screen in the mid-section of the aircraft, with earphones which were basically an air pipe connecting to the seat’s outlet.  The older folks may remember this, I haven’t thought about it for decades, but I swear that was the aircraft sound system back there.  The flight attendants were young, good looking and nice, very nice.  The flight was uneventful and we have arrived in New York JFK airport on time.

Since then, I must have flown the route many dozens of times.  And many other routes as well.

TIA is no longer with us.  Many other airlines I’ve flown with are long gone as well: Eastern Airlines, Pan American, Tower Air to name a few.  Ben Gurion 2000 Airport opened in 2005… and while it’s a significant improvement over the terminal it replaced, it’s not yet on par with other airports around the world.

On November 13, 2011, I went to the Ben Gurion airport just outside Tel Aviv on my way to New York.  Times have changed significantly since 1979.  Check in is now done at home, using the World Wide Web.  I checked in around noon, and leisurely arrived at the airport three hours before the scheduled departure.  To my amazement, it turned out that the Continental flight I was on was delayed.  I’m not talking the thirty minute usual delay, I’m talking nine hours.  The airline counter was not opened when I arrived.  Instead I met a bunch of angry travelers, who like me, already checked out from their hotels, and returned their rental cars.  When the ground crew finally arrived, they didn’t even bother to apologize, nor did they offer a hotel.  The put two options in front of me: get out of here back to where you came from and return in the morning, we will reimburse you the taxi fare, or check in and sleep on a park bench inside the terminal.  I chose the first.

I am a naturally easy going guy, and thankfully, I can recognize a situation for which I have no control whatsoever.  I turned around and hit the sack at my brother’s.  Got up at 4:00 AM and went back to the airport.  I stood in line for security screening, about an hour, and then another half hour on the check in line.  No apologies yet.  Checked in my luggage and went to the gate.  Another security screening for the carryon luggage, border control, and I’m in the terminal.

The aircraft was a brand new Boeing 777.  The seats were crowded, and when the person in front of me reclined his seat, I could pat his hair and sing lullabies to put him to sleep, I didn’t.  The entertainment system was state of the art.  The headphones though, sucked, so I used my own.  There were hundreds of programs to choose from.  The captain announced that the flight time will be eleven and a half hours, right about the time I saw a few flight attendants going by without as much as a smile.  And then it hit me.  Air travel has gone south in the last thirty years.  Something is very wrong in the air travel industry, and I have no idea where it’s going.  Think about it, the flight time from Tel Aviv to New York has gone up by more than 10%.  It can only mean one thing: the airlines have come to the conclusion that flying slower, preserving fuel, gives them a chance to make some money on the flights.  If they fly slower, they use less fuel, which requires them to carry less fuel, which in turn cuts the cost of operating the flight apparently in a significant way.  Speaking of which, the cross country flight from Newark to Seattle was five hours and thirty minutes.  I clearly remember flying this same route in an hour less.

The business model of air travel is simple: cut cost, increase profit.  Basically, the airlines, and in particular the Western airlines (Air China, Dragon Air, Singapore Airlines, Thai Airlines, Cathai Pacific, Qantas are still taking into account customer satisfaction), are trying the best they can to provide the absolute minimum, charge the absolute possible maximum, so they can make some money of operating the flights.  An airline which could fly people on broomsticks will be extremely successful.  With the fuel prices soaring, and the requirement to show profit growth quarter on quarter, the passengers are treated as human cargo that needs to be transported from one place to another.  The flights are usually overcrowded, the ground crew gives you hell on every extra ounce you have in your luggage, they charge for food, legroom, and soon enough I bet they will place a flight attendant at the lavatory entrances to collect the entry fee.  In short, flying is not fun, and possibly it doesn’t have to be.  My advice to the airlines is simple: pay the flight attendants enough so they can pretend to be nice…

By the way, this is the first time I fly Continental out of Israel.  My experience with El Al is completely different.  El Al flights are usually full, they cost slightly more, their aircraft fleet is ridiculously old (the Tel Aviv Beijing flight is operated with Boeing 767 that must have been flying for the last thirty years if not more), but the service is good, and the food is good.  I certainly did not mean for this post to be a good review for El Al, but in all honesty, compared to Continental, it’s a dream.

Continental had the nerve to ask me to fill a survey.  I usually ignore requests like this knowing that they are done to just make you think as if your opinion actually counts.  As if someone actually reads it and scratches his or forehead while saying: “that Amiram guy, he really has an insight.  Lets see if we can change something to make him happy”.  Right…

The year is 2029 and I’m on my way to New York again.  I show up to the airport buck naked, and I get the injection.  When I lose consciousness, I’m placed in a box and hauled to the airplane.  I’m flying business this time, so my box is placed on top and close to the door.  Given the two thousand bodies around me, I have a good chance to be up and leaving the airport hours before the economy class guys.  There are no pilots, no flight attendants, no entertainment, and no food.  In fact, there are no windows at all.  The solar energy based airplane will make the trip to New York in over 72 hours.  Yes, I’m flying Planetary Airways, the only airline surviving the airline industry…