How horrible do things have to get before most normal people just decide not to put up with flying any longer?
Last week, Terminal 5 at Heathrow was an utter clusterfuck of mythic proportions.
Yesterday a huge report came out that showed how terrible the airlines are at performing their most basic functions, to say nothing of comfort, service, decent prices and so on.
Today: American Airlines cancels 500 flights. No advance notice. Not scheduled maintenance. But the wiring on the planes may be fucked, and it's bad enough that they just decided to leave literally thousands of people stranded.
They're going to cancel a lot more tomorrow.
I no longer fly unless it's completely necessary. It's utterly misery-inducing. I was about to book a cross country flight over the weekend - my first in a long time that wasn't for business or to visit family - when suddenly the airline announced it was closing its doors forever.
Excellent. That's one down. Or four this weekend actually (ATA, Skybus, Aloha and Champion). Now if all the rest would go to hell, we could start over from scratch and have someone devise a pleasant way of air travel that doesn't involve being treated like cattle and criminals by retarded federal officials and exasperated airline employees. Suck it airlines.