#130: Air travel: America’s magnum opus 🏆
#130: Air travel: America’s magnum opus 🏆
Good morning!
This newsletter is dedicated to the non-stop chaos of air travel in America last month—2,268 flights canceled smack dab in the middle of the holidays, including the flights of my parents’ and my in-law’s parents, which of course meant that all four of their bags wandered aimlessly around the country for days. I’ve always been inspired by how comically rotten it is to fly these days, and I took this fiasco as a sign from above to finally pay my respects.
A hell of our own making
A few weeks ago, on our way to Colorado, Avi and I found ourselves at JFK airport with an hour to kill and I made the mistake of suggesting we get breakfast at an Italian spot near our gate. Despite appearing to be a sit-down restaurant replete with fake stone walls, a long formica bar, and decor that suggested (inexplicably) high-mall sushi, “Due Amici” was actually more akin to a fast-food restaurant run by iPads. Strapped to the table like a toddler to a carseat, the beat-up screen displayed the menu, took our orders, and attempted to charge Avi’s credit card. When it beeped at us in error, we tried again, and then again. By the time we flagged down the single warm-blooded employee, he raised an anxious finger to signal “just a second,” as he was busy helping not one, or even two, but three different customers with their broken iPads. We had to laugh. Pseudo-progress at its finest.
Airports are America’s tea leaves. Airplanes too, and really everything related to flying, which at this point has become so subtly degrading and scammy that it can only be understood through the broader failings of this country’s ideology. It’s hard to think of a more comprehensive encapsulation of our society today. More broken, racist, and classist than promised, but just banal, disorienting, and superficially delightful enough to keep everyone from starting a revolution.
It starts when you book a ticket: a labyrinthian process full of dark patterns, hidden loopholes, and boxes you’re scared to check. Nevermind the urgent scroll for a reasonably-priced flight that leaves during daylight, then the pressure to book it before it changes. More objectionable are the increasingly skeletal ticket offerings, as basic services (a single checked bag, the opportunity to choose your seat, a meager meal on a six-hour flight) are lopped off and repackaged as luxuries for purchase. My favorite is paying a 10% fee for the privilege of canceling my flight if I’m hit by a car.
But travel day is when the real fun begins. A standard security line involves planning for anywhere from a 20-minute to four-hour wait—anyone’s guess. Of course, you can skip this part for a price. One year, when I was about to miss a flight due to unexpected crowds, I was coaxed into signing up for Clear, a privatized version of TSA Pre-Check that asks for $189 a year and a scan of your retinas to be held eternally by a random tech company with good intentions, I’m sure. What’s particularly fun about Clear is that while they used to have separate security lanes à la Pre-Check, now they simply escort their members to the front of all the regular lines, butting them in front of people decent enough to wait their turn. Avi never signed up for Clear, so I stopped using it. But the last time I did, the employee led me to cut, unbelievably, in front of a woman in a wheelchair. I thought of insisting against it, but in the end I chickened out, afraid of stealing valor I hadn’t earned. I deserve that ticket to hell.
Once you get through the line, you’re delivered to the actual security lane, where at least one underpaid and regularly abused TSA employee is shouting at you to take off your shoes: a policy established because someone named Richard Reid tried to hide a bomb in his boots on a flight to Miami in 2001. Of course, no one at the TSA really thinks you’re hiding anything in your shoes. It’s all Bush-era security theater; a smoke screen to convince you you’re safe in America through escalating measures of surveillance. The same applies to the wasteful rules around liquids, another policy established in response to the outlandish plan of a single man. (I hope a TSA agent somewhere is enjoying this skincare set I got my sister for her birthday last year.) It goes without saying that security checkpoints are racist, classist, invasive, and prejudicial, but at least they cause constant fights between civilians and employees who have no power to change the rules. You have to admit the system works.
Last month, after we got through security, and after the guy fixed our airport iPad, we finally got our food (egg sandwich, yogurt). Only mildly worse than standard cafeteria fare, our bill came to $55 with tip. While joking around about who, specifically, we were tipping, we realized the kitchen making our food wasn’t only serving Due Amici but every place in the terminal, recontextualizing each restaurant as a kind of phony branding exercise; a glorified section of one big, stinky menu. I’m sure the line cooks find the work deeply fulfilling, and that their bosses have passed the cost-savings of a ghost kitchen right on to their most valued resources (themselves).
Everything in the airport is laughably expensive because investors know you’ll be stranded there, thirsty and hungry, as your flight gets delayed with no recourse. This time, like every time, Avi and I were boarding group “Main 2,” which of course meant we’d be boarding second, after the vets, the rich-but-not-rich-enough-to-fly-private, the business drones, and everyone else who shelled out an extra $100+ dollars for “priority boarding,” and Main 1. This caste-based loading process—front to back, logical for wiping and little else—is much more profitable for the airline. Luckily, it’s unlikely the executives making these rules ever have to endure them. Their condolences to the powerless and sleep-deprived gate agents tasked with forcing them upon the unwashed masses. That said, they better not get sick or they’re fired.
The Hunger Games-like quality of finding a place to store bags in the economy-class overhead bins is interesting considering a carry-on is included in the cost of tickets, isn’t it? Maybe they thought it would be good to get our heart rates up before cramming us into their ever-shrinking seats like slaughter-bound cattle, where our vitals are sure to take a hit. Once seated, a sea of screens project the same propaganda inches from everyone’s face: A reel of white-toothed actors dressed up like airline employees, grinning about what an honor it is to have you on board, insisting they exist only to serve you. Supercuts of footprints on a Hawaiian beach, kids baking cookies with their moms, a girlboss looking wistfully out her plane window then starting an Etsy business. “At Delta,” my screen concluded en route to Denver, “Connecting you to what matters, is what matters most.” If I wanted to eat any time in the next four hours, I should refer to the menu stored under my tray table. Only $19 dollars for a “charcuterie” box starring a twig of grapes.
In the air, a quiet violence takes hold: unsettled debates over reclined seats; suspicious coughs; silent battles over window shades; dirty bare feet creeping into personal spaces or, worse, used like hands; the wails of confused babies and the glares that pierce their exhausted parents; bags of vomit passed precariously to flight attendants (sorry to my seatmate that one time); unknown numbers of people too afraid to ask to use the bathroom (also me); fat people shamed for merely existing; tall people wearing their bones down against the tray table like mortar to pestle (Avi); flight attendants burdened with fielding errant rage. These are the trials of inhumane confinement. A curtain resolutely drawn between first class and the rest, there’s no one to turn on but each other. I’ll never forget the big-boned guy seated in front of me who kept leaning back so heavily in his chair that he pushed it past its reclining limit within inches of my nose. I knew in my heart he was born like that and I resented him anyway.
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Perhaps the most pernicious, American-esque quality of air travel is that, in the end, it’s something of a modern marvel: a feat of engineering, better than the alternatives, an escape from the drudgery of everyday life. There’s the charming, liminal quality of airports—non-places in non-time; there’s the little stores, the little snacks, the little TVs. Sure, you could waste your energy shaking your first at the power-brokers who make it so unfair, but they won’t see you. They don’t even fly commercial. It’s much easier to tuck into your movie with your chicken “caesar” wrap and cookie packet, or else scream at the people nearest to get your feelings out. You’re a kindergartner either way.
That’s the art of the deal. Composed of corporate contracts you have no choice but to accept. Basic human rights rebranded as luxuries. Meaningless red tape endured for political ends. The push for automation that replaces wage workers with broken technology. Low-level employees stuck with managing frustration caused by higher-ups’ greed. The rich walled off in their bunkers. No one with any power even remotely aware of the everyday person’s experience, blasting us with the comically disingenuous propaganda about how much they care. And just enough candy-colored entertainment to keep us docile. Modern air travel isn’t just an annoying fact of life. It’s an awe-inspiring, red-blooded salute to the American way.
Of course, that’s if you’re even fortunate enough to travel as planned. If your flight is canceled, delayed, or overbooked (it’s great for business!), or your baggage lost, there’s no telling what will happen. Maybe you checked the wrong box next to the two-point font while booking; maybe it’s raining. Unfortunately, that’s out of the airlines’ hands. 💸
Thanks so much to Jess Focht for interviewing me for The Creative Independent. I’ve read and loved many TCI interviews and was honored to be featured! Last week’s 15 things also included a camera roll hack, my new favorite puffer, a sparse wistful gem of a movie, and more. The Rec of the Week was your 2023 resolutions, which made for a very sweet comment section (full of great ideas).
Also I’ve been so touched by the response to my essay and podcast last week!! Thank you so much for all the messages and comments. Can’t say how much I appreciate feeling understood by you, or at the very least equally nuts lol. I’m so grateful for your time, truly. Sorry I wrote about airports this week….
I hope you have a nice Sunday,
Haley