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We're Fed Up
Air travelers in America, especially businessmen, suffer high prices, delays, rude service, bad food and unfair restrictions.
Bruce Schoenfeld
From the Print Edition:
Air Sick, Jul/Aug 02
(continued from page 8)
That's the future. For the passengers on UA 1631 on this April morning, it's small consolation. They file out of the plane with cricks in their necks and growls in their bellies, relieved that another travel experience is over. Friendly skies? Not for a long time, they haven't been.
Not when record numbers of consumers are fed up with air travel. Not when a week doesn't pass without a major newspaper describing the precarious condition of the industry. Not when corporate jets and niche airlines are thriving as alternatives to the major carriers. Not when airlines such as United and American are so defensive about their plight that they refuse to comment in articles like these.
"Sounds like a negative story," says a United spokesman. As if there was any other story to tell.
It's not enough anymore for passengers to ask if this is any way to run an airline. The real question is one that the airlines have only just started asking themselves: "Is this any way to run an industry?"
A quarter-century after deregulation, with record losses continuing to mount, most will find that they already know the answer.
Bruce Schoenfeld is a frequent contributor to Cigar Aficionado.
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