WTF is wrong with the U.S. air travel system?
I'd describe myself as a seasoned traveler. I've been flying for a good 12-15 years, and at one point was traveling once every couple of weeks. In the past 3-5 years I've seen things get downright terrible. In all the time before that, I had never had to deal with a canceled flight or lost luggage (I know I was probably the exception - just beating the odds) but in the last couple of years especially it seems like every damn time I fly it's always something. Delays, cancellations, shoddy or nonexistent customer service. So WTF gives? I understand that sometimes delays and cancellations are just inevitable - this last time, it was a major storm at O'Hare that grounded everything for several hours. It's hard to bounce back from something like that. But even in cases where there are minor glitches it seems to have significant effects.
I have a theory: The system has been pared down to its bare "just-in-time" essentials, which makes it incredibly fragile. If one plane is late it ripples - the aircraft isn't there to take the next flight; the crew is now late for its next trip, or over their allotted operating time, so they can't fly; the gate assignments are all fucked up. In the case of cancellations, it can take days to get all the passengers home flying standby on full or overbooked flights.
How much of this is just inevitable? Is it like this in Europe, Asia, etc? Do we Americans need to just quit our whining and realize that sometimes there are things beyond anyone's control, or is our system broken and we need to demand changes?
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"If ten million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."
- Anatole France
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