Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Jazz
I fly 60,000+ miles/year on average. Weather happens. You can't deplane down a metal jetway in a thunderstorm with lightening strikes nearby. You have to expect snow and rain to make things run a little slower. It's pure safety and there are piles of wreckage to exhibit why those are important lessons.
But everyone who pays a fare is entitled to good customer service. I get it because of my loyalty, but I know full well that the folks in the back of the plane deserve the same, especially when they need help when weather strands them. That's the part of the system that needs to be fixed.
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I'm mostly in agreement with The_Jazz on this. Delays and cancellations are most frequently an inevitable result of Mother Nature and the sheer logistical complexity of moving around the volume of flights that we have every day.
Lost/damaged baggage, though, is silly. I personally have been lucky in this regard, but anecdotally I hear bad news about this all the time (though perhaps simply because everyone flies more than they used to). Ditto with service - you get what you pay for, but it seems this is likely an area for a lot of improvement.
To directly answer the OP about the 'just-in-time', no-slack character of the industry today, I think there's a degree of truth here, but air travel is also far more affordable than at any time in our history. Sure, we could ask the airlines to run half-empty flights and bring back all the little conveniences, but to do so would be to return air travel from a middle-class commodity to an upper-crust luxury.