Quote:
Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA
{scratches head}
A lot of the grief consumers experience with airlines could be eliminated if, en masse, we decided that a lot of stuff simply wasn't worth the hassle.
Sure, there are situations that are difficult to impossible to avoid - emergencies, work-related stuff, etc - but we still do a lot of optional air travel here. I'm not talking about those.
It's been, give or take, a little over a decade since I've been on a plane & somehow {gasp} I've survived. And that's after flying several times a year for a few years prior to that. Pricing & aggravation simply made it not worth it anymore yet, OMG, I didn't die from not jetting hither, tither,and yon.
As long as you keep hand-feeding the machine, hard to be legitimately shocked if it bites you.
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That's where I think reducing the need to fly to mostly longer trips makes the most sense. There's no good reason to have to fly from Philly to Buffalo most of the time. A good rail system is nearly as quick and much cheaper to maintain. Cross country flights make sense. I'd rather fly Philly to LA or Boston to Miami than any other method of travel between them. I'd rather hop on a train, or even in the car if traffic isn't bad, to handle those short and mid range distances.
When I was in Honolulu flight was mandatory to go anywhere else in a short time frame. Since then I've only been on 3-4 flights and those where paid for by universities that interviewed me for jobs.
You're spot on about how we've made air travel too common when it's not necessary. It feels like we've overburdened a travel method that doesn't scale to the level at which we are using it and then complaining about the result.