There's something thrilling about boarding a flight. Whether it's to a foreign country or a conference for work or in my case, a flight home from Greenville, South Carolina to Fernandina Beach, Florida. Once you finally board the plane, you find your seat and gaze out the window. You watch as the proportions rapidly change, shrinking cars and trees, and buildings until you can see an entire suburban neighborhood from your seat among the clouds. Usually a flight attendant hands you a cold Coke product and a tiny packet of pretzels to thoroughly enjoy your flight. This entire experience is dependent on one simple fact, one must first make his/her flight.
On my journey home to Florida, it's necessary to connect in Charlotte due to the unavailability of direct flights. This particular trip home, I ran into a number of issues making my connection in Charlotte. Once I boarded my first flight, we took off 35 minutes late. Once we landed in Charlotte, I realized that I had a grand total of 15 minutes until my connection took off. I grabbed my shiny red suitcase and sprinted from Gate E to Gate A. Unbeknownst to me, one of my wheels broke off my suitcase, so I dragged a 30 pound suitcase for ten minutes to my Gate. Sweaty and exhausted, I made my flight by 3 minutes.
This narrow escape from having to shuffle all my travel plans made me question the efficiency of air travel. Passengers pay through their teeth for tickets, and yet are victims of gate changes, delays, flight cancelations, inept workers, and overall inefficiency. In a normal business structure in the United States, this inefficiency would not tolerated. The monopolistic power of airlines is difficult to break. There are often limited options concerning travel. Travel by air is the most direct and speedy option. Therein lies the power of the monopoly: consumer dependence on this service causes our demand to be inelastic. There is no other form of travel that can compete as a substitute service. Therefore, this international inefficiency continues to effect travelers in every continent.
It is true that despite attempts to create more competition in the airline industry since the advent of deregulation, sometimes there are simply not enough options. This has led some to argue for a return to regulation of the airlines--if there isn't going to be competition anyway, one might as well control the market. The alternative of course would be some mechanism to actually ensure more competition--state intervention to encourage the free market. For Hobbes, this would not be ironic at all.
ReplyDeleteI also was traveling to a conference last weekend. But I did not get any pretzels! American no longer has any free snacks whatsoever! It's making me hungry just thinking about those long, snackless flights.