On Flying

The more I fly, the more I wonder why America's once-great airlines can barely manage to move me from point A to B without an excess of insanity, much less transport me cross country with a dash of class and a pinch of excellence. While I appreciate modern aviation innovations, such the pressurized cabin and the stratospheric cruising altitude, I have a yen for the elegance one associates with Pan Am in the 1930's. People must call it the "golden age of aviation" for one reason or another. I know I would rather cram myself into a cramped metal tube filled with besuited gentlemen and haute couture clad ladies sipping Champagne than a cramped metal tube stuffed with people who constantly redefine the meaning of raunch. (Perfection falls somewhere in the middle of that continuum.)

I always think of Southwest Airlines' now-infamous questionable ensemble incident. Whether the wonky woman's choice of clothing justified the airline employee's action or not, the simple fact that she was wearing something that prompted an employee to think twice about allowing her onto the aircraft says something less than positive. I do not mean to say people should don their Sunday Best just to board an aircraft. It would, however, be nice if people would — as much for their own sake as for the comfort of the other passengers — think twice before boarding the plane in a mini-mini-mini skirt. Granted, I suppose that example speaks more to some Americans' questionable taste — a societal problem of sorts — than to something directly related to the airlines. Not that people wearing mini-mini-mini skirts make my life at 35,000 feet any more pleasant.

Certainly, high jet fuel prices, health insurance costs and post-9/11 security superfluity contribute to the dismal quality of US commercial aviation. But those three costs alone cannot explain the enormous chasm that lies between US carriers and their far superior foreign rivals. It is not as if Air New Zealand has some kind of special agreement with oil producing nations to buy jet fuel at below-market prices. Or, if they do, I don't know about it.

Of course, I will concede that healthcare costs and superfluous security spending do not burden the rest of the industrialized world — one of the many reasons I, the loony free market devotee, support a universal healthcare system. And I will admit that many top-notch foreign carriers receive generous subsidies from their respective governments, which give them some insulation from fuel costs. Curiously, though, as Western European governments have adopted more laissez-faire rules and moved further from their old socialist policies, their airlines have, by all accounts, suffered very little or even improved. In other words, as partial or wholly owned government airlines receive fewer government dollars, their products' quality has either diminished marginally or improved. If state subsidies were the root of these foreign airlines' high-quality product, then, logically, their high-quality product should have either worsened or, at best, remained identical.

That said, I am not the Oracle of Delphi: I have no idea what business wizardry makes flying Lufthansa so much less painful than suffering through torture on United. I do, however, have a suggestion.

As it stands, all airlines flying domestic routes in the US (i.e., New York to Los Angeles or Portland to Atlanta) may not have more than 25% foreign ownership. That nasty little regulation explains why British Airways flies from O'Hare to Heathrow, but not from O'Hare to San Francisco International. Thus, at least on domestic routes, American carriers face no genuine competition. JetBlue, I will admit, does a far better job than U.S. Airways, but I would switch my allegiance to Lufthansa in a heartbeat if they flew domestic routes in the United States. As the people in Frankfurt like to say, "There's no better way to fly."

A healthy dose of competition would do the US carriers a favor. In the one space where US airlines must lock horns with their vastly superior foreign counterparts — on international routes — US carriers step up to the plate and offer a much better product. Take the Miami-Seattle and Boston-London routes. Miami, Florida sits about 2,700 miles from Seattle, Washington, and Boston, Massachusetts lies some 3,300 miles from London, England. The jet stream, however, evens out their flight times, such that each flight takes about six hours to complete. Nonetheless, not a single US carrier offers "international-grade" business- or first-class — the sort of swanky cabin with lie-flat hybrid bed-cum-seat apparatuses and snazzy snacks — on their Miami-Seattle route. On the other hand, virtually all US airlines offer those sorts of amenities on their Boston-London routes, and those who do not are in the process of making those services available. Why? Competition from foreign airlines, who all offer those kinds of amenities to their first- and business-class passengers on international routes. (Note: This paragraph has been edited for factual accuracy post-publish. See the extended entry for the original language.)

No doubt, some lunatics would oppose such a brilliant stroke of deregulation either for fear that Qatar Airways will conspire to destroy Mount Rushmore on an Atlanta-Portland run, or that a handful of American jobs will be lost in the transition. To the conspiracy theorists, I say, buck up and tolerate. From what I hear, Qatar Airways — official sponsor of the weather on England's Sky News — does a marvelous job moving people in flying metal tubes. To the protectionists, I say deal with it. People in the agriculture business (i.e., farmers) were probably none to happy when the industrial revolution reduced the nation's need for farm laborers a hundred some odd years ago. But with a dollop of education and a sprinkling of determination those people managed to migrate — for the better — into the emerging industrial sectors, such as automobile or textile manufacture.

So what are we waiting for? Deregulate already!