A Failure of Service: Flying Domestic in the US

The domestic airport scene in the United States is one of permanent lines, warnings on leaving bags unattended and jittery surveillance. Warning alerts on potential strikes by unspecified ‘terrorists’ sound like a game children might like: ‘The terror alert today is yellow.’ Perhaps the writer Elias Canetti might well have seen his observation correct in coming through Chicago’s O’Hare airport in the twenty first century: Humans have truly fallen out of history. Welcome the machine, administrative automata, and an absence of humanity.

Everything is done to minimize effort on the part of the airlines. High prices are charged for minimal service. ‘Discount’ prices are used to shield the discrepancy. In the US, this may be due to the fact that airlines are not generally considered national carriers or representatives of their nation. They are merely companies hoping to make a profit. The emphasis on cutting costs is permanent and crippling.

At the terminals where United Airlines feature, self check-in kiosks dominate. This is not an innovation. The self check-in process was regarded as something of a revolution. It would speed up matters, until people discovered that it merely replicated another process of delay. So, there are queues and lines of personnel witnessing the self check-in queues. Humanity doesn’t so much progress and sidestep. Work is never reduced but merely displaced by another set of work that seems strikingly similar.

While the American character is shaped on an assumption of anti-authoritarian valour (‘We hate the Washington establishment, and every other establishment.’), there is mute submission to inefficient inspections, exhausting queues and the placebo of airport security. The cattle line up and merely await the directing prod. Domestic airline checks resemble international inspections with ID cards and passports. Severe personnel with a pink marker gaze at the documents.

The removal of shoes, belts, and liquids is a daily pantomime rendered global after the ‘War on Terror’ was declared after September 11, 2001. It has guaranteed nothing other than more jobs for the security establishment, the only establishment that really matters in this business. The airlines encumber their services with extra charges; the security establishment burdens passengers with specious rules of ‘safety’.

In going through the inspection process, the rules of self-help prevail. The inspection personnel at the security barrier get rather irate if you don’t push your bags through the screening device. To be free, we need to be individual. In being individual, everyone shall do their bit in helping security.

Then comes the features of a truly budget airline. One is charged for checking in luggage. For an airline that claims to be one of the finest in the world (boasting is never a substitute for talent), this comes as a surprise. Then come the allocated seating zones. This tends to make pre-arranged seating redundant in terms of efficiency or purpose. There is no boarding by seating rows but by allocated groups. The result is often chaos on getting on the flight, delays in getting people seated, and delays in leaving the airport. The passenger is immediately struck by an advertisement outside the gate: ‘United Airways – getting to destinations on time far ahead of other airlines.’

Once on the airline, there is a striking indifference to service. Cabin crews always seem to have something better to do. On one flight between San Francisco and Chicago, directions to aisles were not given to incoming passengers – the crewmember was far too busy on his phone. Baggage space is limited (they are appropriately termed ‘bins’), with a second small bag having to be placed ‘under the seat in front of you’. Everything from then on must be purchased by either debit or credit card (this is a plastic cash economy) except soft drinks. When the flight arrives, a race to the exit is imminent. With the merger between United and Continental set to be fully operational shortly, hope for an improvement should be banished from the human breast.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

ENDS

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