6 ms·

This is pretty funny. It's like a case study in the armchair expert. Here's a person who is not a travel industry veteran, but was curious about something, so t

This is pretty funny. It's like a case study in the armchair expert. Here's a person who is not a travel industry veteran, but was curious about something, so they just started googling facts and figures, tried to find a trend, then looked for evidence to back up the trend they were looking for, then googled for "explanations" (read: news articles from mainstream media) to justify the trends they were looking for. At no time did they actually talk to somebody in the travel industry. Just a lot of googling, vague questions, and hand-wavey answers. The weirdest part is how subjective the question is. It's like saying, is life getting worse? It turns out there's more than a few ways of looking at that. Air travel is cheap and widely available, despite coming out of a global pandemic, not to mention the global recession before that, among other minor blips. Oh, but you were delayed in getting in your magic metal tube that hurtles through the sky at hundreds of miles an hour, letting you sip beer and watch movies in your PJs while traveling thousands of miles in a few hours, arriving safer than any other form of transportation? Man, that's terrible.

mhb 1y ago
Why does he need to talk to someone in the travel industry to evaluate the experience of traveling? Yes, we all agree with Louis CK that just being able to fly is a marvel. But it still sucks and it has gotten worse.
- tekla 1y ago
  Mass availability, hilarious cheapness, and ease of access makes things worse, News at 11.
  - geodel 1y ago
    It is news because a lot of people intuitively don't get this point. Also they would not show at 11 as news would rather be promoting more travel instead of covering downsides.
  - thrown-0825 1y ago
    For many people making something more accessible is the same thing as making it worse.
  - forgetfreeman 1y ago
    We had cheap airfare and significantly better passenger accommodation 20 years ago. For the most part folks didn't act like assholes in public either. So yeah, things have gotten worse.
    - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
      I was thinking 30 years ago. The response to 9/11 definitely made the flying experience worse in the US. Plus of course the gradual shrinking of seat space. Happily my last few flights I have used points to upgrade to sit in the front of the plane, which alleviates the space problem, but just having to spend more time hanging around in the airport because of added security is hard for me to deal with.
noduerme 1y ago
With air travel, and most kinds of tourism, and customer service, and actually with most commodified experiences, the affordability and mass availability is the thing that makes the experience subjectively worse. It's the other people. Farting. Coughing. When you treat people like animals, they act like animals. At the same time, when they act like animals, why not treat them as such? Objectively and societally it may be better that more people have access to something, but by definition more people doing something makes it a shittier experience. No metrics or other dimensions necessary.
- Eisenstein 1y ago
  Not necessarily. It isn't the amount of people that is causing your discomfort -- the airline is always going to optimize for a full plane (and environmentally, we should want them to). It is the fact that we have been taught to tolerate people when they are being obnoxious and discourteous. If the airlines just ejected people who were being an asshole and fellow travelers would call out and shame bad behavior, it might lead to a more pleasant experience.
  - noduerme 1y ago
    In theory, yes, you could enforce better conduct (although this might harm the bottom line). But I also think that when you place people in cramped conditions, they inherently begin to behave more antisocially and become less amicable. For every inch of legroom or width you shave off a seat, I think there's a non-negligible amount of discomfort that leads to more annoyance, which in turn leads to worse behavior. At some point, some portion of the consumers do explode into outright hostility or madness, and the airlines mostly seem to be tuning their services to just above that point. Money - the very high cost of any air travel prior to deregulation - used to somewhat alleviate both issues. The airlines had incentive to compete on service quality rather than chase the maximum number of seats they could pack on a plane. And anyone paying that much to fly had a reputational incentive to behave in a civilized way. Flying private for the same amount of inflation-adjusted money as first class cost in the 1960s is a poor analogue, because it inherently leaves out the social dynamic that caused people to, e.g., wear their best clothes and don their best manners to board an airplane. There is no analogue, because first class now is not much better than what coach was back then. In other words, public air travel as it is now is a product that did not exist in the 1960s, geared to a consumer who didn't exist. And the enshittification is inevitable when the goal is maximum occupancy. If there were an airline with double the legroom in coach for double the price of coach on other airlines, I'd fly it exclusively. No one offers that. It's a barbell with steerage at one end and a very diminished first class experience for 5x the price at the other.
aaron695 1y ago
[dead]
Der_Einzige 1y ago
With the way they pack people into airplanes like sardines, most of the reason for why "air travel sucks" today is that too many others are doing it! It used to be FAR more common to get onto airplanes that were partially or even nearly totally empty. The extreme increase in efficiency/total flights combined with privatization means that every tom dick and harry is now flying/being a shitty tourist. I would nationalize all airline industries and I would have done it yesterday primarily because tom and dick should not be flying! Americans have too much money. Too many low quality Americans (i.e the kind who cause negative stereotypes of Americans abroad) are now traveling who should have stayed home permanently. Gate keeping is good and the "let people enjoy things" crowd is responsible for why a lot of stuff is now declining in this world. Tourism is only fun when it's being done in small amounts. The locals of the "tourist dependent localities" certainly agree (and are often willing to take significant economic pain for the benefits of reducing the tourist load). Why not give them what they want for once???
emtel 1y ago
The author explains clearly what his sources were, and it wasn’t Google. Did you even read the post?
jdminhbg 1y ago
> Just a lot of googling I'm not sure I've ever seen this as a pejorative for doing research to come up with sources for data before.
wisty 1y ago
Amd yet their conclusion at the start seems to nail it? They say it's worse in terms of delays, cheaper, and safer. This all seems to be perfectly correct. Rambling about for travel follows ... I remember back in the 90s when a domestic flight was a major luxury for an upper middle class family. Now just about anyone with disposable income can afford it. An economy ticket in the 90s was (roughly IIRC) equivalent to business class today in terms of service and first class in terms of price. Yes, it's a lot cheaper. IMO if someone wants to experience 90s style travel they could upgrade to business or first class but there's a reason why most people don't. Airlines have also gotten better at saving money on things that won't chase customers away. Delays are always a possibility so just having a better record on delays won't win many customers because they still need to manage the risk of delay. See also meals, seats, and every other thing people hate about air travel - there's always been unpleasant things about air travel, and making them a bit worse and a lot cheaper will win a lot more customers than it loses.
- amanaplanacanal 1y ago
  I remember flying coast to coast in the US in the 90s cheaper than I can get tickets today, but that's not accounting for inflation, so probably not really cheaper.
makeitdouble 1y ago
> Here's a person who is not a travel industry veteran, but was curious about something > At no time did they actually talk to somebody in the travel industry. Ignoring what conclusions they landed on, I'd like to defend this approach. For a controversial subject, first party expertise or second party direct testimonials will have less weight than actual data and tangible trends. We're having exceptional access to data, and I personally wish more people would go look for a topic they care about, gather facts and expose their conclusion. An example of it is Sarah Marshall's essays on Tonya Harding [0] with 0 access, only interviews, police reports and news papers of the time. IMHO it's not competiting with expert analysis or new reporting, and bring a different kind of insight to the table. https://www.thebeliever.net/remote-control/ https://www.thebeliever.net/remote-control/
ccppurcell 1y ago
I agree with your broader point. But I used to get a free beer on British Airways flights and no longer do. It's been many years since I flew on a plane with even a compartment for my stuff in front of me let alone a screen. Admittedly I fly less than I used to but that's at least partly because the relative experience vs cost of trains has got better and I have no reason to fly across the ocean.
grosswait 1y ago
As if talking to travel industry experts is a sure way to quantify the subjective experience travelers? Sorry, I prefer the perspective of people and data that depend upon the travel industry indirectly, not as their cash cow.

mhb 1y ago

Why does he need to talk to someone in the travel industry to evaluate the experience of traveling? Yes, we all agree with Louis CK that just being able to fly is a marvel. But it still sucks and it has gotten worse.

tekla 1y ago
Mass availability, hilarious cheapness, and ease of access makes things worse, News at 11.
- geodel 1y ago
  It is news because a lot of people intuitively don't get this point. Also they would not show at 11 as news would rather be promoting more travel instead of covering downsides.
- thrown-0825 1y ago
  For many people making something more accessible is the same thing as making it worse.
- forgetfreeman 1y ago
  We had cheap airfare and significantly better passenger accommodation 20 years ago. For the most part folks didn't act like assholes in public either. So yeah, things have gotten worse.
  - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
    I was thinking 30 years ago. The response to 9/11 definitely made the flying experience worse in the US. Plus of course the gradual shrinking of seat space. Happily my last few flights I have used points to upgrade to sit in the front of the plane, which alleviates the space problem, but just having to spend more time hanging around in the airport because of added security is hard for me to deal with.

noduerme 1y ago

With air travel, and most kinds of tourism, and customer service, and actually with most commodified experiences, the affordability and mass availability is the thing that makes the experience subjectively worse. It's the other people. Farting. Coughing. When you treat people like animals, they act like animals. At the same time, when they act like animals, why not treat them as such? Objectively and societally it may be better that more people have access to something, but by definition more people doing something makes it a shittier experience. No metrics or other dimensions necessary.

Eisenstein 1y ago
Not necessarily. It isn't the amount of people that is causing your discomfort -- the airline is always going to optimize for a full plane (and environmentally, we should want them to). It is the fact that we have been taught to tolerate people when they are being obnoxious and discourteous. If the airlines just ejected people who were being an asshole and fellow travelers would call out and shame bad behavior, it might lead to a more pleasant experience.
- noduerme 1y ago
  In theory, yes, you could enforce better conduct (although this might harm the bottom line). But I also think that when you place people in cramped conditions, they inherently begin to behave more antisocially and become less amicable. For every inch of legroom or width you shave off a seat, I think there's a non-negligible amount of discomfort that leads to more annoyance, which in turn leads to worse behavior. At some point, some portion of the consumers do explode into outright hostility or madness, and the airlines mostly seem to be tuning their services to just above that point. Money - the very high cost of any air travel prior to deregulation - used to somewhat alleviate both issues. The airlines had incentive to compete on service quality rather than chase the maximum number of seats they could pack on a plane. And anyone paying that much to fly had a reputational incentive to behave in a civilized way. Flying private for the same amount of inflation-adjusted money as first class cost in the 1960s is a poor analogue, because it inherently leaves out the social dynamic that caused people to, e.g., wear their best clothes and don their best manners to board an airplane. There is no analogue, because first class now is not much better than what coach was back then. In other words, public air travel as it is now is a product that did not exist in the 1960s, geared to a consumer who didn't exist. And the enshittification is inevitable when the goal is maximum occupancy. If there were an airline with double the legroom in coach for double the price of coach on other airlines, I'd fly it exclusively. No one offers that. It's a barbell with steerage at one end and a very diminished first class experience for 5x the price at the other.

aaron695 1y ago

[dead]

Der_Einzige 1y ago

With the way they pack people into airplanes like sardines, most of the reason for why "air travel sucks" today is that too many others are doing it! It used to be FAR more common to get onto airplanes that were partially or even nearly totally empty. The extreme increase in efficiency/total flights combined with privatization means that every tom dick and harry is now flying/being a shitty tourist. I would nationalize all airline industries and I would have done it yesterday primarily because tom and dick should not be flying! Americans have too much money. Too many low quality Americans (i.e the kind who cause negative stereotypes of Americans abroad) are now traveling who should have stayed home permanently. Gate keeping is good and the "let people enjoy things" crowd is responsible for why a lot of stuff is now declining in this world. Tourism is only fun when it's being done in small amounts. The locals of the "tourist dependent localities" certainly agree (and are often willing to take significant economic pain for the benefits of reducing the tourist load). Why not give them what they want for once???

emtel 1y ago

The author explains clearly what his sources were, and it wasn’t Google. Did you even read the post?

jdminhbg 1y ago

> Just a lot of googling I'm not sure I've ever seen this as a pejorative for doing research to come up with sources for data before.

wisty 1y ago

Amd yet their conclusion at the start seems to nail it? They say it's worse in terms of delays, cheaper, and safer. This all seems to be perfectly correct. Rambling about for travel follows ... I remember back in the 90s when a domestic flight was a major luxury for an upper middle class family. Now just about anyone with disposable income can afford it. An economy ticket in the 90s was (roughly IIRC) equivalent to business class today in terms of service and first class in terms of price. Yes, it's a lot cheaper. IMO if someone wants to experience 90s style travel they could upgrade to business or first class but there's a reason why most people don't. Airlines have also gotten better at saving money on things that won't chase customers away. Delays are always a possibility so just having a better record on delays won't win many customers because they still need to manage the risk of delay. See also meals, seats, and every other thing people hate about air travel - there's always been unpleasant things about air travel, and making them a bit worse and a lot cheaper will win a lot more customers than it loses.

amanaplanacanal 1y ago
I remember flying coast to coast in the US in the 90s cheaper than I can get tickets today, but that's not accounting for inflation, so probably not really cheaper.

makeitdouble 1y ago

> Here's a person who is not a travel industry veteran, but was curious about something > At no time did they actually talk to somebody in the travel industry. Ignoring what conclusions they landed on, I'd like to defend this approach. For a controversial subject, first party expertise or second party direct testimonials will have less weight than actual data and tangible trends. We're having exceptional access to data, and I personally wish more people would go look for a topic they care about, gather facts and expose their conclusion. An example of it is Sarah Marshall's essays on Tonya Harding [0] with 0 access, only interviews, police reports and news papers of the time. IMHO it's not competiting with expert analysis or new reporting, and bring a different kind of insight to the table. https://www.thebeliever.net/remote-control/ https://www.thebeliever.net/remote-control/

ccppurcell 1y ago

I agree with your broader point. But I used to get a free beer on British Airways flights and no longer do. It's been many years since I flew on a plane with even a compartment for my stuff in front of me let alone a screen. Admittedly I fly less than I used to but that's at least partly because the relative experience vs cost of trains has got better and I have no reason to fly across the ocean.

grosswait 1y ago

As if talking to travel industry experts is a sure way to quantify the subjective experience travelers? Sorry, I prefer the perspective of people and data that depend upon the travel industry indirectly, not as their cash cow.