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With air travel, and most kinds of tourism, and customer service, and actually with most commodified experiences, the affordability and mass availability is the

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.
  - devilbunny 1y ago
    It's not double the legroom, but "premium coach" is a thing. Coach size seats, business-class legroom.
  - voidhorse 1y ago
    Culture and behavior aren't strictly consequences of economics. In my experience for example, people on flights outside of the US tend to be far more polite, amicable, and respectful than one experiences on US flights, even though flights are still widely accessible in that region too, to my knowledge. Perhaps part of that is a side effect of reasonable train availability as well and distribution resulting from that (another great public utility we lack in the US because public good is bad or something)
    - geodel 1y ago
      > In my experience for example, people on flights outside of the US tend to be far more polite, amicable, This doesn't seem to be true at all in my experience. Nasty behavior or punches in planes in India is increasingly common. And it will get worse as more and more people travel by plane again due to "cheap tickets".
- geodel 1y ago
  Not really. Very crowded airports and tight seating makes whole flying experience worse than before. Nothing to do with obnoxious people. And cheap ticket price creates same incentive as cheap gas price. If its so cheap why not just travel more. One can argue "no one is forced to fly in plane" but living in society has taught me otherwise.
  - noduerme 1y ago
    This too. All else being equal, if you doubled the price per flight and halved the number of passengers you crammed on a plane, you'd have less than half as many people flying and a lot fewer flights, hence a lot less pollution. My proof of this is that if it or equal value to double the price and halve the seats, some airline would be doing it.
    - geodel 1y ago
      You make great points above and here. I feel one key social dynamic is travel, tourism, exploring the world is relentlessly promoted as unalloyed good. Cities all over are falling over each other as great place to "explore" and "experience" much more than being good place to live, work or raise family. If I see through this promotion I am the curmudgeon who doesn't love the joys of travel.
- geoffpado 1y ago
  Agreed. I feel like if they started ejecting obnoxious passengers mid-flight, people would straighten up *real* fast.
  - rzwitserloot 1y ago
    I don't think so. Even a villain is the hero in their own story. For the vast majority of folks who are or would be a nuisance in flight, I'm pretty sure: * If they hear about stories where folks got punished for being obnoxious, they'd think "I would never be that obnoxious - that is not meant for people like me". In other words, they'be oblivious to their own predilections. * If they are placed in a situation where their instincts would lead them to being obnoxious, they.. will be obnoxious. Even if they 'know' what the consequence are. There are a few reasons for that: * It's a crime of passion; they can't help themselves. That's the general problem with trying to use rationality to tamper down crime: Most crimes are fundamentally not rational. You don't decide that it is in your best interest to murder someone (outside of an infinitesemal % of the population that are high functioning total psychopaths). No, you do so in the heat of the moment. At which point "Rational brain telling the id to cut it the fuck out because you might be ejected from the plane" is obviously going to have absolutely no tempering effect whatsoever. * They honestly think it doesn't apply to them. Usually because 'yes of course obnoxious behaviour should be punished by ejecting the obnoxian from the plane. But I'm not obnoxious, you don't understand! That kid is crying and driving me nuts, I had a bad night's sleep, and I have an important meeting right out of the plane so I need my rest so I have to yell at that mom to shut their kid up, see, my intentions are good!' Ref: Bit of a stretch, but: Similar (in culture, size, average wage, etc) locations with wildly different takes on how important it is to punish crime in order to serve as a 'warning' / to disincentivise crime by making clear that it will be heavily punished. The best place in my experience to look for this is the US where it appears to be culturally in vogue to act as some sort of wild west sheriff trope. The results? Not one iota of difference in crime rates. Or, if anything, the places that punish it more have _more_ crime, not less. And, of course, a million-and-one psych papers. If you want to make flight less of a nuisance, the rest of this thread has the right idea I think: Given that it's so ubiquitously available and intentionally designed in that way, it's inevitable that the experience sucks. If you want the experience to be less bad, it inherently comes with a reduction in accessibility. And on top of that, 'travel stress' is real and not something the airline industry can easily tackle. Try to imagine that travel just stresses you out. That it just does. For those who don't suffer from travel stress this can be hard to do. Maybe you have a light fear of heights; channel that. It's easy to see how the experience just kinda sucks if half the people trying to enjoy the view from some high vantage point are lightly freaking out, and they kinda have to be there for other reasons.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- borroka 1y ago
  The seats are also too small, at least for Western men (and increasingly for women too). I am quite tall and find flying an experience to be endured by gritting my teeth, but for taller and heavier people it is almost torture. I recently saw a man with half his leg in the aisle, taking up almost all the walking space. If you are unlucky enough to sit next to a very large man, a fairly common sight especially in the US, the entire flight becomes a series of small and large movements, squirming and twisting. However, people want to pay less and less, while airlines earn more and more. Competition is limited and I don't see how flight comfort can improve for the average passenger.
- mancerayder 1y ago
  Isn't that a broader societal thing? It feels like American culture has gotten more tolerant than it ever has, and we're all to patiently zip it while the person in front of us stands on the left side of the escalator we're trying to walk up, instead of the right like everyone else. Or someone is listening to Instagram feeds at full volume on the train as they flip through one stupidity after the other. Or is it we're scared of getting shot or punched in the face, given how much we've vilified law and order as inherently unjust and skewed, and therefore to be reimagined. And thus we grit our teeth in 'tolerance' which is a virtue of the young.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
ruszki 1y ago
This doesn’t explain why the flexible compartment in front of me, on the back of the seats, is either less usable than 10 years ago (ie too inflexible), or doesn’t exist at all on some flights (Hello, Ryanair).
- andrew_eu 1y ago
  I think it's about improving the turnaround on planes. When a plane lands, the crew has to get everyone out, clean the cabin, then get the next flight's passengers in -- all as quickly as possible. The shorter this turnaround, the more flights the plane can fly, and the more money the airline can make. Flexible seat back pockets are easy for people to stuff all kinds of trash in, so that's just one more task for the crew. Inflexible slots are harder to put trash in, and harder for passengers to notice there's trash in.
  - crusty 1y ago
    Counter offer... the turnaround time is locked in, cargo unloading and refueling, but fewer tasks mean fewer crew members needed to perform those tasks in the given time. So rather than 5 cleaners descending on an arriving plane, they can put 2 or 3 on it and pocket the 2 salaries they are no longer paying. Just an offer, I don't actually know the airlines' historical cleaning crew requirement number trends.
Hilift 1y ago
The problem with air travel is it is too fast. Or at least it is presented as fast. This implies if something is unpleasant, it shouldn't be a big deal because you shouldn't be exposed to it for long.
- VBprogrammer 1y ago
  The on the ground part of flying has certainly gotten worse (honourable mention to Brexit). Which for flights of modest length is actually the longest part of the process. People keep coming up with creative ways of making it more painful. Flying out of Cyprus was a good example, they have some crazy system where you have to print off a bit of paper at a kiosk to...well I really don't know what it did to be honest, verified your passport?
borroka 1y ago
It might sound funny in a juvenile way, but it just takes the uncontrolled flatulence of one impolite passenger to make the flight experience miserable for all the others. I was recently on a long-ish flight of a few hours and there was a passenger, whom I could not locate, who every 15 minutes or so was freeing themselves of some poison. The misery of the experience is difficult to describe, but I am sure that many will have felt something similar. All it takes is one rude bully to turn what should be a miraculous experience, like flying ought to be, into a depressing one. Many parallels can be drawn.
- amy214 1y ago
  He's not a bully, hell is other people and the phantom aerial farter speaks for all of us
- whamlastxmas 1y ago
  This is why I fly with an N95 regardless of Covid risk lol
  - matt-attack 1y ago
    A paper mask cannot filter out gases.
    - whamlastxmas 1y ago
      It seems to greatly reduce odors for me? Maybe placebo effect but it does seem to help a lot. Also when someone farts it’s the particles that smell bad, not the air itself
    - 0xbadcafebee 1y ago
      Any mask with activated carbon[1] can filter basic odors. For more gases, get a chemical cartridge[2]. [1] https://www.homedepot.com/p/HDX-N95-Disposable-Respirator-3-Pack-H960OV/312050625 https://www.homedepot.com/p/HDX-N95-Disposable-Respirator-3-... [2] https://www.homedepot.com/p/3M-OV-AG-P100-Professional-Multi-Purpose-Respirator-in-Black-with-Drop-Down-63023DHA1-C/206408987 https://www.homedepot.com/p/3M-OV-AG-P100-Professional-Multi...

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.
- devilbunny 1y ago
  It's not double the legroom, but "premium coach" is a thing. Coach size seats, business-class legroom.
- voidhorse 1y ago
  Culture and behavior aren't strictly consequences of economics. In my experience for example, people on flights outside of the US tend to be far more polite, amicable, and respectful than one experiences on US flights, even though flights are still widely accessible in that region too, to my knowledge. Perhaps part of that is a side effect of reasonable train availability as well and distribution resulting from that (another great public utility we lack in the US because public good is bad or something)
  - geodel 1y ago
    > In my experience for example, people on flights outside of the US tend to be far more polite, amicable, This doesn't seem to be true at all in my experience. Nasty behavior or punches in planes in India is increasingly common. And it will get worse as more and more people travel by plane again due to "cheap tickets".
geodel 1y ago
Not really. Very crowded airports and tight seating makes whole flying experience worse than before. Nothing to do with obnoxious people. And cheap ticket price creates same incentive as cheap gas price. If its so cheap why not just travel more. One can argue "no one is forced to fly in plane" but living in society has taught me otherwise.
- noduerme 1y ago
  This too. All else being equal, if you doubled the price per flight and halved the number of passengers you crammed on a plane, you'd have less than half as many people flying and a lot fewer flights, hence a lot less pollution. My proof of this is that if it or equal value to double the price and halve the seats, some airline would be doing it.
  - geodel 1y ago
    You make great points above and here. I feel one key social dynamic is travel, tourism, exploring the world is relentlessly promoted as unalloyed good. Cities all over are falling over each other as great place to "explore" and "experience" much more than being good place to live, work or raise family. If I see through this promotion I am the curmudgeon who doesn't love the joys of travel.
geoffpado 1y ago
Agreed. I feel like if they started ejecting obnoxious passengers mid-flight, people would straighten up *real* fast.
- rzwitserloot 1y ago
  I don't think so. Even a villain is the hero in their own story. For the vast majority of folks who are or would be a nuisance in flight, I'm pretty sure: * If they hear about stories where folks got punished for being obnoxious, they'd think "I would never be that obnoxious - that is not meant for people like me". In other words, they'be oblivious to their own predilections. * If they are placed in a situation where their instincts would lead them to being obnoxious, they.. will be obnoxious. Even if they 'know' what the consequence are. There are a few reasons for that: * It's a crime of passion; they can't help themselves. That's the general problem with trying to use rationality to tamper down crime: Most crimes are fundamentally not rational. You don't decide that it is in your best interest to murder someone (outside of an infinitesemal % of the population that are high functioning total psychopaths). No, you do so in the heat of the moment. At which point "Rational brain telling the id to cut it the fuck out because you might be ejected from the plane" is obviously going to have absolutely no tempering effect whatsoever. * They honestly think it doesn't apply to them. Usually because 'yes of course obnoxious behaviour should be punished by ejecting the obnoxian from the plane. But I'm not obnoxious, you don't understand! That kid is crying and driving me nuts, I had a bad night's sleep, and I have an important meeting right out of the plane so I need my rest so I have to yell at that mom to shut their kid up, see, my intentions are good!' Ref: Bit of a stretch, but: Similar (in culture, size, average wage, etc) locations with wildly different takes on how important it is to punish crime in order to serve as a 'warning' / to disincentivise crime by making clear that it will be heavily punished. The best place in my experience to look for this is the US where it appears to be culturally in vogue to act as some sort of wild west sheriff trope. The results? Not one iota of difference in crime rates. Or, if anything, the places that punish it more have _more_ crime, not less. And, of course, a million-and-one psych papers. If you want to make flight less of a nuisance, the rest of this thread has the right idea I think: Given that it's so ubiquitously available and intentionally designed in that way, it's inevitable that the experience sucks. If you want the experience to be less bad, it inherently comes with a reduction in accessibility. And on top of that, 'travel stress' is real and not something the airline industry can easily tackle. Try to imagine that travel just stresses you out. That it just does. For those who don't suffer from travel stress this can be hard to do. Maybe you have a light fear of heights; channel that. It's easy to see how the experience just kinda sucks if half the people trying to enjoy the view from some high vantage point are lightly freaking out, and they kinda have to be there for other reasons.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
borroka 1y ago
The seats are also too small, at least for Western men (and increasingly for women too). I am quite tall and find flying an experience to be endured by gritting my teeth, but for taller and heavier people it is almost torture. I recently saw a man with half his leg in the aisle, taking up almost all the walking space. If you are unlucky enough to sit next to a very large man, a fairly common sight especially in the US, the entire flight becomes a series of small and large movements, squirming and twisting. However, people want to pay less and less, while airlines earn more and more. Competition is limited and I don't see how flight comfort can improve for the average passenger.
mancerayder 1y ago
Isn't that a broader societal thing? It feels like American culture has gotten more tolerant than it ever has, and we're all to patiently zip it while the person in front of us stands on the left side of the escalator we're trying to walk up, instead of the right like everyone else. Or someone is listening to Instagram feeds at full volume on the train as they flip through one stupidity after the other. Or is it we're scared of getting shot or punched in the face, given how much we've vilified law and order as inherently unjust and skewed, and therefore to be reimagined. And thus we grit our teeth in 'tolerance' which is a virtue of the young.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

ruszki 1y ago

This doesn’t explain why the flexible compartment in front of me, on the back of the seats, is either less usable than 10 years ago (ie too inflexible), or doesn’t exist at all on some flights (Hello, Ryanair).

andrew_eu 1y ago
I think it's about improving the turnaround on planes. When a plane lands, the crew has to get everyone out, clean the cabin, then get the next flight's passengers in -- all as quickly as possible. The shorter this turnaround, the more flights the plane can fly, and the more money the airline can make. Flexible seat back pockets are easy for people to stuff all kinds of trash in, so that's just one more task for the crew. Inflexible slots are harder to put trash in, and harder for passengers to notice there's trash in.
- crusty 1y ago
  Counter offer... the turnaround time is locked in, cargo unloading and refueling, but fewer tasks mean fewer crew members needed to perform those tasks in the given time. So rather than 5 cleaners descending on an arriving plane, they can put 2 or 3 on it and pocket the 2 salaries they are no longer paying. Just an offer, I don't actually know the airlines' historical cleaning crew requirement number trends.

Hilift 1y ago

The problem with air travel is it is too fast. Or at least it is presented as fast. This implies if something is unpleasant, it shouldn't be a big deal because you shouldn't be exposed to it for long.

VBprogrammer 1y ago
The on the ground part of flying has certainly gotten worse (honourable mention to Brexit). Which for flights of modest length is actually the longest part of the process. People keep coming up with creative ways of making it more painful. Flying out of Cyprus was a good example, they have some crazy system where you have to print off a bit of paper at a kiosk to...well I really don't know what it did to be honest, verified your passport?

borroka 1y ago

It might sound funny in a juvenile way, but it just takes the uncontrolled flatulence of one impolite passenger to make the flight experience miserable for all the others. I was recently on a long-ish flight of a few hours and there was a passenger, whom I could not locate, who every 15 minutes or so was freeing themselves of some poison. The misery of the experience is difficult to describe, but I am sure that many will have felt something similar. All it takes is one rude bully to turn what should be a miraculous experience, like flying ought to be, into a depressing one. Many parallels can be drawn.

amy214 1y ago
He's not a bully, hell is other people and the phantom aerial farter speaks for all of us
whamlastxmas 1y ago
This is why I fly with an N95 regardless of Covid risk lol
- matt-attack 1y ago
  A paper mask cannot filter out gases.
  - whamlastxmas 1y ago
    It seems to greatly reduce odors for me? Maybe placebo effect but it does seem to help a lot. Also when someone farts it’s the particles that smell bad, not the air itself
  - 0xbadcafebee 1y ago
    Any mask with activated carbon[1] can filter basic odors. For more gases, get a chemical cartridge[2]. [1] https://www.homedepot.com/p/HDX-N95-Disposable-Respirator-3-Pack-H960OV/312050625 https://www.homedepot.com/p/HDX-N95-Disposable-Respirator-3-... [2] https://www.homedepot.com/p/3M-OV-AG-P100-Professional-Multi-Purpose-Respirator-in-Black-with-Drop-Down-63023DHA1-C/206408987 https://www.homedepot.com/p/3M-OV-AG-P100-Professional-Multi...