
I was on a US Airways plane last week that was held together by Band-Aids. Literally.
The flight safely transported me to my destination for the cheapest available flight. Mission accomplished.
This reminded me of a column by Sharon Schmickle on MinnPost earlier this month where she complained about the condition of the plane that safely transported her to Argentina:
Rigid and tattered
To our dismay, the plane we boarded in Atlanta for the nine-hour flight to Buenos Aires last month was an older model Boeing. Seats were rigid and tattered. One tray table was cockeyed. Forget about movies; you could barely see the tiny, circa 1980 overhead monitors.Delta has been an all-Boeing airline, which means it’s a very uncomfortable one. A few years ago, Northwest’s planes were ranked as the oldest in the industry. But it had done a lot of recent upgrading, to the relief of passengers paying for long hauls overseas.
There isn’t necessarily a correlation between the age of the plane and the condition of the interior, so the logic in those statements is a bit tough to follow. Regardless, Ms. Schmickle was safely transported from Atlanta to Buenos Aires in 9 hours. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
This reminds me of Louis CK’s appearance on Conan in October where he points out that we need to take a step back from time to time to realize just how good we’ve got it. Jump ahead to 2:00 for his thoughts on people’s air travel expectations:
We’re living in good – but slightly tattered – times.