Letters to the Editor
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Rich and middle-class, not rich and poor
Smith wrote "We hear a lot about the ever-widening gap between the rich and poor. Maybe I'm reaching too far, but airplanes have a dramatic, sometimes vulgar way of showcasing this gap. In fewer places are the demarcations of class, in a very literal sense, more plainly in view."
As someone stuck in the back on every flight I take, I can sympathize with that view, but it just isn't true. This is the gap between the middle-class and the rich. The poverty line in the United States is set at $20,650 for a family of 4 in the contiguous 48 states (why Alaska and Hawaii should get their own rates and New York shouldn't is another issue). At that level you can't afford to take a week off work (and you are probably paid by the hour, with little paid vacation), much less a plane ticket, and hotel.
Poverty in this country is continually ignored, and yet more than 10% of our citizens are living in poverty. Poverty means not being able to eat healthy food, not knowing how to pay the utility bill, working 2 jobs and not affording day care. It does not mean having to fly coach on trans-Atlantic flights. It is true that poor people can afford television sets and other technological gadgets but, despite what some conservative pundits would have you believe, technological innovation does not put world travel at the feet of the poor just for enduring the discomfort of coach.
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OK, so it's ugly. So?
It's not like you're going to be seeing what it looks like from the outside while you're flying in it, right? Anyway, ugly is not only subjective, but changes: The triple-tail Constellations look, in retrospect, ridiculously streched.
Maybe I'm being too Charles Addams, but what worries me about the 380 is just the thought of what happens if something that big has teething troubles in its first few years, the way the British Comet did.
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Why stop with the fuselage.
Patrick,
As an owner of a Beechcraft Bonanza, I know what a beautiful aircraft should look like. The Bonanza follows the golden rectangle throughout and has one of the most pleasing shapes.
http://www.fspilotshop.com/images/v357.jpg
The Gulfstream V has the most beautiful wing, period.
http://www.247jets.com/private-jet.gif
This brings me to the ugly segmented wing used on AirBus aircraft. I’m well aware that specific fuel consumption drives the final shape of the wing. As fuel efficiency is most important.
http://www.zap16.com/images/F-WWBA.jpg
Airline execs don’t care what an aircraft looks like as long as it makes a profit. As an aviation enthusiast, I Care.
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Air travel is ugly
Maybe it's that I'm not a fashion kind of guy. I'm 6'2". Every flight is painful. I only fly once or twice a year, cross-country to visit my elderly mother. I'm retired and on a very fixed, very low income. Flying is a miserable experience.
I don't really give a damn what a plane looks like from the outside. If it gives me an extra inch of space so that the guy in front of me doesn't crush my kneecaps when he leans back it's a beautiful plane. If it costs ten bucks less to fly into Newark at three a.m. it's okey dokey with me.
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Ask the pilot
Poor Patrick !
, At heart, this is the story of a peculiar cultural victory -- the Americans as the elite, trumping those boorish, tasteless Europeans.
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American and taste ! - surely an oxymoron ...
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It's hard out there for a blogger
Are you sure you've been blacklisted by Airbus, Pat? Unless you received a peevish email from one of their PR flacks protesting your hurtful words about their flying apartment building, you might be assuming that they even pay attention to on-line magazine columnists.
After all, if you called them and said you were with Condé Nast Traveler, they would have credentialed you by overnight FedEx, and it would not have mattered if you had previously called their new plane a humpbacked pustule teaming with wretched humanity and poised to set a new airline disaster record for the largest number of air passenger casualties in a single event.
But you should not feel slighted. I don't believe media relations firms have developed a system for rating the effectiveness, "penetration" they call it, for on-line magazines. The raw number of "hits" is known, but the demographic is harder to pin down. I'd like to blog about that, but I doubt I could get credentialed. Know what I mean?
Anyway, on to the new AirPustule 9000, the world's largest flying waiting room. You get on in San Fran, you cram your stinky stocking feet under the seat in front of you and slam your seat back into somebody's face and settle in for a 14 or 20 hour ride to Sydney. It doesn't matter if it's a 747 or an A380, if you are not filthy rich or on an executive expense account, your journey is going to be the same torturous ordeal that it has always been.
Back in the days when I was in the a'wl bidness, and before I racked up the miles to get upgrades, I looked forward to those flights from Houston to Dubai and from Houston to Singapore the same way I'd look forward to root canals, or a colonoscopy. If I would have known about the date rape drug rohypnol back then, I'm sure I would have drugged myself out, comatose for those flights. I began to realize how bad the chickens have it at Tyson Farms.
Because no matter what kind of aircraft they build and how well they appoint the showroom model, by the time of delivery, it's all about putting asses in seats -- a giant flying waiting room, jam-packed with stinky crabby people who want to be somewhere else.
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Ask the pilot
Too bad you couldn't scrounge a freebie. Maybe you should have shelled out an bought a ticket? Sounds like sour grapes to me. Your Op-Ed piece reads like you are pimping for Boeing. Are you? What qualifies you to critique the A380's appearance? Are you a qualified aircraft designer? So you don't like where the drivers sit, so what. Engineering wise I suspect they could sit at the bar in 1st class and drive it from there.
Hard lines that the French (now GWB's best buddies) and the English (not so popular since they got smart about the silliness in Iraq) beat America to the punch with the Concord.
You seem to be in love with the 747, a plane now almost 40 years old. Whats so special about it?
Why not get a ticket in super deluxe class on Singapore Airlines and then tell us how tough things are!