Unfriendly Skies

I have never seen an industry that hates its customers more than the airlines. They subject us to:

• Long waits at the ticket counter, which is perpetually understaffed


• Cancellations, pinball rerouting, tarmac purgatory and other ills of pushing a hub system of interdependent flights to its limit


• All sorts of tacked-on fees, including American's decision to charge you for your first checked bag, rather than just the brutal honesty of raising fares to keep up with fuel costs


• Customer service nightmares, such as Ed Cone's experience with flight attendant stupidity and other incidents related by Jeff Jarvis


• And the latest: possibly charging fliers according to weight, essentially reducing you to just another piece of baggage -- which is pretty much what they've done already

Yet we still continue to fly. We have no choice. We have to be in New York, L.A., Chicago, Kansas City in a matter of hours, and the airlines have us as their captive customers, enslaved to their rickety system.

Even more ironic: most airlines (except Southwest) are in one of four financial states:

1) bankruptcy

2) emerging from bankruptcy

3) flirting with bankruptcy

4) merging to avoid bankruptcy

It astounds me how the airline industry continues to find new ways to lose money, year after year, crowded plane after plane, fee after fee. Only Hollywood accounting is shadier... or Enron's.