The end of term comes bearing ill tidings: piled-up projects, constant stress, sleep deprivation, and for some international students, a 30 hour flight back home.
Don’t get me wrong, I love being back in my home country. But that’s just it: I love being back, but I truly detest GOING back. Whatever glory airlines commercials offer you — the service of sleek-looking flight attendants, the wide range of in-flight entertainment, even the will of man to defeat gravity itself — it all becomes faded, just like the feeling in your backside, when you’re stuck in a tiny seat for over a day. I don’t want to name the airline here (but it rhymes with “Sqatar Airways”), because it’s not just my flying experience that sucks. The simple truth is: flying nowadays sucks. And you can blame it all on capitalism.
I’ve seen photos from what they dubbed “The Golden Age of flying” — a handful people in suits leaning back in their huge seats, their legs stretching out as far as could be. It’s a classy and relaxing sight, one that many airlines still replicate in their commercials. These commercials look like they were shot only in the business class, though, because when you board an economy flight these days, it’s like you’ve walked into purgatory, if purgatory really is a crowded metal tube flying in the sky.
There are more people are on planes now. There are more people because there are more seats. And there are more seats because all the seats have shrunk. Studies have shown that minor differences in seat sizes, down to the inches, matter greatly to travelers’ comfort, and in the past 30 years, seat length had gone down an average of four inches, while seat width had been cut off by three inches. And that’s not all: in order to put in extra rows of seats and haul even more people on board, airplane lavatories are also getting trimmed viciously, with one instance of the Boeing 737 Max 8, whose lavatories are just 75 percent of what they originally were (this was as of July 2018; the Max 8 is currently being grounded).
While the seats are getting smaller, the passengers are getting bigger. In the 21st century, the average American is getting heavier and thicker, and obesity is still a raging national epidemic. If the seats and bathrooms keep shrinking, soon, many people wouldn’t be able to fit into neither of them, and the flying experience, no matter now classy the airplanes try to sell it as, will disintegrate into long, fleshy, sweaty hours of spinal pain.
In all this madness, the reasonable person might look to the government, more specifically the Federal Aviation Agency, that collection of nice respectable people who have sworn to look out for air travelers. But in response to complaints about shrinking seat sizes, the agency promptly replied that it did not deal with “creature comforts” matters, only safety.
But these tightly packed planes are unsafe. Tightly packed seats mean that in cases of violent turbulences or a crash, the passengers can suffer head trauma from hitting the back of the seat in front. According to the FAA’s law, an airplane has to be configured such that in cases of emergency, the passengers can evacuate within 90 seconds. However, in one incident on American Airlines flight 383 on Oct. 28, 2016, it took more than two minutes for passengers to escape plane. On Qatar Airways flight QF32 on Nov. 4, 2010, it took 52 minutes to start the evacuation. In both cases the planes were at risk of burning and exploding.
Flying absolutely sucks, and that’s just from looking at the physical aspect of it. When you count in the overbooking, the security checkpoints, the airport hassle — it is downright torture. Airplanes seem to have forgotten that people are people and not farm animals, and we have a reasonably high expectations from something we paid so much money for. As for me, I now have constant dread of going back home and even going on vacation. The mere sight of the plane ticket nauseates me. However, being an international student and a keen traveler, travel I still must. But if airlines keep shrinking seats, cutting toilets, and adding more sweaty people on board, well, then, I’d better get myself a raft and a spoon.
