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The pathetic state of airline travel in #Murica: crumbling airports, staff shortages, rising fares, and slashed services. {The Times 17 June}
A perspective from a British writer, and it is rather shocking — I do not believe that to be hyperbole — how far American airlines and airports have fallen behind the rest of the civilised world in the past 25 years, post-9/11. Travellers certainly are not happy, yet also resigned to the miserable experience that is flight within the former United States; in fact, there is almost zero incentive or political pressure for anybody to provide better service, and the Trump regime rolled back very reasonable and basic protections the Biden administration had enacted. That’s what you swine voted for: degrade your quality of life and curb your most basic liberties, just so long as we pick on all those undesirable ‘woke’ types. That is not hyperbole, either, it is really how low we’ve sunk.
A perspective from a British writer: it is genuinely startling — no hyperbole needed — to learn how far American airlines and airports have fallen behind the rest of the developed world during the quarter-century since 9/11. Travellers are plainly dissatisfied, yet also are gaslit to be resigned to the increasingly unpleasant experience of domestic air travel within the former United States. Delays, overcrowding, ageing infrastructure, diminished customer service, and an endless array of fees have become so commonplace that Americans simply accept them as unavoidable facts of life.
Most remarkable is the absence of any meaningful political or commercial pressure to improve matters. Consumers grumble, yet continue to fly; politicians occasionally promise reform, yet little changes. The beloved Trump regime even rolled back several consumer-protection measures enacted under President Biden that were modest and entirely reasonable safeguards for passengers (specifically having to do with capping fees, if memory serves), and suffered zero popular backlash for doing so. Declining standards carry few consequences for either airlines or policymakers, because the dominant plurality of #Muricans are angry and stupid white trash.
Perchance, the greatest tragedy of modern American politics: large segments of the electorate have repeatedly accepted tangible declines in their own quality of life and freedoms in exchange for the promise that all the immigrants and other assorted ‘woke’ parties will suffer even more. Harsh though that assessment may sound, it reflects a reality that observers — inside and outside the former United States — find increasingly difficult to ignore. Americans, in the main, are not good or decent people, and my experiences in life have entirely reflected as such. Hell, I cannot even say I’ve been a good person much of the way, but at least I have the decency to be ashamed of what we’ve become now.
🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈
