How much worse could air travel actually get? | Canada Voices

Blame Freddie Laker? Thank Freddie Laker?

It depends on your perspective on modern air travel, I guess.

If not for Sir Freddie, most of us would see a lot less of the world and of each other. Conversely, if not for Sir Freddie, most of us wouldn’t live in fear of a middle seat in the economy section. You see, it was Sir Freddie who fired the starting pistol in the race to the bottom in what we now call air travel.

Back in the 1970s, Sir Frederick Laker revolutionized air travel by introducing “no frills” flights between London and New York with his Laker Airways Skytrain service. You didn’t even have to book a ticket. You just showed up at the airport and paid for a seat – which cost about one-third of what a regular airline would charge. Given how prohibitively expensive flying was, people were thrilled with the idea.

It was a development the travel industry would never relinquish.

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Before then, air travel offered two levels of service: economy – sometimes called coach or tourist – and first class. That was it. Meals were served on china in both categories, but the passengers up front got things like champagne and wider seats along with the chance to silently flex on economy travellers who had to parade past to reach their perches in the back. (Being stalled with your carry-on beside a seated person sipping champagne is always an awkward moment for both parties.)

In the airline-industry turbulence that followed the arrival of deep discounts, we’ve ended up with an array of service levels: business class, premium class, economy, premium economy and whatever else the industry can get away with. At least the persistent rumour that Ryanair will offer “vertical seats” has proven to be baseless. For as little as $9 you’d get a sort of upright stretcher and bike saddle, making the “packed like sardines” trope more true than ever.

In the early 1980s, the now-defunct CP Air offered a passenger experiment called Skybus. Skybus seats offered nothing beyond a place to sit and access to a bathroom. It was as close to Jack Dawson-steerage or being actual cargo as you could get. Basically, bottom of bottom of the barrel. This high-density, low-fare service proved so profitable that CP Air expanded Skybus in response to other ultra-low-cost carriers flooding the market at the time.

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It wasn’t long after until every aspect of flying was parsed and priced according to whatever the market would bear. A seat implies a certain amount of legroom, but what’s the minimum a passenger will accept? It’s no wonder the video of the disgruntled 6-foot-3 passenger crammed into an economy seat on a reconfigured WestJet plane went viral.

To its credit, the carrier adjusted its seating arrangements. Still, I can’t help but wonder whether the day is coming when you have to pay for inflight toilet paper.

It should be no surprise that flight attendants I spoke with told me they’re noticing elevated levels of anxiety in passengers. Old-timers say they’ve also seen a notable degradation in civility, as passengers have become (as one put it) zombies in cylinders, anesthetized by a panoply of movies-on-demand, barely offering even the simplest acknowledgment of service.

Personally, I hate to fly. For one year right out of university I was a flight attendant and, to this day, I’d rather work a flight than sit in an economy seat. I seriously question just how efficiently a plane can now be evacuated in the “unlikely event.” If I can’t reach my purse at my feet, there’s no reason for me to note the closest “clearly marked emergency exit.”

Call these new categories what you will – bare fare, cattle cars, bud-jets – it’s just a race to the bottom when it comes to passenger comfort and safety.

How much better is it for the deep-pocketed passengers? This isn’t a question you really want answered. Etihad Airways offers a three-room private suite that you can book only as an upgrade. The cost comes in at about $40,000 for one way to Abu Dhabi from New York. Round-trip business class to Australia from Vancouver on Air Canada will run you around $30,000, versus about $1,600 in economy.

Clearly, being stacked like cordwood in the back offers has some benefits. I mean, which would you rather: Never see the Parthenon, or be sleepless and miserable for 16 hours en route to Athens? But surely, we could find some better compromise than the choices we have today? Choices where people get absurdly creative with their carry-on luggage and become combative about overhead bins. Choices that determine whether you arrive at your destination looking like a human being or like you’ve been locked in a challenging yoga pose for half a day.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that luxuries once sampled soon become necessities. Can you risk it? After a fold-flat bed, hot showers and gourmet meals on demand, can you really go back to competing for elbow rests? I don’t know. But I, for one, am willing to find out.

Jane Macdougall is a writer based in Vancouver.