With each price increase for checking luggage, people work even harder to shove two weeks worth of necessities into two carry on bags, only one of which can even be laughingly referred to as a purse or similar personal item. By the time some of these people load themselves on the plane, there is more weight in the overhead compartments than in the seats below them.
So here’s my suggestion. We already have lost all civility, comfort and compassion that airlines and their in-flight personnel may ever have been inclined to show. That we are nothing more than cattle to be shoved into too small seats with too little leg room and flight attendants who make it clear their only real job is to keep themselves safe from us… well, this has become quite obvious to anyone who has flown anywhere in the past few years.
So here’s my suggestion. Let’s stop all pretense that we are being treated like anything but cattle in a cattle car. Lose the seats and overhead bins. Send us into the belly of the plane with all the luggage we can haul. Let us figure out how to pile it up in the cargo bay and then find a comfortable way to sit on it for the duration of the flight.
Flight attendants can then do what they seemed most trained to do… stand at the door of the cargo bay and beat us back if we try to escape or find water or a bathroom.
Seriously, why are we still pretending that airlines offer any service at all?