We gotta get out of here: Stranded airline passengers find an advocate

IHT ^ | September 20, 2007 | Jeff Bailey

[Jotmo]

I believe I've seen the video in question. A truck is pulled behind a 747, or perhaps a 777 which has much more powerful engines, and the truck is blown away like a paper plate from a picnic table on a windy day.

It's quite impressive.

But it's also not idling.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

why can't passengers be removed using shuttles

And if I have to take the metal ladder off the plane down to the tarmac and walk 400 yards to the terminal, fine. I'd rather do that than sit for hours.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

I'd pay it and like it. Air travel was a lot more enjoyable when a lot fewer people could afford it. Now it just sucks. It's like Las Vegas and nearly everything else. Instead of getting first-class service at a price, you get cheapo service from people who look like they woke up under a bridge, whose IQ matches their hat size, and care about their job as much as they care about a cockroach on the sidewalk. Does everything in life have to be cheap cookie-cutter plastic Burger King crap? It disgusts me how people are no only satisfied with it, they prefer it. This is America, we shouldn't be choosing to be treated like damn dogs.

I'd rather drive for two days than fly for 6 hours. /rant off

[Wuli]

“I’d rather drive for two days than fly for 6 hours.”

While staying for a while in an area about 1 1/2 hour south of Chicago, I myself found it more enjoyable to rent a car and drive (6hrs) to Kansas City than to drive to Chicago and take a flight. Given the departure delays, the flight times and the drives to and from the airports, the door to door car trip was much more relaxing.

Now, if there had been a high-speed rail option, from downtown to downtown, I might have used it. I think “regional” air trips could become obsolete, if we could privitize Amtrack and give the new owners tax incentives for capital investments.

Right now, due to all the politics inherent in a government corporation, Amtrack is burdened with continuing (subsidizing) dozens of unprofitable long distance routes - New York to New Orleans for example - while the Northeast Corridor routes - along densely populated Boston-NY-D.C. - are the only ones making any money (and, they do so because the rail trip - door to door, downtown to downtown - is price and time competitive with flying).

“Amtrack” should become like the Interstate highway system, simply supply the routes, as the builder and maintainer of the rail-bed, while private companies obtain licenses to run train private services on them; services those companies chose to run, not services they are mandated to run. In that environment, capital investors will invest in profitable rail service plans and train service will likely improve to the point of putting regional plane services out of business.