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With more passengers, fewer flights and crowded planes, it’s no fun flying
Overbooked flights. Skimpy legroom. Storage bins packed to the max. After 17 years of weekly business travel, David Bewley couldn’t stand the hassle anymore and quit his job as a franchise business consultant (www.kansascity.com) Más...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
Sadly US carriers take their bad US habits on international flights. It gives people a horrid impression of the USA.
no tradition of train travel in most of US...Europe/Asia different - the've always ridden in trains - East corridor an exception to the rest of US
You also have to remember that those of us that remember pax trains prior to AMTRAK are now in our 60's and 70's. Hell, we have a whole generation or more that has never seen or used a hard wired phone or TV with only 3-4 channels.
ironically trains perform best for trips under 500 miles, while the airlines are sick of any flight under 500 miles (and they don't help all the congestion baseside, either): they fit nicely together
Sad part is, that is how hey should have structured it in 1971 or pre AMTRAK, before the advent of he regional airlines and traced into the downtowns and out to the hubs. That would have put more money into the hubs as well as all would have been O&D traffic to/from there./
I was in Germany as an Army Brat in 1958, and in it's rebuilding years after the war, their train travel would make ours look like child's play. Even the military chief of staff had a private train (I said train, not private car) rather than a plane. The Airline infrastructure just wasn't there. Lufthansa was in it's infancy and the infrastructure eventually came around, but I am talking the days of the Trans-European express, TEE. It was something to go out to a gatehouse and normally gates were lowered one block at a time. When the TEE was coming, they'd go down about 5 miles up and down the railroad.
Things will have to get a whole lot worse before the public will value adequate comfort above low price. Forcing seats together and then charging extra for legroom is great, but unless you buy tickets months in advance, those seats are long gone. On retirement income, I cannot afford double prices for a blue carpet into "1st Class."
Most of my flying these days is on my flight simulator. Screw 'em.