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Tuesday, 06 June 2006 13:02 |
| Mark West
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The airlines have finally gone too far.
Airbus, the gigantic and heavily subsidized European aircraft maker, has apparently been quietly pitching the notion of standing-room-only jets to some of its Asian clients.
To those of us who have to travel by air, there??s little surprise in this latest indignity. American Airlines, several years ago, introduced much thinner airline seats, which it claimed would allow for more leg room.
What
it actually allowed for was more seats in coach. Meals vanished, to be
replaced by carry-on sandwiches and then nothing; the once-genteel
atmosphere of aviation was replaced by a peculiar sense of having been
kidnapped by people largely indifferent to your well-being. Frequent
flyers these days swap tales of horror flights ?? hours on the tarmac,
unable to leave the plane; haughty inspectors tearing through luggage
and then taping it shut since it can??t be closed if the content are
just piled inside and the like. It seems like traveling in steerage on
the old ocean liners.
Of course, it isn??t like steerage. Steerage was cheap.
Now,
Airbus is denying its plan to strap customers to a padded vertical
board. They only investigated the idea, they say, and decided that it
was impractical. We??ll see. Before too long, what do you want to bet
that SRO flights show up?
What is
impractical, and what has always been impractical, is the notion of a
national long-haul transportation system based on aviation. In the
United States, we often hear that a rail system is impractical because
it would require subsidies. Amtrak, goes this line of reasoning, needs
help from the public purse; thus any sort of serious national mass
transit featuring the railroad system just wouldn??t be practical.
Aviation and the automobile, goes the argument, are the practical
methods of transportation.
But
aviation receives huge subsidies, although those subsidies are often
hidden. Much of the United States?? vast defense budget is channeled to
firms like Boeing, who can use the immense profits from locked-in
contracts to guarantee profitability during the development of new
commercial aviation ventures. Similar defense contracts are granted to
the constituent firms of Airbus by European Union nations ?? this in
addition to the EU??s subsidized airlines, which are obliged to buy
Airbus products.
In addition,
every city of any size in the United States believes that it must have
an airport in order to attract business. That may be so, although
whether that speaks to the necessity of air transportation for the
conduct of business or to the widespread belief that it is necessary
when it isn??t is an open question. But cities nevertheless build
airports, generally with the use of taxpayer monies. Often, these
airports operate at a loss, and are subsidized by local or regional
governmental authorities. Further, the whole system of flight control
and communication is run by the government and funded through tax
dollars.
The
notion that automobile travel is somehow an efficient enterprise is
even more far-fetched. Only a very tiny amount of the vast highway
system in the United States was created via private enterprise; the
vast majority was constructed with public dollars. Military contracts
and subsidies to the American automakers constitute a substantial
portion of their income, as well. And subsidies for exploration and
drilling and the refinement of petroleum have helped to make the
automobile more viable ?? while the same time generating record profits
for the American petrochemical industry.
Considering
that the infrastructure is already constructed, and that it is vastly
more efficient to move hundreds of people at once on the ground as
opposed to one or two at a time in a single vehicle, a return to rail
travel seems inevitable as fuel prices creep ever higher. The
transition could be made to relatively painless at this point, via the
application of some leadership from Washington.
But, of all the possibilities I??ve discussed so far, that is the least likely.
?ΓΏ
Mark West is a professor of mass communications at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.
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