Pretty Fed Up with Travel

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So let’s start back in the 1970s, before many of you were born, and paint a romantic yet not inaccurate picture of airline travel in the US.

You had an average of 34 inches of seat pitch back then (industry-speak for legroom). Nowadays on a budget carrier like Spirit you might get 28 inches. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s six more inches back then – or half a foot!

You got free drinks because in the 1970s air travel and alcohol were practically synonymous. You got very attentive flight attendants. You got luxury. Sometimes you got laid.

You were excited be traveling by air, either because you were a boozy businessman on an expense account or because you rarely flew and it was awe-inspiring. You were headed for a romantic destination or at least one where your expense account was still in play (unless you were headed home, which was romantic and boozy in its own way). You considered flying on your own dime a big deal and a big expense. You dressed up. It was an event.

I’m old enough to remember those days and I loved to fly. Normal vacations for normal people back then were taken by car. Road trips undertaken in a gargantuan vehicle that resembled a boat gliding along highways not old enough to consist almost entirely of potholes. Families piled in and the kids in the back (often sans safety belts) squabbled with each other and asked ‘Are we there yet?’.

Flying was for young people taking their young person’s tour of Europe, and for old people taking their old people tours of Europe.

I’m not gonna say those were the days, but in some ways – those were the days.

And then – ominous music – the Airline Deregulation Act happened. The act was undertaken with its own romantic ideas – that deregulation would reduce fares and allow more companies to enter the air travel market. These romantic ideas were correct. For a while.

Airlines were against deregulation. A regulated industry is stable and profitable. An unregulated industry would likely be unstable and less profitable. The existing airlines were worried about that and encouraged their employees to lobby against deregulation.

The airlines’ worries were correct. And still are.

By the early 1980s, air fares were cheaper, new carriers abounded, workers suffered, comfort and luxury started biting the dust, and venerable carriers went extinct.

Flying became wildly popular, and the level of comfort has descended to somewhat below the level of comfort on a Greyhound bus of the 70s. Mind you, a Greyhound bus was a poor man’s airplane back then and it was still way more comfortable than flying on many airlines today. I flew often in the 80s, and I hated it. I still remember getting smacked in the face by someone’s carry-on skis on one winter trip.

By the mid 90s (I’m guessing), cheap air fares were seen as some sort of consumer birthright enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. The inalienable rights became life, cheap airfare, and the pursuit of recreational travel.

Then September 11 happened, and people realized that traveling by air sucked big time. But that in no way made them want to stop doing it.

Nope, if anything, travel has only exploded since then. There were three times as many passengers in 2011 as in the 1970s. And more people than ever before have flown in the summer 2023.

There are also approximately 8 gazillion travel websites and any number of travel bloggers, travel influencers, and get-your-cheap-air-fares-here businesses. Competition abounds, efficiency is greatly increased, and profits veer precariously between the obscene and the non-existent.

Workers hate working for airlines, airlines hate being airlines, airlines hate hiring workers, people hate flying, and travel has gone from a romantic escape to an extreme sport that should have its own reality show (Naked and Afraid on the Tarmac for 27 Hours!).

But nothing, it seems, will stop people from hopping on a plane with the idea that they will quickly and smoothly get to Grandma’s for a wearying round of family togetherness. Or from hopping on an airplane to go to Machu Picchu via Bali or some such.

All this air travel has consequences. For one thing, it is absolutely, spectacularly great if you want to hasten global warming. Summer’s not hot enough for you yet? Well, then fly even more. You can watch the polar icecaps melt from your almost window seat.

Buy your own private jet if you want to maximize the carbon output. And many of the obscenely wealthy late-stage capitalists are doing just that. Wanna guess why? Because flying commercial sucks!

Why does flying commercial suck? Oh yeah, the Airline Deregulation Act.

The worldwide mania for travel has also created a host of economies dependent on tourism to survive (‘host’ of economies, get it, ha ha, oh well never mind). Tourism as the basis for an economy sucks. It makes you depend on the largesse of clueless entitled tourists that you don’t like while they spend too much and you get too little.

Overtourism also causes ecological devastation and isn’t good for the wonders of nature that people are flocking to appreciate. Making things good for tourists makes them bad for the people who live there. And don’t get anyone started on Instagram, selfies, influencers, and the general hordes of people mucking up what used to be a really nice view.

Tourism is so distasteful in fact, that some places are beginning to actively discourage it.

I doubt that the nascent anti-tourism sentiment will do much to reduce the mass tromping around on what once were unspoiled destinations. Unless the current economic structure changes (which it might, it might indeed), the thing that will discourage mass tromping is – um, high air fares.

That may happen. Capitalism, as is its wont, has looped back around on itself. The Airline Deregulation Act aimed to encourage competition and increase the number of carriers. The realities of capitalism are such that once again carriers have had to consolidate, so that there is less competition. The idea of consolidation, of course, is to be able to raise fares.

In the meantime, we have a generation or two or three born with the idea that going anywhere in the world and landing on someone else’s doorstep to gawk at their scenery is not just a birthright but a positive personal and spiritual good that broadens their horizons, expands their outlooks, diversifies their perspectives, and greatly increases the attractiveness of their social media feeds.

And to be fair, people have always traveled. There wouldn’t be people anywhere other than a small spot in Africa if people weren’t traveling fools by nature. When I used to read medieval literature (yeah, I used to do that, unenthusiastically, but still I did it), I was always amazed by how much traveling people were doing.

The thing is, though, that modern traveling is based on notions of abundance that are out of sync with reality. Resources and nature are in dire need of conservation and sustainability more than they are in need of untrammeled tromping. There are many experiences to be had (because experiences are seemingly what matter) that don’t involve jet fuel. You can find a world in your own backyard if you take up gardening.

I know – that’s a stupid and maybe insulting thing to say to those who are passionate about travel and their right to it. And I would probably be hard pressed to convince them that a more mindful approach to the planet is in order.

Still, there are young people on the horizon. Teenagers. A generation that has grown up with more knowledge of climate change than of comfortable airline seats. A generation that has plenty to worry about and has seemingly already climbed aboard the worry train. Young climate activists. People who care about some important things more than they care about how good their vacation photos look.

And maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to usher in a time when, thankfully or not, people are fed up with travel, and willing to explore what happens when they try to take care of the earth.

Tags: travel, trends, United States