Finneran: Come Fly With Me
Friday, January 17, 2020
Tom Finneran
We all have them.
Perhaps it’s as a teenager, wanting to strike out and escape the narrow confines of home. A couple of buddies, a few bucks, a few maps, and a van, and all of a sudden, you’re cruising Route 66.
Perhaps it’s after college but before grad school, marriage, kids, and careers give birth to multiple responsibilities. Whether it’s Europe or America’s National Parks, these are strong temptations.
I suspect that for many of us, wanderlust strikes when the grandkids are in school during the day and booked up with afternoon and evening activities after class.
These thoughts and more crossed my mind as I recently endured a cross-country flight to Arizona.
Yes, the word is endured. That flight was close on the heels of a flight to New Mexico a few months earlier. The locations were beautiful but the flights are sheer torture.
If I was a tad younger and many tads wealthier, I would start an airline that focused on the human body. You know, like legs. And arms. And most especially, butts.
Every airline on the planet seems to do two things---they treat the economy passengers like cattle and they gouge business or first-class passengers with ridiculous prices.
Can someone out there make an airline seat that does not hurt my rear end? I don’t have a big butt. In fact, my wife says that I have a cute butt. Why then does my skinny little rear-end feel as if I’ve been crammed into a sardine can by flight’s end? How can anyone sit comfortably with their legs cramped up for hours at a time? Why must I tuck my elbows into my ribs in some kind of mixed martial arts fighting pose in order not to sprawl into my fellow passengers’ space?
I get up on every flight---more than once or twice on long flights---and I’ll do some stretching exercises in the galley. Even these efforts don’t forestall the misery of the sardine can treatment.
Might some entrepreneur find the sweet spot of reliability and passenger comfort? I don’t need hot Turkish towels. I don’t need fine wines and liquors. But I crave the simple creature comforts of sufficient space.
Can the airlines remove a half dozen rows of seats and use the additional room to provide such space? I would fully expect to pay a bit more in recognition that the plane is now carrying fewer passengers per flight. I would also expect much happier passengers as well as cabin crews who presently suffer the same indignities as the rest of us. I’m a capitalist through and through and I understand the connection between cost and service. There’s a sweet spot here to be found and filled by someone who understands the human anatomy.
And might some smart American engineer finally design a seat with my rear end in mine?
I can dream, can’t I?
Tom Finneran is the former Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, served as the head the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, and was a longstanding radio voice in Boston radio.
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