Fear and loathing at the airport

It has been years since Walt boarded an airplane. There are multiple reasons for this, and fear of flying itself is not one of them. What I fear and detest and avoid like the plague is the experience of going on an airplane voyage in the 21st century.

Gone are the days when I could afford to fly first or business class. How I used to enjoy sipping my vodka 'n' tonic while the hoi polloi filed past to their little seats in the back. But now, if I flew, I would be relegated to the SBS (Screaming Baby Section) with the rest of the cattle.

Here's the problem with "coach". The seats are getting smaller, but the cattle are getting bigger!

Let's talk cabin configuration. Back in the day when the 747 was the biggest thing in the air, many airlines had 2-4-2 or 2-5-2 seating in coach, so you had only a minimal chance of getting stuck in a dreaded middle seat. "Never more than one seat from the aisle" was OK.

Now we have 767's, 777's, and their Airbus equivalents, and the airlines have discovered that with 3-3-3 seating they can squeeze 9 pax into a narrower cabin! Sure, they've bulked up the seat cushions a bit so the seats don't look so skinny, but the seats are narrower.

Or maybe it's just my impression, an optical illusion created by the fact that those who fly are so much wider! Have you seen some of the behemoths waddling through our airports these days?

I took Mrs. Walt to the airport a couple of days ago for her annual jaunt to the mysterious east, and watched in slack-jawed disbelief at the down-filled mammoths in the check-in lines. I felt Mrs. Walt's fear as she attempted to peek at the seat number on the boarding pass of the gargantua ahead of her.

And here's the thing. The blubberbutt who sits beside you and needs a seat-belt extension to satisfy the FAA pays the same fare as you do, even though they really occupy two seats -- their own and half the space on either side as their bulk oozes over and under the armrest.

They get the same weight allowance for their luggage too. Mrs. Walt weighs about 100 pounds soaking wet -- we put a scale in the shower to check -- and can bring with her two suitcases of 50 pounds each, total 200 pounds. The circus exhibit behind her, weighing in at 250 if she's an ounce, adds 350 pounds to the plane's take-off weight, for the same price.

The fare's not fair! Why not just weigh the passenger and the luggage and charge by the pound-mile! [Or kilogram-kilometre, for the metric-minded. Ed.]

And don't get me started on airport "security". The terrorists [if they really exist. Ed.] have made prisoners of us in our own country! I don't need or want to have my junk touched. If I want to hear laughter, I'll try stand-up comedy. And really, what's the point of it? They couldn't even catch one guy with explosives in his shorts. Seriously, can anyone report an instance of a terrorist being caught by airport "security"? Just one?! I thought not.

So, taking all this into account, I'm grounding myself until further notice. In fact, I think I'll be like Nero Wolfe and just stay in my house tending to my orchids.