There was a day when getting on a plane was beautiful, comfortable and aspirational. Today most already hates it

Flying is fascinating. Or it was. Get on the plane, look for the seat and check with illusion that it has a window. A slight tingling when the route starts towards the track. The tremendous push against the seat at the time of accelerating. The incoherent feeling of ungravation when gaining height and we feel pressured against the bottom of the seat. The notice that we can take off our belt and yes, make sure that, mysteriously, we are flying.

A formidable trip. I remember my first plane trip. With illusion, with nervousness. But everything changes when, due to the circumstances of life, the plane ceases to be something exceptional and becomes a more or less usual means of transport.

Or when you arrive at the airport and check the huge tail with horror to pass a police control that, fortunately, It should be simplified very soon. Or when you discover that you measure more than 1.70 meters and enter the seat becomes an exercise in contortionism. Or when your look visualizes in the poster that the flight is delayed. Or when that little bridge getaway falls apart by an unforeseen cancellation. Or when you reach the destination and you have the keys and wallet at hand, but the suitcase has been lost along the way. Or when …

A blow of reality. We have gone from seeing the plane as a luxury transport and associating it with an attractive and unique experience to pray because nothing happens if we have to take one. In 1951, Iberia flew for the first time to New York. On its website We can read how “a select chefs group prepared each meal, poured syrup on the cakes and prepared the trays that would then serve passengers aboard the Iberia airplanes.”

There was no trace of huge queues before climbing the plane, from the distinction of passengers in four groups, “that suitcase does not enter” because it measures two and a half centimeters more than expected or charging significant amounts for choosing a seat. In the 50s in Iberia, “only the plane receives more attention than you.”

They are not just sensations. It is not only a matter of sensations. Passengers begin to be really fed up with companies’s practices. In Financial Times They give as an example an American passenger who travels regularly with Southwest Airlines. In his five annual trips to the same destination he lived delays, cancellations for various reasons and even loss of the suitcase.

It is not an isolated case. For the first time in more than a decade, the negative perception of flights exceeds the positive. In the United States, the fourth part of the 2022 flights were delayed or canceled and only in October the United States Department of Transportation registered 3,000 complaints of users, five times more than in 2019.

Two hours. And 10,800 canceled flights. This was the result of a problem in the software of the Federal Aviation Administration of the United States that forced to leave on land all the air paths of the country for a couple of hours. 120 minutes that, as proven, wreaked havoc in the country with greater air traffic of the world. It is calculated which in 2019 traveled 925,500,000 passengers.

With data from 2022, the United States is the country that has the most airports in the world. Its enormous distances and the absence of any type of commitment to the train as an alternative medium has caused that last year it will be counted until 16,890 airports. The second country is Brazil, with 4,093. The most recent data in Spain are from 2013, but then added only 150 facilities of this type.

A funnel. One of the problems that indicate in the Financial Times article is the lack of workers. Coronavirus pandemia had cleaned, more or lessthe sky of airplanes. The increase in remote meetings caused many companies to ensure Bloomberg That the business trips had ended. But nothing is further from reality. Withdrawal restrictions, The number of trips has firmed again.

While Airbus and Boeing thousands of millions are distributed in aircraft purchases, Pilots are missing. Many. In the United States alone, 8,000 new employees are necessary. By 2032 a world scarcity is expected of up to 32,000 pilots.

And not just pilots. But pilot scarcity is not the only one that is causing delays, cancellations and generalized discomfort in travelers. In our country we know that traveling on vacation is synonymous with risk. The strikes of land workers, cabin staff and pilots have become generalized in summer and Christmas.

The workers of the airlines generally denounce too much work at work for a lack of employees that crawls from the toughest months of the confinements by the COVID-19. It is estimated that those days said goodbye to 191,000 workers in airports and airlines.

Photo | Carlos Coronado

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