NY Times Scribe Flies Coach -- Whines About It In Print

DJTorrente

DJTorrente

En-Route
PoA Supporter
Joined
Dec 16, 2011
Messages
3,254
Location
NJ
Display Name
Display name:
DJTorrente
... for over 1,600 words.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/06/class-struggle-in-the-sky/

The first error I noted was this:

...high overhead, the 1 percent fly first class; the .1 percent fly Netjets; the .01 fly their own planes.
Click to expand...
I'd say that the range of those who "fly their own planes" stretches through coach and tops out around first class. Regardless, his hierarchy is way off.

Not to mention how foreign the capitalist concept of getting more in exchange for paying more seems to Mr. Atlas.
 
What a disgusting piece of drivel. What has actually happened in the sky is the exact opposite of class distinction. Everyone who is not a senator or HR member goes through TSA screening when getting on a comm plane. Sure, the netjet and private plane crowd are spared, but the rest of the comm aviation experience just shows that even the hoi-ploy have to eat with plastic utensils. Yes, they may still be eating steak, or jumbo shrimp just as they were in the 60s, but now they can't have a cigar after their meal, nor can they say the word "bomb" while on a plane, and if they cause a stir in the air, they will be hog tied and turned over to the feds.
 
Yea, my wife complained about her last flight. She did not get her beverage from the flight crew, she was not able to get her bag during the flight and the pilot was kind of surly. Oh...wait a minute she was flying with me, I was the pilot, oops.:D
 
What a political statement from a supposed journalist,who appears to know nothing of the history of aviation history.His next story will probably give us the reason for the accident in Frisco
 
DJTorrente said:
... for over 1,600 words.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/06/class-struggle-in-the-sky/

The first error I noted was this:

I'd say that the range of those who "fly their own planes" stretches through coach and tops out around first class. Regardless, his hierarchy is way off.

Not to mention how foreign the capitalist concept of getting more in exchange for paying more seems to Mr. Atlas.
Click to expand...
I don't know about you but I feel like part of the .01% that fly their own planes.
 
I go, in order of preference.

1. Bonanza.
2. Car.
3. Boat
4. Horse and Buggy.
5. Walk.
6. Back of a Hearse.
...
999,987,321. Airlines.

if the NYT wants to post a class warfare article on their blogs...."yawn"
 
Hasn't commercial aviation gone from being exclusive and only for the wealthy, to something just short of (and sometimes worse than) basic bus service? Seems to me the "exclusive" type used to have the run of the plane and have slowly been forced out and forward to make room for spam can seats offered at below cost just to take the other airlines' market share.

I agree flying commercially these days is agony, but class warfare? Come on!
 
TexasPilot71 said:
Hasn't commercial aviation gone from being exclusive and only for the wealthy, to something just short of (and sometimes worse than) basic bus service? Seems to me the "exclusive" type used to have the run of the plane and have slowly been forced out and forward to make room for spam can seats offered at below cost just to take the other airlines' market share.

I agree flying commercially these days is agony, but class warfare? Come on!
Click to expand...

Did you read the article? It was a class warfare piece that used airline service as an example. It had little to do with ****ty airline service. Hell the title is "Class Struggle in the Sky"

EDIT: Or, ummm were you not responding to me? :confused:
 
I had to fly commercial to go pick up my new-to-me purchase (Arrow II) some 1140NM (1162 actual flown) away. First I had to drive 3 freggin' hours at O dark thirty in order to be at the cattle port a good 1.5-2 hours prior to takeoff. Then the circus that is security ensues. It's 0530 and it's a zoo in there. It's literally an out of body experience. Most of civilization is still snoozing, but in this terminal the level of anxiety over missing flights due to TSA is just overbearing. Everybody is freaking out, nobody is having a good time. It's just miserable, or numbing, depending on how frequently a commercial passenger you are for the year.

Then you share the most personal 24 inches of shoulder room with your favorite stranger you'll never see again, and pay $650 dollars (after bag fees) one-way for the privilege.

Get to my destination. Buy Arrow. Go to sleep; too tired to even think about starting the flight back on the same day (good ADM). Next day, spend an amazing 9.4 flying hours split over three sorties (4.1,3.8,1.5) crossing this great Country of ours from Canadian border to Mexican border and land 2 miles from my house.

The messed up part? It was the same block hour day as going commercial, but literally landed more rested flying 9.4 on my own, even behind a crappo piper autocontrol AP (worked beautifully btw), than having spent the same block hours in a combination of driving, dodging 0500 drunk driver sleepy traffic, fondled by TSA and sweating out of one armpit (courtesy of airline shoulder room posture) for a 2.7 hour Delta flight.

The airline thing is out of control. I do it to see my parents once a year because I can't drive to the Caribbean. Other than that, if I can't fly the Arrow, you live too far and I just stay home. No level of airline discount pricing is worth that pain to me.

P.S. Arrow fuel bill was $415 for that day. Commercial adventure in contrast set me back $188 in one way car rental plus $655 one way ticket... for the same block day, and to end up more rested by actually flying myself the whole way.
 
Last edited:
hindsight2020 said:
I had to fly commercial to go pick up my new-to-me purchase (Arrow II) some 1140NM (1162 actual flown) away. First I had to drive 3 freggin' hours at O dark thirty in order to be at the cattle port a good 1.5-2 hours prior to takeoff. Then the circus that is security ensues. It's 0530 and it's a zoo in there. It's literally an out of body experience. Most of civilization is still snoozing, but in this terminal the level of anxiety over missing flights due to TSA is just overbearing. Everybody is freaking out, nobody is having a good time. It's just miserable, or numbing, depending on how frequently a commercial passenger you are for the year.

Then you share the most personal 24 inches of shoulder room with your favorite stranger you'll never see again, and pay $650 dollars (after bag fees) one-way for the privilege.

Get to my destination. Buy Arrow. Go to sleep; too tired to even think about starting the flight back on the same day (good ADM). Next day, spend an amazing 9.4 flying hours split over three sorties (4.1,3.8,1.5) crossing this great Country of ours from Canadian border to Mexican border and land 2 miles from my house.

The messed up part? It was the same block hour day as going commercial, but literally landed more rested flying 9.4 on my own, even behind a crappo piper autocontrol AP (worked beautifully btw), than having spent the same block hours in a combination of driving, dodging 0500 drunk driver sleepy traffic, fondled by TSA and sweating out of one armpit (courtesy of airline shoulder room posture) for a 2.7 hour Delta flight.

The airline thing is out of control. I do it to see my parents once a year because I can't drive to the Caribbean. Other than that, if I can't fly the Arrow, you live too far and I just stay home. No level of airline discount pricing is worth that pain to me.

P.S. Arrow fuel bill was $415 for that day. Commercial adventure in contrast set me back $188 in one way car rental plus $655 one way ticket... for the same block day, and to end up more rested by actually flying myself the whole way.
Click to expand...

+1...and That's why I fly myself.
 
bartmc said:
Did you read the article? It was a class warfare piece that used airline service as an example. It had little to do with ****ty airline service. Hell the title is "Class Struggle in the Sky"

EDIT: Or, ummm were you not responding to me? :confused:
Click to expand...

Haha, no I wasn't responding to you. I was just laughing at this guy's holier than thou attitude.
 
It was a time when it was possible for most families to live on one income — almost always Dad’s — buy a house in the suburbs and go on vacation twice a year. The country was prosperous; if you weren’t rich, you felt rich.
Click to expand...

Seems like this is still the mentality, despite the fact it was proven to be a bad mindset when everything imploded in '07. So, even if you're not financially able, go ahead and buy that second home and third car... you deserve to feel rich.
Now we're saying everyone deserves business class treatment? Gimme a break.
 
I fly commercial a couple or few times a month, mostly coast to coast. It isn't fun, but it puts food on the table. It would not be a practical flight in my Cherokee and dispatch reliability is required (my clients don't want to hear that fog kept me from taking off or a vacuum failure grounded me in Arizona).
 
Not sure I have ever received an 'amenity kit' or a steak served on white linen in domestic business class. I do remember a lot of cafeteria food (chicken salad or roastbeef sandwich) and some linen-looking stiky-paper that holds the tray in place.
For all the griping about airline travel. It gets me where I need to go, usually cheap and on schedule.
 
rmlewisjr said:
Yea, my wife complained about her last flight. She did not get her beverage from the flight crew, she was not able to get her bag during the flight and the pilot was kind of surly. Oh...wait a minute she was flying with me, I was the pilot, oops.:D
Click to expand...

So Rich, is your service level higher than that of some airlines then? :D

David
 
DJTorrente said:
... for over 1,600 words.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/06/class-struggle-in-the-sky/

The first error I noted was this:

I'd say that the range of those who "fly their own planes" stretches through coach and tops out around first class. Regardless, his hierarchy is way off.

Not to mention how foreign the capitalist concept of getting more in exchange for paying more seems to Mr. Atlas.
Click to expand...
He's wrong it probably 0.06%. According to the FAA site on the net (if it can be believed)in 2010 there were about 223,000 general aviation aircraft(including helicopters, turbine, piston, gliders, etc tough over 170,000 were piston fixed wing) in the US. With a population of 313,000,000 it comes out to 0.06%. Leave it to the NY Times to exagerated!
 
Skylane81E said:
Who what's to bet he makes more money than I do?
Click to expand...

He was writing for NYT so I assume he lives in new york.

Class divide is me flying a $100/hr rental and splitting a 1100/mo house with two friends VS this author buying $15 cocktails, frumpy latte's and living in a $3000/mo closet.

Sure he makes plenty of money but he has none left over to fly first class!
 
Last edited:
dell30rb said:
He was writing for NYT so I assume he lives in new york.

Class divide is me flying a $100/hr rental and splitting a 1100/mo house with two friends VS this author buying $15 cocktails, frumpy latte's and living in a $3000/mo closet.

Sure he makes plenty of money but he has none left over to fly first class!
Click to expand...

Yep, here I am trying to keep a 94 my car running
 
douglas393 said:
He's wrong it probably 0.06%. According to the FAA site on the net (if it can be believed)in 2010 there were about 223,000 general aviation aircraft(including helicopters, turbine, piston, gliders, etc tough over 170,000 were piston fixed wing) in the US. With a population of 313,000,000 it comes out to 0.06%. Leave it to the NY Times to exagerated!
Click to expand...

His "1%" refers to income. Yours refers to population. Different numbers.
 
denverpilot said:
His "1%" refers to income. Yours refers to population. Different numbers.
Click to expand...
You are so right, but I when I read it I could not believe he would say something that was so blatantly crazy, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. How stupid of me. Well then his numbers are completely ludicrous, because if that was so then we would all be flying citations.
 
flhrci said:
So Rich, is your service level higher than that of some airlines then? :D

David
Click to expand...

It was an on time flight, and she did get door to door service. The return trip she did get her beverage.:wink2:
 
Yup on NYT. Also WaPo and all others who have gone to a pay wall.
I understand they are between a financial rock and a hard place.
We are in a huge flux of new paradigms (whatever that means) and the old business of making money by throwing bundles of printed newspapers with 60% paid advertising in them, off the truck onto street corners for the delivery crew, has gone away.
Not MY problem (shrug)
If they want me to view their advertisers they have to let me see their web edition.

NYT and a few others are about the last of the great newspapers with good reporters who can sniff out a story and write it in complete sentences (a skill massively dwindling with the new crop of wet nosed so called 'reporters' who went through puberty (last week) while texting)
And that I do miss the competent writing that is left since I have been blocked from access.
OTOH, I do not miss the far left media's neo-communist propaganda.
 
Dr. O said:
Yup on NYT. Also WaPo and all others who have gone to a pay wall.
I understand they are between a financial rock and a hard place.
We are in a huge flux of new paradigms (whatever that means) and the old business of making money by throwing bundles of printed newspapers with 60% paid advertising in them, off the truck onto street corners for the delivery crew, has gone away.
Not MY problem (shrug)
If they want me to view their advertisers they have to let me see their web edition.

NYT and a few others are about the last of the great newspapers with good reporters who can sniff out a story and write it in complete sentences (a skill massively dwindling with the new crop of wet nosed so called 'reporters' who went through puberty (last week) while texting)
And that I do miss the competent writing that is left since I have been blocked from access.
OTOH, I do not miss the far left media's neo-communist propaganda.
Click to expand...

Part of the problem is that some of the sites have used the most obnoxious possible forms of advertising (pop-ups, pop-unders, java widgets that crawl around the screen, scrollers, etc) that many of us use ad blockers. They they wonder why folks don't want the ads or don't spend time on the site. Content is the other - the quality of content has gone down.
 
Airline travel is exactly what we the people wanted. A very inexpensive, reliable and safe transportation system. In order to do this, the airlines had to strip costs. So, we pack you in, charge you for bags, eliminate food (you hated airline food anyway) and destroyed labor.
 
jonnyjetprop said:
Airline travel is exactly what we the people wanted. A very inexpensive, reliable and safe transportation system. In order to do this, the airlines had to strip costs. So, we pack you in, charge you for bags, eliminate food (you hated airline food anyway) and destroyed labor.
Click to expand...

Confirmed exactly. The top two growth carriers recently are Spirit and JetBlue with SWA not far behind. I was in the concourse with the rest of the cattle loading on a Spirit flight. We were all standing there knowing that our flight from DFW to MSP was going to be miserable. But - none of us walked away from the ordeal. We just paid our ticket price, got in line, and sat there for +2 hours while a guy up front steered us to our destination. We entertained ourselves, we fed and drank what we brought and we shuffled off at the end knowing that we got a fairly short trip for a low price.

Pan Am went Tango Uniform for a reason. The economic model of Pan Am just didn't have a market in the get-me-there-now-and-cheap times. Sure, if you want 1st class to your destination it's avail for you, but the price delta from discount coach is - staggering.
 
I don't understand this trend to vilify the successful and the desire to drag them down to the "common man" status rather than the ambition and desire to try and rise to that level of success.

I prefer to work to achieve that sucess (as I sit here literally as we speak crammed shoulder to shoulder on a commercial flight in coach...oh wait, I have free internet via my frequent flier perks...I MUST be the 1%!)

Actually I do understand it...I am just more worried for this country!
 
I am always deeply impressed with the airlines' record of safety in the US, especially when I think that all of these flights involve thin-walled aluminum tubes filled with volatile materials (and jet fuel, which burns pretty good too) traveling at hundreds of miles an hour.

And every time I think of it I give deep and wonderful thanks to my savage pagan gods that I don't have to utilize it to keep food coming out of the grocery chute.
 
Will the flight crew expect "extra favors" from the nice lady when the trip is safely completed?

rmlewisjr said:
It was an on time flight, and she did get door to door service. The return trip she did get her beverage.:wink2:
Click to expand...
 
Graueradler said:
NYT doesn't exist for me. Their logo is like an "Ignore" button.
Click to expand...

"All the news that fits" is the proper expression for their tag line.

denverpilot said:
And USAToday.
Click to expand...

I only see that rag if the hotel leaves it in front of my room. Not much better than the NYT.

Oh, and first class on UA from SJU to EWR to SEA yesterday was just fine. :D
 
That whine boils down to "nobody should have more disposable income than me".
 
bbchien said:
That whine boils down to "nobody should have more disposable income than me".
Click to expand...

Heh. I don't know about you Doc, but I've never had any "disposable" income.

I've had income I could spend on nice stuff, but never disposable. ;)

(It says something that the phrase used is "disposable" about our economy, doesn't it?) ;)

What do you bet the NYT reporter could have afforded a First Class ticket, but *chose* to spend their money elsewhere?

Hell, they probably didn't even pay for the flight... Work expense for the article... If they did pay for it, writing the article made the trip a tax write-off for them as an unreimbursed business expense.)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top