No-Frill Airlines Considering Frills

Fly in style, not fly-by-night ideas

By Ed Goldman

If you haven’t firmed up your holiday travel plans yet (but are still viewed as sensate by family members), you should know that a few lower-priced airlines—whose theme song could be “The Frill is Gone,” famously recorded by the immortal B-dot B-dot King—are considering cutting back on things they previously cut back on.

In other words, they’re adding stuff the other airlines already provide, like baggage check, priority boarding and booze. That’s all fine, if unimaginative. How about providing some of the following amenities?

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Non-Fall-Off Doors and Completely Fastened Plane Tires.Perhaps we’re asking too much. A short-term fix could involve hammering the tires onto the door jambs and landing with one fewer tire, in the style of a skateboard ramp-dismount. A clever airline could even announce that its planes can pop wheelies, which should thrill younger flyers.
Diction Lessons for Pilots. I’m blessed with excellent hearing, as I’ve mentioned to anyone within earshot (!). A physician’s assistant tested it not long ago and proclaimed I could “hear a mouse peeing on a desk blotter in a closed office down a long corridor.” Why, then, can I rarely decipher a pilot’s mid-air commentary? More than once, a pilot has announced that we were heading into “some weather” and I thought he’d been praising the day’s climate, saying “Some weather!” So either give these guys and gals a speech therapist, improve the plane’s sound system or start printing subtitles on the seatbacks.

Not Saying “Welcome to (your destination)!” when you still have a solid 20 minutes of landing and its accompanying turbulence ahead of you.
Not serving drinks and snacks 16 minutes before the attendants glide down the aisles with those mammoth garbage bags to retrieve the detritus of your barely consumed drinks and snacks.

A greater understanding of overhead-bin tolerances. Just as we’re taught in arithmetic class that you can’t handily divide the number 3 by 17, why do airlines think we’ll find a way to cram steamer trunks into a cubby designed to hold a makeup kit and a single ankle sock?
Imprisonment (possibly to include caning) for seatback invasion. While pushing your seat back isn’t necessarily an invasive act, doing so when you know the person behind you was just delivered a steaming cup of coffee may qualify under international law. Under this rule, the passenger will be permitted (nay, encouraged) to empty the remaining contents of the coffee cup onto the seatback invader’s head. Extra points if the invader is wearing a toupee and the cascading java displaces it.

Enforce a complete ban on airplane-accident discussions among loud passengers.
Enforce a complete ban on loud passengers in general. This doesn’t include screaming babies or whimpering service dogs, who are God’s perfect creations and can easily be calmed with low-cost pharmaceuticals.

Added legroom (an actual consideration by the no-frills airlines, but for an added fee).If you’ve flown recently (or ever), you already know that the airlines think coach passengers are an average 4’9″ tall. A simple reconfiguration of the aisles—like lining up the seats on each wall of the plane and having passengers face each other—will provide both ample legroom as well as a venue for impromptu discussions about feelings or an invigorating round of in-flight dodgeball.
Add NIMMS (“not in my middle seat”) to the amenities. Most of us are familiar with the acronym NIMBY, meaning “not in my backyard.” It’s intended to discourage, either emotionally or litigiously, developers from building what a neighborhood may consider value- and safety-reducing structures next to their homes, such as a 24-hour prostitution, cockfighting and discount heroin venue. The smaller airlines are now said to be experimenting with leaving open the middle seat in a three-seat aisle. This will provide serious comfort to those of us who still have functioning elbows and whose waists are larger than 16 inches in circumference. Those with waists that small might want to petition the airlines to allow them to obtain, at a discount, seating in overhead bins.

Ed Goldman's column appears almost every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A former daily columnist for the Sacramento Business Journal, as well as monthly columnist for Sacramento Magazine and Comstock’s Business Magazine, he’s the author of five books, two plays and one musical (so far).