A tale of two airlines

By Todd Stadler · Tuesday, January 2, 2007 3:22pm

Traveling during the holidays is always fun. As in "fun and annoying".

This is, of course, mostly the airlines' fault. It is they who have intentionally held back on building some sort of plushly outfitted supersonic plane. It is they that always seat too many grumpy babies near my row. And it was they who at one point suggested that a nice way to fly from Portland, Oregon to Dallas, Texas was via Toronto. Ontario.

Fig. A: Yes, I am conveniently ignoring things like map projections and great circles in calculating the numbers for this overly-produced graphic

Hmm. I was generally under the impression that trips from the Pacific Northwest to parts south and east generally needn't pass through Canada (okay, fine, excluding you, Point Roberts, Washington).

But then I also used to think that flying over twice the distance necessary was a bit ... um, unnecessary. (The suggested itinerary covered 3,290 miles for a journey that's 1,610 miles as the crow flies — the crow, you see, having wisely eschewed the hub-and-spoke system.)

The inefficiency of this route is further made clear when you realize that its two legs make an angle of 42°. I generally like my flight plans to involve obtuse angles. In fact, my new rule of thumb is that any flight plan with an angle less than right is wrong. Man, that's catchy.

But that's not the reason I sat down to write this rant. Julia and I ended up finding a more direct (though less cheap) flight from Portland to Dallas, and there was merriment and feasting and warm family moments.

No, with the new year comes a fresh, new topic to complain about: airplane food.

It used to be that airplane food was lousy. Now, on American Airlines, it's lousy and it costs $5. Or, at least, I assume it's lousy. Because I'm not paying $5 to find out if just maybe Jacques Pépin is hiding in that tiny galley serving up some tasty vittles.

I'm not sure I've even seen anybody pay for an American Airlines meal. Maybe they don't even have them on the plane anymore, but they like to see if anyone is dumb enough to try and order one. If anyone does, they make a note on his account and charge him 50% extra on all subsequent ticket purchases. Because hey, he'll pay.

I'd much rather take my $5 and spend it in the airport before I board. At least that way I could buy a small bag of pretzels ... or half a beer. Ha.

Okay, but I really don't get how airlines' trying to save money by charging me $5 for bad food is a good move. If they secretly increased all plane fares by $5, I wouldn't notice — in fact, I'm fairly certain they increased the fares this Christmas by well over ten times that amount.

But rubbing their cost-savings in my face while I'm a captive audience on their plane just seems like bad PR ("What's that, Seat 29D? Is that your stomach I hear growling at the sound of rustling cellophane, lovingly puffed up with warm, moist air, covering some kind of food? Well fork over the cash, bub!").

I mean, look — I'm blogging about it, aren't I? And don't they know the power of the blogosphere to punish blogged-about corporations? They saved $5 and now I'm even grumpier than I usually would be about their service. Better put that money towards your retirement, Mr. American Airlines, because this blog has you squarely in its sights! Yowza!

Ahem.

This miserliness was put in stark contrast on the second leg of our route home, which found us catching a Horizon Airlines flight from Seattle to Portland. (Okay, let's ignore the fact that this itinerary also violates my new-but-still-clever rule about flight plans and right angles — the flight is so short it hardly matters, with the flight attendants scrambling to finish drink service for forty people in the time after we reach cruising altitude but before we begin the descent.)

It was that (hurried) drink service that makes me think Horizon is such a great airline. Why? In addition to the usual sodas that American Airlines and their ilk serve for free (for now), Horizon serves complimentary wine or beer. And, being decent Pacific Northwest folk, they offer quality local microbrews, not, say, Heineken.

And it's not even like I had a whole bottle or a wide selection. Nope, the cart had only Widmer's Snowplow, poured out of large bottles into plastic airplane cups. It's not even my favorite beer.

And yet the mere mention by the flight attendant of complimentary beer and wine caused one passenger to applaud. And that's what I'm talking about. Horizon likely paid much less than $1 to serve me a cup of beer that makes me think they're just the greatest little airline, and American gets nothing but my sneer.

Penny-wise, pound-foolish, people.