The high cost of cheap flights

Flying is harsh — it’s like a dose of naloxone without the initial high — but at least it’s cheap. It would cost me $1,256 to fly return to London next week on Air Canada, or $969 in September after vacation season ends.

In exchange, I would get to London in under seven hours, which I regard as a triumph of technology, a wondrous wrinkle in time. Imagine taking the train.

A return subway ride in Toronto costs $6.50, which means that for the same price as a September flight, I could travel to and from the North York Ikea 149 times. Even better, my stop would be Bessarion, the TTC station that time forgot.

Flying to London is a bargain but a debased one.

On airlines now, the seats are tiny and hard, the food awful, passengers fight each other over armrests and Seat Defenders, they attack flight attendants and have to be smashed over the head with wine bottles and subdued with zip ties while being sat on, airport police seize passengers and drag them out broken, bloody and screaming, the toilets are horrific (and so few of them), and there aren’t enough flight attendants since the staff-to-passenger ratio was raised from 1:40 to 1:50 in 2015.

That ratio saves airlines money though. (Never say “Transport Minister Lisa Raitt” to a flight attendant.)

The latest story is Air Transat keeping two Montreal-bound planes diverted to Ottawa on the tarmac for up to six hot hours after an eighthour flight from Brussels. Without air conditioning, the passengers finally called 911, and the Canadian Transportation Agency is investigating.

And then there’s the near-miss at San Francisco International Airport last month. The CBC reports that the tape of the pilots’ conversation has vanished, recorded over when the plane flew out the next morning. We may never know what happened.

The Canadian government is planning a passenger bill of rights for 2018, but the problem is bigger than that.

The British comedian Eddie Izzard, explaining why he takes a tour bus rather than fly, says there are five stress points: taxi to the airport; checking in; security; getting on the plane; getting to hotel from airport. A bus offers two, getting on and off.

That’s just Izzard on the bus. The Greyhound and the flight experience are gradually converging. I don’t fear for my fellow passengers, I simply fear them.

While understanding the tactics of the modern traveller, which are the same as those of demonstrators arrested by police — just go limp — I don’t see why flyers should need a strategy in order to sit for seven hours.

Still I go passive. There sits the economy passenger, as Alexander Pope put it, “fix’d like a plant on his peculiar spot, to draw nutrition, propagate, and rot.”

So my plan is to do that but next time in Air Canada’s premium economy. In August, it will cost $2,731, in September $2,204. This means I can’t afford to go on vacation until next spring, but on the bright side, I’ll have more time to look forward to it, more weeks to salt away dimes.

Even this skates around a core problem. Flying is not a right, like health care. It’s a purchase. And for some reason, customers think airfares should be cheap. I do go on about how Canadians followed the Americans in worshipping the god of cheap, but this is an extreme case.

Even reading airfares online apparently makes people burst into tears. So Air Canada can’t raise prices. It prefers to charge for services that used to be free, which maddens unreasonable people, just as digital subscriptions madden readers grown accustomed to free journalism.

Capitalism demands profit. You’re stuck on the tarmac because it costs Air Transat money to let you off and come back. The Air Canada flight recorder was erased because they likely had to get that plane back in the air and earning its keep. Should there have been a catastrophe in San Francisco, a few more flight attendants might have been able to hustle you off the plane in time, and not on fire either.

I don’t think flying across the Atlantic should be cheap. Yes, it’s worthwhile flying business class while on business because you can’t negotiate while jet-lagged. You’ll sound like Donald Trump talking to the Australian prime minister.

But business class is $7,200. My mental stamina is not worth that, even to me. So I’ll fly in the spring and take premium economy. Why don’t more people do that, fly less often but better? If Air Canada evened out their pricing and built those seats, people would come.

Flying accounts for 4 to 9 per cent of the climate change impact of human activity, says the David Suzuki Foundation. Think of the good you’d do if you took one less flight but found it twice as pleasant.

Air Canada makes premium economy sound bucolic. More room to sit, lean back and stretch out, priority boarding so people don’t get all snitty, an “amenity kit,” adjustable headrest, ambient mood lighting, a single-pin audio jack (Is that good? It sounds good) and a “next generation entertainment system,” which may very well involve latex gloves and virtual reality, though that doesn’t sound very Air Canada.

Still not enough? You’ll get hot towels. Mmm baby. I’ve actually considered doing this at home, shoving some wet face cloths in a microwave and serving them on a little tray to my millennials before they dine.

“Tonight your meal will be chicken or chicken,” I say. “Would you care for a beverage with that? It’s complimentary.” At home or away, it’s premium economy from now on. hmallick@thestar.ca