Here’s a flight of fancy for solving airlines’ problems

In the wake of recent unpleasant incidents, airline executives no doubt are wringing their hands and asking themselves hard questions.

At this very moment, I can imagine them wringing their hands and asking themselves, “What can we do to ensure passengers will receive better treatment?” OK, all I actually can imagine them asking themselves is, “What can we do to guarantee we’ll make even more this year than the $35.6 billion we made last year?”

But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and go with the first handwringing scenario.

Most airline executives, I’m pretty sure, realize that cellphone videos showing passengers having their teeth knocked out or sobbing mothers being assaulted by flight attendants are not good for business. Snuffing that giant rabbit probably won’t help, either.

The obvious solution would be to ban cell phones on planes. Guns, knives, hand grenades — fine. But no cell phones. That idea has its drawbacks, though. I don’t care if your flight attendants all have black belts in karate; if they try taking a Samsung GalaxyS7 away from the average millennial they’re in line for a pretty good tussle.

So here’s my suggestion: make airline executives fly on their own airlines. Because the problem isn’t necessarily that airline executives don’t care about their passengers’ complaints. It may just be that they’ve never experienced them.

I don’t personally know any airline executives, but my guess is that they don’t often fly coach. Douglas Parker, the CEO of American Airlines received $12,301,976 in compensation, according to the latest published figures, and probably has his own jet. Delta CEO Edward Bastian ($9,046,574) most likely can afford to charter a plane. Even United CEO Oscar Munoz ($5,461,218) might have accumulated enough frequent flyer miles for business class.

But perhaps they’d get the idea if they had to fly the way you and I do, sort of like in that Undercover Boss program.

No fair having their secretaries book their flights, though. To make the experience as authentic as possible, they’d need to power up their laptops and try to find a flight from Atlanta to Chicago that doesn’t leave at 6 a.m. and include a two-hour layover in Baltimore. They’d have to book themselves in coach. Preferably in a middle seat, as close as possible to the nearest aromatic lavatory. I wouldn’t want their trip to be entirely unpleasant, though, so I’d definitely give them a bag of taste-free pretzels and the option of two inches more legroom in a “preferred” seat. For $17.95.

And I’d be sure a flight attendant made an announcement sometime during the flight to assure them how much the airline appreciated their business.