Hard landing
When you think about the prison-like atmosphere in which we're forced to travel — lacking the high-speed rail transforming the advanced nations of the world — and the five-mile-high coffins in which we're locked for a cramped, nasty trip, who can argue with the punishments already meted out and yet to come for two Northwest Airlines pilots? They flew 150 miles past Minneapolis while distracted by their laptop computers. On second and third glance, they represent much more than two jokers in the cockpit.
Am I the only one who thinks America is much like these pilots? Off-course, befuddled by the latest merger and its consequences, living in a world where your pay has been cut in half already, enchanted by technology and believing it can save you (those laptops — or the electric car), while the airship cruises along, on autopilot, past its destination. The difference is that America is not going to get a call from the flight attendant asking "what the hell is happening?" We're so adept at ignoring such questions even if they were to arise.
Delta and Northwest is a merger that never should have happened. It hasn't lessened the airlines' financial troubles — for no transportation system really "pays for itself" (so why the hell do we expect that from Amtrak?). It has taken away one more competitor, consolidated an industry even further — which means not only fewer choices and jobs, but fewer competitive ideas. Consider, for example that we are some 40 years into the era of widespread use of "jetways" to board aircraft — and yet there's still only one way on or off, adding much time to boarding. That's what happens with groupthink. These cartelized airlines send much of the maintenance work to Third World countries, where managers order the cheapest fixes to airplanes, whether they are safe or not. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been eliminated. All to appease the free-market gods. And the wayward pilots will be appropriately punished, banged down so hard they will have a hard time getting a minimum-wage job at the local Lowe's. And its two more jobs that Delta can check off its list, throwing the two into the worst labor market since the Great Depression. Christian America loves Old Testament retribution.
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