They're trying to cram ever-more skinny seats into ever smaller spaces, with a population fed on high fructose corn syrup...64% of the population overweight, and of those 54% obese. On top of that, you have the hellacious lines of searches, shoe stripping, jacket stripping, pre-boarding harassment. You are nickled-and-dimed for every single peanut you get on board the plane, and charged for every bag you take with you....unless you put it in the overhead bin or under the seat....so it now takes a good 45 minutes to get everyone off the plane because of all the on-board luggage.

The airline industry jumped the shark a long time ago, and it's just put off a lot of travelers. Our population is growing like a ball player on steroids....millions of new people in the world every day, but they're canceling flights. There is a serious problem when that is happening. They raise the air fares and lower the salaries that are supposed to purchase the tickets.

The whole country is so fucked up!!

If you control for inflation, airline tickets are cheaper than they ever have been. This is due to increased efficiency of planes and the system in which they operate, which includes cramming ever-more skinny seats into ever smaller spaces.

People go on about cramped seating, but continue to demonstrate they will buy the cheapest ticket they can find. You see plenty of United flights take off with full coach and unfilled economy plus seats which are just a few bucks more for another 3" of legroom.

That on top of the "cut cut cut" mentality where it comes to employee staffing and pay ( other than upper management of course! ) and you end up with a system that just barely gets by when everything is OK and utterly nosedives when things out of their control run afoul.

LOL..."demanding ever cheaper flights"

Nor does it explain why the passenger count has grown almost every single year since the Wright brother's flight.

Where the hell have YOU been?

Michigan must be "unreal"!

Ergo in order to be competitive, airlines must increase efficiency in every way possible. This dynamic exists regardless of what the middle class is experiencing.

Like they used to

so that part isn't working out too well for some, is it?

and after two hours they're supposed to offer food and beverages. The fines run around $27,500 per passenger.

The pilot can keep you waiting longer if s/he feels there is a safety issue regarding a return to the terminal (though there apparently there are some rules around what constitutes a safety issue but I couldn't find a specific list).

The rules do not apply to international flights.

It means that instead of imprisoning passengers, the airlines have to deal with them more fairly. If you know at 1PM, for example, that your noon flight isn't going to go, then you can look for other ways to get to your destination. The airlines wanted to lock passengers up so they would not have any options. That cut down on the number of credits the airlines had to issue to other airlines to carry their passengers.

There used to be an incentive against that when airlines were forced to pay for overnight lodging and meals if they couldn't provide on-time service. But the airlines stopped doing that 20 years ago. They just don't give a shit. They will cancel the last flight of the day and leave you standing in an empty terminal with no accommodations at all and no airline personnel to assist. This has happened to me several times. I drive any time that is even remotely feasible.

These new regs don't solve all the problems, but it does prevent the airlines from "running out the clock" in many cases.

Indy to Las Vegas via Chicago O'Hare. My schedule was very tight. I had to speak at a convention at 2PM the following day, but I couldn't get out of Indy until after 3:30PM. The flight that worked was a connection that was to depart Chicago around 10 PM as I recall. They jacked around for 90 minutes. I can't remember if they claimed it was an equipment problem or crew availability. By the time they let us off the plane, it was almost midnight and there was nothing else heading west. Moreover, this was American, and ORD is one of American's big hubs, yet not a single American employee could be found other than a couple of baggage guys that couldn't do anything. No help rebooking. No accommodations. Nothing. They just dumped us on the curb.

I had an office near the airport, so I went there and was able to book a 6AM flight that got me to the show in time, and then I slept on the floor for 4 hours before crawling back to the airport.

Our air travel system is really horrible. Fortunately I am able to avoid using their services most months nowadays.

flight never left but was never cancelled, leaving passengers stranded overnight in a sort of terrible limbo. The airline refused to provide a hotel room and most passengers spent the night on the floor of the terminal. The flight finally left at 10 AM the next day. By then we had rebooked on a flight that was supposed to leave at 9, but that one was delayed 3 hours. During that entire period we were repeatedly lied to, jerked around, and generally treated like shit. Just a brutal, mind and body numbing experience.

thats really bad to be stuck like that.