Infocult: Information, Culture, Policy, Education

US domestic air travel increasingly late: study surprises nobody

More US domestic air flights are late than ever before.  It's the second-worst or worst ever, depending on how you track it:

More than 26 percent of commercial flights in the U.S. arrived late or were canceled last year as rising passenger demand and an industry preference for smaller planes intensified congestion in the skies and on runways.
Excluding cancellations, however, 2007 was the worst on record for flight delays, with 24.2 percent arriving late, compared with 23.9 percent in 2000...

Worse yet, it's not going to get better.  For one,

The air-travel logjam, reported Tuesday by the Department of Transportation, comes as a growing number of air traffic controllers near retirement age -- a trend the controllers' union says will magnify the problem.

And for another thing,

There is no sign of improvement on the horizon, analysts said, because airlines continue to replace larger aircraft with smaller ones. The practice is intended to maximize profit margins by flying with fewer empty seats, but it also means more flights and more congestion and delays.

Strange things on the road

Two odd things during last week's trip:

1. An airport's rolling walkway suddenly stopped, as I was striding along it.  A very disturbing, silent event.
2. I spent time in each of the continental USA's four time zones: eastern, central, Mountain, and Pacific.

Watch your face in US airports

American TSA staff will soon be watching travelers' faces for telltale signs.  According to the Seattle PI some airport workers are scrutinizing our mugs to see if we betray hidden levels of fear or nervousness.  Now, for most of us there's nothing hidden about our feelings!  Experienced travelers spend a great deal of time in existential dread as we shamble from "lounge" seat to cramped airplane perch. 

But I've experienced something like this already.  Last year, in Philadelphia, I noticed a TSA group in front of my departure gate.  Which was unusual.  My first (and correct) response was, sadly, to look away, not make eye contact.  After a few minutes of that I became embarrassed at my own cowardice, and looked up at the staffers, and briefly made eye contact.  I was shortly thereafter searched.  Well, Philly is one of the worst US airports...

Nice American air travel mashup

This American domestic air travel map is a nice mashup with Google Maps:

Delayed by air across the US

Both of my domestic air flights were delayed today, and isn't it interesting how we expect such things?

The first flight orbited over Newark for an extra hour, because of unexplained delays on the ground.  Weather was fine, no holidays or other crises loomed, and air traffic was not cited.  I read, remembering my recent plan to bring long, long books when I fly in the US.

Now my Newark->Burlington flight is at least one hour late, because the plane we need to use took a long time to leave its previous site.  We, a bunch of passengers, had to prod the gate agent several times to get a reason: that other airport was crowded.  Again, the weather is fine, no holidays are screwing up schedules, etc.  It's simply an ordinary day.

It's just the way air travel works.  Like Amtrak, we now expect domestic flights to be late, and receive a small buzz of unexpected pleasure when they're on time.

As a practical matter, I'm expanding the size of layovers for trips.  And expanding the interval between landing somewhere and being expected to do something near there.  And increasing the amount of reading material.

But I can't stand how much this weighs on my wife and children, who simply cannot know when I'll return home, until I've actually landed in Vermont.  They can't plan anything around me, not meals, not picking me up, not their own appointments.

And as awful as this is, are we seeing signs of improvement in US airlines?

A prophet is without wifi in his own land

Once again, my terrible law of hotels and internet connectivity is confirmed.  Alan Levine is the hapless empiricist. 
For those new to Alexander's Iron Law, it's tragically simple: the more expensive the hotel, the more expensive and/or lower quality the internet connectivity.

Class vectors for disease vectors

After noting the Speaker traveling uber-TB story, my wife pointed out a related, yet very different case.  Another man was diagnosed with drug-resistant TB.  But instead of being gently informed of it, then allowed to travel with it across multiple national borders, this fellow was monitored closely, then incarcerated. 

The differences?  Among other things, Andrew Speaker, Typhoid Ambulance-Chaser, is wealthy, white, good-looking, and professional.  Robert Daniels, in contrast, is a Russian immigrant, and has been homeless for years.  How many media accounts, how many policy debates are considering class, nationality, and "lookism" in their discussions of epidemic treatment?  Just how much of the living room does this vast elephant occupy?

The NPR story raises a host of questions.  For instance, the two men offered strikingly similar disease vectors.  Yet consider the homeless man's treatment:

Daniels hasn't been charged with a crime. He's there because he's been judged a menace to public health.

Speaker is exactly this.  Their gender is the same, both traveled, and their ages are comparable.  Yet the ambulance chaser is now in a private facility, after being granted national media attention.  No media account mentions his being imprisoned or otherwise incarcerated.  Consider the conditions Speaker is enduring now, and compare with Daniels':

"He's not seen the horizon, seen a tree, from his locked room for 10 months," says Don Pachoda, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union. "He has a light on…two lights, two bulbs…24 hours a day. There's a video camera in the corner of the room that takes pictures of his every activity in that room 24/7. His mail is opened routinely. And he has absolutely no activities during the day. ...

Daniels' jailer is Joe Arpaio, who calls himself "the toughest sheriff in America." He points out that Daniels already receives special treatment: He eats hospital food, not the 15-cent meals of outdated green bologna that ordinary inmates get in Maricopa County.

After reporters began writing about the harsh conditions of Daniels' confinement, Sheriff Arpaio allowed him a cell phone and TV.

Imagine the next disease carrier, infected with, say, Ebola, or something less desire.  Do we imagine that a Mexican immigrant will receive the same treatment as a white plastic surgeon from Chicago?  Will we see similar discourse of personal responsibility and (my favorite) the possibility of forgiveness?

There's a lot more here, especially in terms of gendering and medical civil liberties, but this class angle is a key point on its own terms.

US airlines' suckage: a report from mid-2007

This article on how badly American air travel stinks is well worth the read.  It dwells on the numerous key factors which worsen an already vile airline situation, including staffing and salary cuts, reduced maintenance support, information sharing and communication problems, and outsourcing to local firms.  Some details are touched on lightly, but should resonate with road warriors: poor phone service, the awkwardness of passengers finding themselves in competition with each other for scant staff attention.

In the darkness, a melee ensued as people lunged for bags dumped on a sidewalk at the airport's entrance...

The article focuses on one especially bad United flight, which resonated with me after my awful United experience last week*.  The passenger self-organizing stories are rare spots of cheerfulness.  Other road warriors will certainly recognize aspects of the story.

"There was a giddiness and a sense of awe that we'd made it..."

*Despite calling and sending reports by their website, I have heard nothing back from United.  I don't really expect to.

(thanks, Jim Lai)

The Speaker plague

As I get ready to fly today, I'm wondering when we'll see the first case of airplane passengers confronting a sick traveler.  I'm thinking, of course, of this bizarre story about a tuberculosis-infected man carrying his sorry self across multiple nations and borders.

To recap: Speaker has extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, XDR-TB.  He was originally diagnosed with multidrug-resistant TB.  His doctor recommended that he not travel.  In response, the personal injury lawyer (ambulance chaser? savor the irony!) flew to Europe for a honeymoon.  Disdaining Italian medical care (why?), he then flew to Canada.  Next he drove across the apparently-porous US border.

One detail fascinates me, the extent to which this story is driven by privilege.  Speaker is white, male, attractive, a member of a profession associated with power, and apparently wealthy. His father works for the CDC on... TB. Speaker was able to win national media attention, including conversations with leading tv interviewers; how likely would this have been if he weren't white and/or well-connected and/or telegenic?  Consider: would an uninsured or underinsured person sneer at Italian health care?  Did his doctor fail to order him to stay home because of Speaker's social status?

Another aspect is just how lame American epidemic response appears in light of this.  WHO rightly mocks the US for letting this disease vector aim himself at the rest of the world.  A border guard was alerted to Speaker (yes! the system worked!)... only to decide to let the fellow go on anyway.  A fine terror tactic: get a splendid disease, then fly around the US, carefully hawking into receptacles.

I expect to hear more stories like this one, with a passenger subduing another.  Wait for the next person to be visibly ill for a while.

Back from North Africa

I just returned from the excellent AMICAL conference in Morocco.  This is a growing body of photographic evidence at my Flickr site, arranged into sets for the conference and associated events, along with one for my side trip to the Roman ruins of Volubilis.  More are coming.

Ironically, I spent nearly two days at the JFK airport in New York City, exactly when the FBI was arresting four people for planning to blow it up. 

Infocult will now resume normal blogospheric operations.