These Abuses That Penalise Air Transport

All air transport customers are well aware that certain practices seem curious, even useless.
Interactions between the actors are parsimonious, to say the least, each of them wanting to preserve some small advantages over others and legislators sometimes meddle in what does not concern them. All these little abuses make air travel strewn with small irritations that we could do without. Each component of air transport suffers the inconveniences caused by the other players and the same ones are a source of difficulties towards their respective environments.

Airports
Crossing a major airport is perhaps the most difficult moment for a passenger. Access is often complicated, signage is sometimes incomprehensible or even completely absent and the spaces seem to be more dedicated to shops, which are largely drained by the airports, than to facilities reserved for passengers. Let’s add to this the famous PIFs (Screening Inspection Posts) set in an incomprehensible way, and often different from one terminal to another in the same airport. Should you keep your seatbelt, put down your watch, open your toiletry bag, take off your shoes? In short, all these small frustrations are a source of stress that passengers would gladly do without.

Airlines
Nor are they free from abuse. Take pricing for example. Who can explain the basis on which fares are multiplied, up to more than 100 for a long-haul flight in the same class of service on the same day? This is a first source of frustration felt as an injustice when a customer realizes that his seatmate has been more favored than him. And that’s not all, the boarding procedures are sometimes similar to the gathering of sheep before they are sheared. Customers are made to wait in the bridges, sometimes for nearly half an hour while waiting for the aircraft to be ready. Why this procedure when passengers could just as well have waited in the airport. Moreover, without knowing if the difficulty comes from the airlines or the airports, there are few terminals where the boarding queues are clearly delimited and where passengers do not mix.

Governments
Curiously, the administrative authorities have a great tendency to interfere in the functioning of air transport. Flight delays are punished outright and strongly and companies sometimes have to pay compensation much higher than the fares paid by customers. In fact, some of them can make a profit by not only traveling for free, but by making money. The practice of “overbooking” is punished as a deterrent. We even see the European administration taking a close interest in the way luggage is handled. It must be said, however, that many rules had to be enacted because the companies had not agreed to solve the well-known problems between them. IATA should have played the role of referee, which it has never done, except in terms of safety with the IOSA (IATA Operational and Safety Audit) program. And let’s not forget the repeated taxes that each state sees fit to impose on air transport because, after all, customers can afford to use this type of travel and can therefore pay well without revolting.

Customers
Let us not forget them. They are also a source of multiple abuses. The behavior of some of them can make the trip unpleasant for others. Of course, these erratic behaviours can sometimes be explained by the stress to which passengers are subjected, particularly those who are less familiar with air travel. But finally, how can we explain certain jostling during check-in or boarding, how can we justify that some customers systematically put their cabin luggage in the first racks of the plane when they have decided to pay only for seats at the back of the cabin, how can we accept that some, in order not to pay for excess baggage, arrive on the plane with multiple packages and occupy a space much greater than what is allocated to them? And then there are those who claim undue compensation for a yes or no, because you never know…

It can never be said enough, air transport is a complex activity. It puts into operation a multitude of players and each of them can seize the machine. So it would be wise for each player to look for ways to simplify and streamline a mode of transport that is still magical.