So WestJet is now going to charge $25 to lose, er, transport your bag to your destination.
If you’re surprised, welcome to modern travel, where the airline industry does everything it can to take the miracle out of flight.
You already have to pay for a blanket and a pillow, so the real surprise is that it took so long for the airline to charge for basic baggage.
It’s all part of the exercise in extreme endurance that flying economy has become. Unless you’re prepared to pay a premium, you end up in cattle class: Sandwiched in a tight row four across, and the object is to somehow survive by fighting off the other guy’s elbow or the oblivious recliner in the seat in front of you.
The seat recliner thing is perhaps the most humiliating and frustrating part of flying. Back at the dawn of discount fares, airlines began cutting back on leg room and stuffing more seats into the cabin.
Nevertheless, most of them still allow seats to recline, which is fine for the person doing the reclining, but the passenger being reclined upon ends up having less room than a roasting chicken in a factory farm.
Seat wars have become, according to CNN, No. 1 and No. 2 on the list of the Top 20 causes of air rage. No. 2: reclining the seat; No. 1: kicking the back of the reclined seat in a fit of fury. A poll in the London Daily Telegraph showed that 70 per cent of the 18,000 respondents were in favour of banning reclining seats.
Some frequent flyers have become so desperate, they’ve forked over $21.95 to purchase something called the Knee Defender, a pair of clips that attach to the chair-back table and block the seat in front of you from leaning into your face. Of course, they are illegal on most airlines, including WestJet and Air Canada.
The Knee Defender is also banned on United Airlines, but that didn’t prevent some guy from deploying his earlier this fall on a United flight from Newark to Denver. He got a glass of water thrown in his face for his trouble, and the plane had to make the dreaded “unscheduled landing.”
The inventor of the Knee Defender, a tall guy from Washington, says the publicity has turbocharged the sales of the device, but he still can’t afford to fly first-class.
Why do airlines continue to allow seats to recline when it’s so obviously the last straw for many fed-up flyers? Is it simply the sole remaining creature comfort that hasn’t been eliminated — but give them time — or is it something more diabolical? Because, the airlines are quick to point out, there is a solution — on the other side of the first- or business-class curtain:
l One-way Vancouver to Toronto, economy— $550;
l One-way Vancouver to Toronto, leg room — $1,736.
I suppose you could always try the Knee Defender.