Umberto Eco was a semiologist, novelist and… a great traveler. He flew countless times. And he already described the absurdity of his aerial experience thirty years ago in a satirical column entitled How to travel with a salmon. A state of the situation which has not improved much since…
Eco noted in 1992, using simple examples, certain absurdities in commercial aviation. For example: why are we serving wine or coffee in an inverted conical cup which predisposes it to spilling at the slightest turbulence?
This was obviously only the tip of the Airbus… and if Umberto Eco were still with us to do the exercise again, he would perhaps write this.
The airport
It begins with a timeless visit. Literally. Because only at the Trudeau airport parking lot do four days last only 48 hours and 1 minute. Take the test: park in Dorval-Trudeau at one to midnight and discover how a rate of $30 per day can result in a bill of $120 two days and one minute later.
However, mastery of math does not appear to be the strong point of an airport where the shuttle is incapable of visiting the eleven parking lots in the right order. P7-P8-P9 parking lots? No, the order is P8-P9-P7, with P6 optional (this is faster than the P5-P6 circuit, even out of order).
Speaking of buses, the appeal of going to Trudeau by car is the lack of any other direct mode of transportation. The 747 bus route from Berri Station is often packed before you even visit the city center hotels. Tourists who have change in their pockets have no idea that they must first purchase an OPUS card at the counter of a nearby metro station… and it is not the driver who will help them out. He can not.
Leaving the airport after returning from a cross-border flight is no better. Unless I’m mistaken, no other international airport needs a mobile application, a computer terminal, a customs agent, then a second customs agent to check the other’s work, to let the people return to the country.
In winter, the frosty windows of buses and shuttles make it impossible to simply find your car or hotel at a glance. Welcome to Montreal.
The plane
The president of United Airlines refuses to travel economy class. Its reason: the seats are too narrow and the legroom too small. This cuts off blood circulation to the lower limbs. Speaking to what he considers perhaps a different kind of lower limb, he recommends that people in economy class get permission from the person behind them before lowering their backs.
It’s more polite.
Meanwhile, North American airlines have cut 10 centimeters of space between each row of seats in 20 years. The elbow rests are also narrower. The result: more people are crammed into the back.
In addition, we are not required to feed them for free on domestic flights. Note that a Toronto-Hawaii flight, which lasts 14 hours, is domestic. For Air Canada, Hawaii is located in North America.
There are of course the seats reserved for business travelers, a sort of purgatory between economy class and first class. These are located near the emergency exits.
It is often agencies that buy the tickets for these travelers. The cunning airlines have therefore created more affordable ticket categories since the end of the pandemic to satisfy these agencies. The travellers ? They are less satisfied: they are deprived of the option to select their seat, or to change flights altogether, even if this frees up space on a packed plane for the benefit of another flight where there are several empty seats.
Baggage
During the 2000s, a comparative study demonstrated that boarding by zones was the quickest way to load an aircraft. Each zone is made up of seats distributed throughout the plane. North American airlines have therefore adopted boarding by zones… proceeding from the front to the rear of the aircraft.
The last ones on board are therefore seated at the very back. Once on board, they understand that there is no longer room for their bags in the overhead bins, since their dimensions have also been reduced in more modern planes. They must return to the front to transfer their baggage to the hold. It costs money. That takes time.
So far this year, 22% of commercial flights in North America have experienced delays. A proportion which was 17% in 2018. The reason given: pre-takeoff is longer.
We wonder why.
Internet
On the plane, travelers can at least console themselves by connecting to the wifi network to work remotely. Internet is becoming common on board commercial flights. Except when the plane is a Boeing 737 Max 8, for a reason that still escapes us (Boeing described it during its inauguration as the most high-tech plane ever manufactured).
Internet at 30,000 feet is nice, but pretty hit or miss. The connection often fails to the point of being unusable. The solution ? Request a refund from technical support.
How do I contact tech support, you ask? But, via the Internet, of course! Just connect: there is wifi on board.
And, apparently, lots of fish.