As soon as I got back on an airplane all the calm serenity of the wilderness, I just experienced, vanishes. The peace of nature is gone and I am once again faced with humans at their worst, the flying public.

Air travel was approaching the breaking point ten years ago but the magnitude of 9/11 put everyone on their best behavior, for awhile.

But now we have had a decade of the TSA's bullying incompetence, and airport harassment which has not lead to anyone feeling safer. Add to this anxiety the nickel and dime, "stuff them in as tight as you can" airline industry policy and we have finally reached critical mass.

Harvard did a study with rats. They crowded them in tight spaces for hours without food, changed their air pressure and irritated them with electric shocks. In this continued environment the rats turned on each other killing and cannibalizing those around them.

We air travelers are placed in the identical situation as those experimental rats each time we board an airplane.

Ordinary people who might not raise their voice at any other time become rude, belligerent idiots when subjected to the treatment of the airlines. Most every time I travel I see something that makes me want to "pull a Steven Slater". Only I would pop the escape shoot and throw a passenger out, ideally at 34,000 feet.

I don't want to predict doom and gloom here, but the next airline tragedy is not going to be brought on by terrorism, but a passenger going berzerk from being treated like cargo at 34,000 feet. It won't be so much an attack on America as a revolution against American corporate greed. I am shocked it hasn't happened yet.

A service industry can't do this to their customers and not expect repercussions. That is the problem, airlines have forgotten they are a service company, and now believe they are a freight company.

I'm not sure what the answer is but the airlines could start by treating is like clients instead of "seats".

As you were,

Jay

www.monkeyjoke.com