Is That A Corpse In Your Carry-On?
That's a question I sometimes ask myself when I see these people toting these huge carry-ons on the plane. Naturally, they expect me to remove my small computer backpack from the overhead and jam it under my seat so they can have all the overhead space. Wrong! Well, Salon's Ask The Pilot, Patrick Smith, has an interesting suggestion:
Assigned overhead bins. As it stands, carry-on etiquette, aided and abetted by a total lack of enforcement from the airlines, is a lost cause. Evenly dividing the available real estate would keep people from stealing more than their share and make it harder to sneak aboard with blatantly oversize bags. And assigned bins would be at or very near your assigned seat. Part of the reason it often takes 20 minutes to get on or off a plane is because, during the boarding process, passengers stuff their belongings into the first empty bin they come to. The forward bins then quickly fill, forcing people to store their luggage down the aisle and then backtrack against the flow of traffic, which they'll have to do again when they retrieve their things.
Carrion in your carry-on?
eric at April 15, 2006 8:20 AM
Nice idea, but impractical. There's no way you can make personal overhead bins that account for the varying dimensions of things people bring with them. And unused or little-used personal bins would be wasted space, exacerbating the problem.
A better idea would be to charge passengers for bringing on anything that doesn't fit under a seat. The charges would increase exponentially for items that are larger and/or more stupid. One small suitcase might be $5; golf clubs start at $200.
Gary at April 15, 2006 12:48 PM
1OK, Gary, how about this: Beating vouchers. When someone with unruly children or unwieldly items interferes with your reasonable comfort, you can use a voucher to have the surliest available baggage handler take them to that space underneath the terminal and whip the tar out of 'em.
As a concession to decency, the following will apply: 1) A limited number of vouchers will be issued with each ticket. 2) You will not be permitted to specify the gender, weight, or race of the handler; The voucher-holder must select the "beater" based solely on apparent demeanor of the available handlers in the surrounding concourse. 3) Beatings must be delivered in a timely fashion such that takeoffs and landings are not delayed; voucher-holder may not complain that the beating was too brief. 4) If the handler chooses to stick that proud orange flashlight up the ass of the beating recipient and hit the switch, it's his own business. 5) ALL passengers must chip into a fund to pay for drinks for the beating recipient after take-off, so that he doesn't weep all the way to the destination and ruin the movie for everyone.
Just thinkin' out loud here. Happy Easter, everyone!
Crid at April 15, 2006 6:56 PM
Beating vouchers.
Be still my heart.
Crid, it's the 21st century Modest Proposal.
Thank you...I needed that.
(Hmm...any chance it might come to fruition?)
Amy Alkon at April 15, 2006 7:36 PM
My newest peeve is people with nasty carry-on food.I have been flying between SF and Fl to see my honey and last flight there was this guy with the burrito from friggin hell next to me.I swear the smell stayed on my clothes for hours,sort of like the Seinfeld "BO in the car" episode.Unfortunatley attempting to regulate civility at this point is a lost cause I fear.
I do await the button on Expedia for extra beating vouchers.
mbruce at April 16, 2006 12:21 AM
The whole deal comes down to people considering others. We were in a restaurant we really like the other night -- a place we go often. We know the maitre d' a little bit because of that. Well, we had an 8:15 reservation and we didn't get seated until 9:15 -- not because he wasn't desperate to seat us. He gave us a $100 gift certificate for next time to apologize. But, it's a relatively small place, and there were people there who just wouldn't get up from their tables. Now, nobody expects anybody to rush through dinner. But, for example, there were two guys who'd long since finished their meal at 8:15 when we got there...and stayed talking at their table the whole time we were standing there...and then for about another hour while we were eating! Again, nobody expects anybody to eat like it's a fire drill in a nice restaurant, but these guys saw us waiting for a table for an hour -- along with a lot of other people -- and they just didn't care. My sister did give them the evil eye at about 9:10pm, which I found very amusing.
Amy Alkon at April 16, 2006 7:48 AM
Re Crid's proposal, another blog item said it best: "Mockery is an important social tool for squelching stupidity." And if that's true, just imagine how effective violence would be against rudeness!
Can't regulate civility? I disagree. Pass the tire-iron.
Gary at April 18, 2006 7:13 PM
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