Against Flight Attendants

Everything about flying in America is unpleasant. Americans need to liberate themselves from the human resources regime.

Hell on wings. The entire process of flying in America today—from the humiliating TSA search procedures to the constant mechanical delays and nasty customer service—is designed to immiserate the passenger. None of this is an accident.

Air travel has been an exercise in ritual humiliation since the airlines capitulated to terrorists during the golden age of hijacking in the late 1960s. Conditions, however, became truly abominable in the wake of 9/11. Nineteen Muslim immigrant men between the ages of 18 and 35 decided to ram several aircraft into the nation’s commercial heart and the Pentagon, therefore the Transportation Safety Administration needs to pat down grandmothers and use surveillance tools to peer at the naked bodies of ordinary citizens. Of course.

COVID managed to ratchet up the nastiness to Stanford Prison experiment levels of wanton cruelty and callousness. A constant drone of public service announcements extol the correct way to wear your face muzzle. Flight delays, a product of absurd COVID isolation procedures and crew burnout, are the norm.

Everything about flying in America is unpleasant.

There is, however, a simple solution. It would bring customers substantial savings, reduce the tension of flying, and contribute to a more positive and welcoming atmosphere.

Fire the flight attendants. All of them.

America’s flight attendants are the single most useless part of the flying experience. Their work has nothing to do either with flying or maintaining the aircraft. Their only real job is to hand out snacks.