There’s a bigger picture, Hill folks

Few dispute that the infamous incident of a passenger being dragged down the aisle of an overbooked United airliner was atrocious, and in many ways emblematic.

That incident, and the justified public outrage it provoked, clearly created the flashpoint that prompted Tuesday’s Capitol Hill hearing on the abysmal state of commercial airline service.

Such attention is almost certainly overdue, although government action (or the threat thereof) is not the first remedy most of us would choose.

But like an airliner aisle — where one person can barely get past another, and nobody can get anywhere (including the toilet) until the refreshments cart has competed its route — the focus here might be way too narrow.

In a 4 ½-hour hearing before the House Transportation Committee, United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz was roundly ripped about, and showed appropriate contrition for, the Chicago incident, calling it “a mistake of epic proportions.”

Why do so many epic “duh” moments occur only in hindsight? Did nobody there at the time — other than the passengers — think manhandling a customer, especially in an age of instant video, might be a really, really bad idea? Still, of the miseries, insults and indignities of commercial air travel to which millions of Americans are compelled to subject themselves every day, getting dragged in the aisle isn’t on most complaint lists.

This might be, as committee chair Bill Shuster, R-Pa., called it, an occasion for airlines to “seize the opportunity” to clean up their act. But it’s the all-too-common problems of air travel, not the headline moments, that really need addressing. (A classic example mentioned in these pages not long ago: the replacement of cushioned seats in some Atlanta airport waiting areas with hard plastic ones. The rationalization from those responsible was doublespeak at its laughable and infuriating worst.)

There’s the routine overbooking of flights, a commonplace practice that means a “reservation” is really nothing of the kind. You might be reminded of the “Seinfeld” episode involving the rental car company that had taken Jerry’s reservation, but hadn’t held the reservation. It was funny on TV. Getting bumped off a flight you’ve already paid for isn’t.

There are long, slow lines made longer and slower by understaffing. There are interminable, claustrophobic ground delays in hot, cramped planes. And while it’s too much to hope that airlines might sacrifice a few fractions of a percentage point in profits to rip out just a couple of rows of seats and give customers in the cattlecar section some leg and breathing room, the seating conditions to which coach customers are subjected are execrable, and inexcusable.

“It is my mission,” Munoz told the House committee, “to ensure we make the changes needed to provide our customers with the highest level of service and the deepest sense of respect.”

That’s a worthy mission for the whole industry. Living up to it will take a lot more than policies not to bloody up passengers on overbooked flights.

This story was originally published May 3, 2017 at 5:40 PM with the headline "There’s a bigger picture, Hill folks."