AIR TRAVEL
Aviation is the youngest mode of travel, but already built some strong traditions. For example: check-in. In the early days of air travel, the travellers came to the airport , but the chance that they fly on time was very limited: weather and frequent last-moment malfunctions caused regular delays. So, the passengers came , checked-in, received board cards and waited, sometimes for days.
Today , flying is largely independent of weather, and malfunctions are rare ; small delays are caused mostly by congestion. But this double-step boarding remained, mainly as a tradition.
Similiarly , at the end of every flight, passengers , all at once, stand up and nervously gather at the front, single -door exit. Why , if the aerobridges ( once called jetways) are mobile , and could be easily provided three or four of them , to multiple doors ? Tradition...
Or, I'm sure many of you were annoyed by fellow-travellers , who immediately after the take off, start to build a queue to the small, cramped toilets , as if there were not sufficient toilets at both airports ; that of departure , and that of arrival , usually one-hour away? It seems, the only way to solve this problem is to forcibly lead the boarding route through the toilet pathway. Again, tradition....
Or - the luggage... Airports boast of length (hundreds km) and speed (similiar) of their luggage conveyors. Passengers react by increasing their hand-carry items. Aircraft builders react by increasing the overhead luggage holds. Why the hell all this ? Why can't a passenger simply scan&dump all his luggage at his gate , straight into aircraft cargo-hold and pick it up after landing directly at landing gate? Some transit Pax would be burdened , but certainly released by the certainty that their luggage flies on the same plane.Tradition...
Also, as many of you , I often considered rationality of thorough personal scanning , in search of explosives, hand grenades , etc. After taking off jacket, shoes, watch, belt, wallet, keys, one sometimes looks through the window and sees hundreds of people and vehicles on the apron, airside: technicians, cargo, catering, fuel, firefighters, security, employees , subcontractors ; all these people can easily smuggle not a single hand-grenade as we, poor passengers, but a ton of dynamite, everyday,... Until , on one nice day , patiently standing queue to scanner behind disciplined japanese group of tourists , I watched how security guys ordered a certain young and pretty girl to take off fashionable , long , thigh-high leather shoes. The poor girl had nowhere to sit ( it was Heathrow, not third world, but the japanese group of B747 crowded all) , so she sat on the dirty floor and obediently started to undress. She was in mini-skirt, so a group of security guys , and the whole japanese set had a lot of fun indeed... Then, in a flash of enlightment, i understood the rationale of personal scanning: they just make fun of us... The security guys, with their jobs , their importance , their raison-de-etre... Of course, there already exist tools which make the undressing of passengers superfluous. Some of them are even non-classified , like low-energy whole-body scanners , which show you naked on the screen, for computer detection. But, where would then security jobs land ? Tradition...
Internet will move jobs to homes for many of us. But I'm rather convinced , air travel will survive and prosper. Perhaps, we could make it more reasonable ?
