One of our favorite airline columnists over at MSNBC.com and from Elliott.org published an interesting article today on the separation between coach and first class called “Frequent Criers: Elite Fliers are Ruining Air Travel”. In it, he points to the increasingly childlike behavior among top tier passengers that has recently been giving first class passengers a bad name — and asks whether this is a function of the passengers themselves or the airlines catering to an unbalanced class of service.
As an elite member myself, I have thought about this topic several times and part of it is true — Elliott points out a variety of instances in which first class passengers have acted unruly and entitled. But I don’t think that it’s limited exclusively to first class passengers — in fact, there are idiots in all classes of service and modes of transportation.
It doesn’t take much effort to be an obnoxious jerk when you’re in cramped quarters and have been traveling all day. In the same way that the taxi cuts you off when you’re merging into traffic or the guy on the stairs walks down the left side instead of the right side, some people just don’t make common courtesy a high priority. Yeah, it sucks. But it’s okay. They’re in the minority that think differently, but we’ll get over it and we’ll continue to do the nice, right thing.
There are good frequent fliers out there. I’m sure Chris Elliott flies all over the world and like myself and many frequent travelers on Gadling is professional and courteous. Don’t lose faith, fellow passenger — first and coach passengers are all stuck in this aluminum tube together. We can’t let articles like this tear us apart.