The kind of stand I and many others I'm sure would like to take but I, like most people I imagine, fly to do important things in the limited time I have, for which air travel is one hell of a luxury that makes it possible at all. Family, friends, personally significant trips. I don't fly for business but I figure that's a very important reason for many.
They have most of us bent over a barrel. No free market to be seen here.
Unless you count fuckhead rent seekers like Clear exploiting that the line to queue for security is technically in the airport's purview. Clear and the airports that participate are offensive.
I think that no-fly lists are pure BS, but for the sake of argument, flying is not a right as long as it's provided by a private entity. When a private entity flies you from point A to point B they have the right to refuse service (see what happened to the anti-maskers that did not want to follow the airline guidelines)
Due to the changes in recent decades, including the security, no leg room, horrible treatment and customer service, I loathe air travel now and avoid it at all costs. I wonder how many are in the same boat. Sadly I’m guessing the industry doesn’t care since their primary revenue is from captive business travelers.
Personally, I don't fly if I don't have to. The cost of flights has nothing to do with it.
The way things are now, I feel threatened in an airport. Especially a US airport, though Canadian ones aren't much better. I feel a heightened possibility that my valuables be stolen from me. That it's done under the color of law makes it even worse than being in a rough neighborhood.
Some may say this is unreasonable, but I know two people who've been stolen from by TSA.
I'd rather drive 8 hours than be subjected to a warrantless search.
The problem, as I see it, is that flying has become an utter evil to be avoided at all costs unless absolutely necessary. It used to be that flying somewhere was a trip in and of itself. Now it is a nightmare. Now, everything from pre-boarding security (which is an absolute joke) to in flight (non)service to hoping that your luggage makes it to your destination at the same time you do to being cavity searched by customs upon arrival is and everything in between is an absolute horror show.
Truth is that there are no good airlines. Just functional airlines. At this point I am just thankful to arrive at my destination in one piece.
Frankly, I don't know why foreigners still come to America. If I showed up at JFk and got the third degree from some rude lackey on a power trip then got fingerprinted along with my wife and child I would turn around and never come back. (I know, separate issues but I'm venting.)
Layered complexity induces logical contradictions. Specifically here, the modern world forces many people to fly, even though it technically remains a voluntary activity. Businesses are free to reject serving you for any reason, even making such decisions in lock step with the rest of the industry. Ergo, your right to travel gets constructively neutered through commercial law, even though your axiomatic/primitive rights have purportedly not been violated.
AFAICT the airlines wanted all of that bullshit legislation to indemnify themselves from the damages caused by terrorism. Technically you might be able to create your own airline (and airports) that rejected all of the groping theater, etc. And perhaps after decades of fighting in court you'd win the right for your companies to not have their freedom hampered in such a manner. But none of that is economically prudent, so we're stuck with the blatantly anticonstitutional regulations.
Perhaps not that extreme, but I'm not aware of an inalienable right to fly on an airplane.
How about a combination of you paid for a ticket and freedom of movement is a basic human right?
I'm not against reasonable and proportionate security, for air travel or anywhere else. But the kind of arguments some airports and airport security organisations have been making in recent years boil down to giving up all your legal rights to anything and not being guaranteed a service you've clearly paid for or even any sort of compensation if they deny you passage on some arbitrary grounds. (Sorry, one of our staff felt you raised your voice to them and we have a Zero Tolerance(TM) approach to that kind of thing -- look, it's right there on page 74 of the impractically long agreement you couldn't possibly have read before the web page timed out when you bought your ticket.)
If you'll pardon the pun, that kind of reasoning would never fly under normal legal conditions. Courts in almost any jurisdiction would throw out a contract where you paid for something but weren't guaranteed what you paid for or some sort of reasonable alternative or compensation if for good reasons it wasn't possible to provide it. And if it wasn't provided and not for a good reason, you would probably be entitled to compensation for any consequential losses as well. I don't see any reason that airports, airlines, or for that matter government-mandated security organisations, should be held to a lower standard, or not held to any standard at all, just because someone mentioned words like "air" or "travel".
I generally agree that there is way too much corporate control of the American government, but this is a pretty great example of how laws sometimes do nothing but hurt corporations.
Because I don't want to put up with this bullshit, I will take the (less profitable) bus or drive when I'm travelling fairly short distances. The airlines lose out, the oil companies lose out, and the airplane manufacturers lose out. I save a little money that I otherwise wouldn't have spent.
If the airlines were a powerful lobbying force, they would try to streamline the process of flying to attract get more people through in less time. The government decided that making people feel like they were safe from terrorists was more important than satisfying the airline lobbyists, so they chose to create security theater.
Airlines can prevent you from boarding if you travel part of a route you booked by alternate means? I'm not generally much of a fan of government intervention in private business, but that should probably be illegal.
The air travel industry is a leading indicator of creeping authoritarianism in our society. I'm very glad that this story is getting the kind of media coverage that it is. This needs to be examined and resisted.
I think it's more or less established that flying on a plane isn't a right in the US. That's part of why the 4th amendment challenges to the TSA haven't been effective.
Yes, but what you are describing is Orwellian, statist bullcrap that Americans typically don't abide with at all. We are not supposed to be a nation run by administrative bureaucrats whose jobs are to hassle us. So whether or not flying is Constitutionally protected, the right to travel freely generally is protected. All this corporo-statist bs security at the airports has been in a knee-jerk response to a few incidents that seem designed to instill fear in the public and lead to the Orwellian nightmare that we have now. I'd personally like to see most all of it rolled back if only so that the cost of government can go down. If you don't feel safe flying then don't. Being free means being brave and hey it's not for everyone. Luckily, there are many asshole nations to choose from where they will happily take your freedom and let you live out your life is slavery to them for the sake of some free food or whatever.
As far as un-appealable no-fly lists, that's just more Orwellian bullshit that people should not tolerate. A person living in a free country should never find themself in a position where they are on a secret list that they can't get off of!
I'd go one step further, as air lines are providers of critical infrastructure, they should have damn good reasons to ban me from buying tickets at their airline.
They have most of us bent over a barrel. No free market to be seen here.
Unless you count fuckhead rent seekers like Clear exploiting that the line to queue for security is technically in the airport's purview. Clear and the airports that participate are offensive.
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