![\"\"](\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/atl_airport_crowd.jpg\")
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I\u2019m sitting at the gate, awaiting my flight.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to DCA, so I can go help my dad out with some stuff that I really shouldn\u2019t have to help out with except for the fact that my dad isn\u2019t a very capable individual and has increasingly just been chalking everything up to aging and doing his best to live out The Korean Story\u2122.<\/span><\/p>\n I don\u2019t often disclose my personal expenses, but in this case, this round trip to and from Washington DC is running me $570.\u00a0 Way back, when AirTran still existed, I could get this exact RT for $159 if I played my cards right.\u00a0 Full fare, and not when I had the ability to fly standby on a moment\u2019s notice.\u00a0 Obviously, inflation is a very real and unfortunate thing, and it\u2019s been nearly 20 years since I used to be able to get those reasonable and cost-efficient fares, but the fact that it\u2019s gone up 350% seems outlandish and reeks of white people<\/span> greed.<\/span><\/p>\n The gate I\u2019m sitting in is relatively deserted.\u00a0 Flying on a Wednesday night is great in that regard.\u00a0 The aircraft will more than likely have upwards of 140 seats all in all, but if I had to guess, maybe barely 50% of the aircraft will be full.\u00a0 If I were still doing the standby thing, I\u2019d be doing a dance at the gate because I would have a 100% chance of getting on this flight.<\/span><\/p>\n That said, there\u2019s absolutely little reason why this fare should have been remotely close to $570.\u00a0 There used to be a time when flight fares would fluctuate somewhat on account of the demand of a particular flight, and a flight like this should probably have been cheaper than what I was forced to pay just so I could help out a family member, because clearly there was not a heavy demand for the flight.\u00a0 I\u2019d hate to imagine what it might have cost to go Friday through Sunday.<\/span><\/p>\n I used to be salty when this route had gone up to like $379 from all carriers, but now I\u2019d be doing cartwheels if I could get a RT for under $400 these days.<\/span><\/p>\n A few weeks ago, there was an article where Delta\u2019s CEO Ed Bastian was quoted, saying shit along the lines of blaming low-cost carriers AKA Spirit and Frontier, for the degradation of airline passenger behavior throughout the country.\u00a0 My knee-jerk reaction at hearing this was, sure, yeah, a lot of unruly people do fly Spirit and Frontier, that\u2019s not entirely wrong, my own criticism has ol\u2019 Ed Bastian in the crosshairs, because man is clearly so out of touch with the people that he probably doesn\u2019t seem to realize that most people are probably unruly because they\u2019ve been given no choice in life but to pay egregious fares in order to travel, and whether they take a low-cost carrier along with all the other unruly poors, or they shell out money they probably can\u2019t afford in order to travel, they\u2019re going to be bitter and pissed off about it in the end all the same.<\/span><\/p>\n I know that I\u2019m feeling quite salty and full of piss at having to shell out $570 to make a routine flight to a destination not even two hours of airtime away.\u00a0 I just happen to have a little more restraint and keep my vitriol and venom encased in harmless text on a brog that nobody on the planet reads except for me, as opposed to feeling entitled to dress like a 2000\u2019s-era NBA player, and act about as much of a shithead as one.<\/span><\/p>\n Ed doesn\u2019t seem to grasp that if Delta would ease off the gas on their price gauging and make flying a little more accessible to the people, not only would everyone flock to Delta if they\u2019re the first ones to cut costs, it would then force all the other carriers to follow suit in order to keep up, and if the royal everyone, is just a little bit happier about not going as broke in order to travel, the civility of airline passengers would inevitably improve.<\/span><\/p>\n And then Ed\u2019s completely out-of-touch analysis of the masses would begin to improve, traveling would stop feeling like such a colossally insufferable experience, and call me crazy, everyone would probably make more money in the end, because that\u2019s often just what happens when consumers are actually made happy sometimes.\u00a0 There\u2019s enough empirical evidence to show the sheer profitability of people not being shitheads to the masses, and hopefully the airlines will rediscover this and the skies may become a little friendlier when they come to that revelation.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019m sitting at the gate, awaiting my flight.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to DCA, so I can go help my dad out with some stuff that I really shouldn\u2019t have to help out with except for the fact that my dad isn\u2019t a very capable individual and has increasingly just been chalking everything up to aging and … Continue reading A microcosm of what\u2019s wrong with the airline industry<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[117,79,100,45,191,129,83,52,65,190,49],"class_list":["post-51020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-airports","tag-cashmoney","tag-comparison","tag-fail","tag-greed","tag-nostalgia","tag-observations","tag-owned","tag-travel","tag-white-people","tag-wtf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51020"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51022,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51020\/revisions\/51022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}