I KNOW, I know, people got their travel plans for The Holidays fucked up by Southwest Airlines and now errbody wants Southwest Airlines to die, die, die, and give them back their money, and give them back the money they spent not getting to where they wanted to go in the first place. Personally I would like to disclose I have a Southwest Airlines credit card, and I use it all the time to buy stuff and I get airplane points and I use them to buy plane tickets on Southwest Airlines, which is pretty much the only Airlines I fly on, because I pretty much only travel to, like, Miami Beach, and Vegas, and Albany, NY from my castle in Baltimore, MD, which is a Southwest Airlines “hub,” apparently, and I have always found Southwest Airlines to be the cheapest. I got “bumped” one time because a surgeon (that’s what they said, anyway) needed to get to Baltimore to do a surgery, and they (Southwest Airlines) gave me a plane ticket to anywhere and a coupla hundred bucks for my inconvenience. Score! Oh, yeah, maybe also I saved a Life, har!
With my Conflict of Interests out of the way, I would like to address all the complainers complaining about how Southwest Airlines is evil because they canceled hundreds—I dunno, thousands?—of airplanes for people during The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, and I feel bad for anybody who got stuck in an airport or is still stuck in an airport, like if you are stuck in Albany, oof, my sympathies, not a lot of action, but you’ll sleep well, yeah on the floor, but it’s quiet!
Also, I believe airplanes are good except for the carbon stuff, and it’s wild that you can strap yourself in one of these things and go miles up into the sky and then go thousands of miles in a few hours! It’s insane! For example, you could get from NY to LA in what 8 hours, 10 hours, how many hours? And for how many dollars? Hardly any, on Southwest!
I checked the thing and you could go from LaGuardia airport to Los Angeles Airport for $286 (not even the cheapest price) with a stop at Midway Airport, and (most of the time) it takes eight hours and 20 minutes. It takes 42 hours to drive! How much gas or electric juice do you think it would cost, plus stops for fuel and road food? I don’t know, but I bet more than $286!!!
Look, I remind myself whenever I board an airplane that it’s a miracle to be able to fly in an airplane. I know you might be super mad or sad about your missed connection, and I heard a thing on the radio about a person who was going to see their dying grandmother and they were trapped in an airport, and their grandmother died waiting on them to get there, and that’s sad, but there’s weather! You are asking the airplane companies to control the weather! You got nothing coming, anything that happens after you buy a ticket to an airplane that does not end in you leaving the planet in a giant fireball is a bonus, your grandmother understands.
It’s Southwest! It’s the cheapo airplane! I’m not saying it’s good or fair or has the finest computer Intelligences controlling their schedules to nimbly adjust to Catastrophic Weather Conditions, but if you get lucky you can get a flight from NY to LA for $286! What the fuck do you expect? Two and a half thousand miles! It’s the cheapest airplane!
Meanwhile, you are stuck in an airport, do you even have a Plan B? You are traveling how many thousands of miles and you expect nothing to ever get fucked up, I know, but just for the heck of it, do you ever try to figure out what you might do if the plane connection craps out? No! You are spoiled! Me too! Also, Southwest Airlines haz no Plan B, they lost their pilots and crews in the weather last week and it turns out they weren’t really keeping track of them at all, because it probably cuts into profits!
You don’t like it? You got ripped off? Go after Southwest Airlines, I don’t give a shit, I use Southwest Airlines to travel preposterous distances at incredible speeds for ridiculous dollars! Get yourself a Class Action Suit and never fly Southwest Airlines again, that’ll show ‘em! Take the fucking bus! Greyhound flies out of every major city, and you don’t have to take your shoes off or your belt or anything to get past security! The Greyhound takes two days plus 20 hours and it costs about $200, oy vey. You can fly on an airplane and get to the coast in 10 hours for about the same as Greydog, how fucked up is that?
Also: Greed! Southwest Airlines is squeeeeeezing the planes for Profit! You are crammed inside there getting squozed! Ouch, the goddamn seats are already too close together, for fuck’s sake, my knees! Shocker! No fucking shit! You are rolling the dice climbing into any of these contraptions, putting your life in the hands of strangers! I saw this thing on Twitter and it says “the predictable result of billionaire & corporate corruption & greed,” I agree! Also, it’s not a Just World, we (as in The People) gotta force companies to do every little goddamn fucking thing that helps the customer, The People! Protect yourself at all times!
Howabout this: You are bad! For getting in a plane! Me too. You’re not helping the planet or the Polar Bears or the Ice when you fly in an airplane! Carbon! Greta Thunberg is 100 correct about all that stuff! Take a fucking cargo ship next time you wanna go to Europe, or Cleveland!
As a planet, I think we will fix enough when we all have electric cars, and I even like the bus, so electric bus would be good, and the train, and I enjoy driving a car on the network of superhighways that were created in the middle of last century, modern-wise, those will be great for electric car, and someday self-driving car, but the only way right now we could go all electric would be to burn a shitload of coal or start firing up a buncha nukes, unless they figure out the fission or fusion or whatever they said they just did in a lab, then it’s gonna be great, like when they invented the airplane!
Anyway, you expect to be able to climb into a heavier-than-air flying machine and go wherever you want whenever you want, and that’s not even Magical Thinking, it’s just crazy, me too. You are nuts with your expectations, me too. Manage your expectations! You’re mad at Southwest for fucking shit up when there was a Cyclone Bomb Weather-whatever. Just don’t say B-O-M-B in the airport, OK?
You pays your money, you takes your chances! You knew there were snakes on the plane when you got on the motherfucking plane!
The MR. WRONG COLUMN is a general-interest column appearing weekly wherever it can appear. No refunds. Write Wrong: wrongcolumn@gmail.com
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