Nothing like a bit of satire and lampooning to highlight how poorly read some people are.

Dear sincx,

While you were away, the following letter was mis-delivered to my battered mailbox:

Dean's Office,
School of Business
Enormous State University

Dear sincx:

Based on your failure to complete and submit your "practice sets" or show up for the final in Accounting 101, plus your score, 0.05 (.05 pints awarded for having entered your name at the top of the page) on the final exam for Cost Accounting 201, you are hereby dis-enrolled from the Business School and this university.

Based on your academic record, the Dean recommends that you seek employment as a Flight Attendant, confident that your skill level fully qualifies you for such employment, especially far aft in the aft cabin of "jumbo" jets configured "All Economy" (and some worse, especially at the back) seating.
I'm sure, after a few years of seasoning, you will be qualified for re-enrollment, but only in the Continuing Education program.

Sincerely,

Vladimir Festouche, PhD
Dean

Well played, OP!

Errr... economy is not quite that bad!

...and if you think it is bad on a 380 try a CRJ.

You will think you have died and gone to heaven when
your next leg after the CRJ is on a 320.

It's called "Raid the Larder" in BA Club World - no ice dispensers or soda machines though

I don't see this coming to economy any time soon.

To the OP:

Beat me to it!

Guys (or at least those yelling at the OP), the OP was a JOKE. It was meant as satire. He was not actually suggesting any of these things (although I do like the part about the young women being forced to sit next to the creepy businessmen).

By the way, what is "economy" class? Is that what's behind that red curtain? There's people back there? I thought it was just boxes. Now I understand what FTers refer to when they talk about self-loading freight!

Mike

^

For most people, it's all about price. Frankly, I include me in this "most people". I travel for business and do not have an option to fly anything other than economy.

That said, I appreciate many of the sentiments of the OP. Economy is what people have made it. Voting with their wallets.

Some do not have the benefit of a classical education.

I see nothing wrong with someone not getting the joke (many different nationalities are represented here...)

I think this highlights how people don't bother to read the comments that explain how this is satire. I'm sure the post below mine will reflect that as well

It's okay; this is why in the US, I only fly JetBlue. Roomy all around.

Yes, Jonathan Swift wrote A Modest Proposal.

And OP posted a modification of a passage from "On the Trail of The Immigrant" by Edward Steiner.

For those apparently blessed with a better "classical education", and who feel they are better "read", what is the link I'm missing?

I'll applaud the OP use of classical literary ties in his witty post. I agree that E or even E+ may be less than rewarding aboard most flights, only slightly better than a seat in the lav, door closed, no FA service.

But then my perspective owes something to ancient antecedents, almost pre-Dean Swift.

When you've flown from DAL to DCA via BNA in a DC-3, on a hot Summer day, all (21?) seats occupied, across a landscape which gives birth to s steady stream of up drafts and down drafts, leading many aboard to resort to barf bags, arriving on the melting tarmac at BNA in a bird in which the cabin reeked more than the orlop of a plague ship, so vile that I expected to hear the cause sloshing in the scuppers, today's E/Y cabins aren't so bad. Cabin service? Not much, although the FA was ready to help carry out the departed should there have been any so fortunate.

Then there was this military flight, the cavernous and drafty freight hold of a C-130, NORVA the long, multi-stop way around the Arctic fringe to Rhein Main. Seating? Those long canvas benches which line to bulkhead, designed to induce parachutists to want to jump out soon. FA, one only, also the Loadmaster, far more concerned about freight shifting than pax being crushed or otherwise discomforted. Food? Box lunches, and the ones taken aboard at Keflavik tasted as if they had been left out on an Icelandic glacier for an extended period. Beverages? Coffee, already oily and bitter on departure, increasing tepid as time went on (and on, and on). Water? An urn, last washed before Lockheed buckled it in place, its contents could only be described as wet, likely drawn directly from one of thos murky creeks near Norfolk. IFE? None, and even in daylight, the few tiny "windows" allowed only mild and murky illumination. Even if turned on, the red and green "jump" lights hardly enabled reading. Duration? Well, day turned to night, again to day and finally night again, even with the short nights of high latitudes. Baggage? if you brought it, you carried it (across the ramps to board and debark).

Built upon those foundations, while i complain about the discomfort and often less than modest service in economy, I'm not totally enthralled with tales of the grand glory of air travel in yesteryear.

What a funny and interesting read. I quite enjoyed it actually.

Qantas has a snack bar on it's long haul economy flights.

I enjoyed the 'raid the larder' although I don't think it was called that last time I used it - I seemed to be the only person awake in economy, so sat chatting with the FAs in the galley and taking the egg sandwiches out of the packs!