I used to pack a smoke hood in my carry-on luggage. I knew that most passengers survive a plane crash on impact, but many die before they can escape the toxic smoking fuselage of an airplane. But I didn't pack a smoke hood for the trip that ended with a safe landing in San Francisco last Friday.
I figured my old smoke hood had outlived its shelf life. My husband, Wesley J. Smith, bought it for me in 1994 on the release of "Collision Course: The Truth About Airline Safety," a book he co-authored with Ralph Nader.
Also, flying is safer than it used to be. Although a regional-carrier crash in Buffalo killed 50 people in 2009, there hasn't been a fatal accident with a major American airline in more than a decade. (For the record, Asiana Airlines is a South Korean carrier.)
Credit federal safety regulations for reducing seat flammability and the danger of seat collapse inside the Boeing 777 jetliner. Those advances allowed Asiana Flight 214 passengers to get out of the wreckage.
Flying never will be risk-free — as the families of the two dead 16-year-old girls, as well as the seriously injured civilians and crew, can attest. But air travel has become so safe that rather than worrying about falling out of the sky, the flying public obsesses about the indignity of TSA searches and having to pay for airline food.
We live in an amazing age that allows people to fly from one end of the country to the other in six hours — and at affordable prices — and all we do is complain that flying isn't as glamorous as it used to be.
The Sunday New York Times had the unfortunate timing to run an opinion piece by contributor James Atlas titled, "Class struggle in the sky." It was about the travails of flying coach — bad snacks, less legroom, too many people. Atlas likened flying coach class to sailing in steerage. He marveled, "The hardships of economy (class) don't seem to deter us from air travel."
Hardships?
We in the writing class truly are a bunch of crybabies. Atlas should ask the Donner Party how they liked their snacks.
Like many journalists, I am a world-class complainer. My repertoire of airline horror stories includes a 48-hour hitch at O'Hare. I can talk for a full five minutes about the challenges involved in getting to the Republican National Convention in 2000. (Long story short: After sitting on a tarmac for hours and not getting my luggage, I had to take the train from Chicago to Philadelphia.) I don't like sitting in the middle seat. I hoard my miles so that I can fly business class on international flights. I envy those with "elite" frequent-flier status.
But I also know that I get to fly because I live in a country where middle-class people have the wherewithal to see different continents. Because of airline regulations and smart engineering, it's more dangerous to drive to the airport than to get on the plane. I started to feel silly carrying a smoke hood, although I always spend a moment to scope the exit options at takeoff.
And at the end of a journey that takes hours, not weeks, if you're lucky, you get to complain — about peanuts.
Debra J. Saunders writes for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her email address is dsaunders@sfchronicle.com.