I remember when, back before the world went crazy, taking a commercial airline flight was enjoyable. Checking in 20 minutes before departure time raised nary an eyebrow; baggage was considered the essential travel component that it actually is and didn't require X-rays, explosive-sniffing dogs or intrusive questions; and passengers could proceed to the gate fully clothed. How quaint that now seems.
But I have adjusted to today's air travel realities. I know that holding a confirmed ticket for a particular flight is more of a vague concept than it is a guarantee, and that a posted arrival time is a wildly optimistic estimate. A three-hour flight is now at least seven hours of punishment for being born past the golden age of air travel or for not being wealthy enough to own a private jet. And I'm OK with all that. I don't expect a pleasant flying experience so I'm not disappointed when I don't have one.
But I am not OK with a proposal soon to be advanced by the Federal Communications Commission to allow passengers to use cellphones on airplanes. I have come to accept the surrender of personal control over my circumstances that air travel entails — up to a point. I can put up with the usual discomforts of air travel — crying babies, boorish fellow passengers, unexplained delays, gut-wrenching turbulence — but being forced to be an unwilling party to one end of an inane phone call is asking too much. I can put up with damn near anything for a few hours; I am, after all, married and a father. But expecting me to endure other people's conversations with the home office, customers, loved ones, friends or anyone else without exploding in a stuttering rage is unrealistic. And I am not alone. Surveys have found that most passengers and, overwhelmingly, flight attendants oppose unleashing the chronically communicative on a captive audience.
The FCC must have lost its collective mind to even consider this idea. On the surface it seems to be a laudable and benign way to free the public to use the latest available technology for business and pleasure. But an airline flight is in many ways a cooperative undertaking and a certain amount of altruism among passengers is necessary for a good result. Experience has shown that counting on the masses to exercise restraint for the common good in anything at all has led to minor and major disasters throughout history. Terrible things such as war, happy hour, communism, credit card debt, Wayne LaPierre, the Great Recession, Black Friday, all-you-can-eat buffets and the tea party are a few chilling examples of what can go horribly wrong when exuberance leads to bad judgment. There is no need to add to that sorry list with this dubious proposal.
Cellphones seem to spark a powerful desire in many people to engage in senseless and idiotic talk (drop into any Starbucks), although my friends who are psychotic gun nuts would say that cellphones don't cause vapid conversations — people do. And they may actually be right for once. But I'm pretty sure that, given the means, the urge to babble on will be irresistible to a certain percentage of people who are locked inside a metal tube with no escape for several hours. So airlines should be ready to manage this phenomenon in a positive way.
How? By going low-tech and bringing back the phone booth. A few slight alterations to each plane are all that would be necessary: rip out a row of seats, install a couple of sound-proof booths and limit their use to 10 minutes per person. It's a new twist on a relic of pre-cellphone days. In olden times, a phone booth was a cocoon that gave callers privacy and a place to escape outside noise; these days it's everyone else who needs protection. This old-school shelter could and should now be used on airplanes to shield innocent bystanders from cellphone Babel.
This is a reasonable solution to an insidious menace. Air passengers have suffered enough. The airlines have already placed their customers in double jeopardy by raising prices while cutting back on service. Allowing unrestricted cellphone use on commercial flights is a cruel and unusual punishment they don't deserve.
Bill Federman is a Times Union editor. His email address is bfederman@timesunion.com.