One of the great things about being a poor senior citizen is the fact that I no longer expect to travel by climbing aboard an airplane. I’m coming up to the sixth anniversary of my last flight, and it may well be another six years before it happens again.
I can barely remember when traveling by air was actually an adventure that I looked forward to. I wonder how many thousands of you who watched that recent video about flying the ‘Friendly Skies of United’ may have come to the same conclusion. What on earth have we come to in 2017?
A few years ago, when oil was selling for more than $100 a barrel, you could almost feel sorry for the airlines. They jacked up the cost of tickets to help pay for that more expensive fuel. By the way, did they ever drop the ticket prices when oil prices collapsed? If they did I must have missed the e-mail. Nowadays the airlines go ka-ching, ka-ching for just about everything. Will they be charging for going to the john next?
Owning an airline used to be a license to lose money, but that can’t be the case in 2017. How about the people who make the airplanes, like those geniuses at Bombardier? They just about had it all figured out. When the kitty starts to run dry, just pull a little ‘stick up’ in Quebec City or Ottawa and all will be well.
The company loses hundreds of millions of dollars, and they lay off thousands of workers in Canada and elsewhere. But they still feel ‘entitled to their entitlements’ in the form of huge pay increases. The whistle was finally blown on them and those huge raises were pulled back, but did they really learn anything do you think?
Ah, semi-retirement is truly a wonderful thing, especially when it means you don’t have to fly.
I’m Roger Currie
