The security lines, the hassle of either parking or taking a three hour bus trip to the airport, etc. In other words, ditto. Though I do enjoy road trips. I also enjoy Amtrak. For me, a large part of the enjoyment of travel is the travel itself, and the airlines have sucked every bit of happiness out of flying.
No, because the people who ride Greyhound are too busy bitching about the fleas and lice crawling over from the toothless wonder who smells of used motor oil and cat piss in the seat next to you.
I expect laundry costs are the issue. Each one of those pillows has a little papery pillowcase on it, and I’ve never had a dirty one. Come to think of it, I’ve never gotten one that was even slightly flat, as you’d expect after a lot of use, so they must replace them a lot more frequently than I replace the ones on my bed.
I’ve flown more than any sane person should and do not care about the pillows. I find it remarkable that they keep returning after getting pulled. They are nice on rare occasions when trying to sleep in a window seat but also an occasional nuisance clogging the overhead bins. Newer seats with those “wings” on the headrest largely make pillows moot.
There are plenty of reasons to pit the management of airlines but this doesn’t strike me as worthy.
Just for fun, here’s a personal top ten:
1 Culture of casual lies
2 Lack of communication with customer
3 Incomprehensible pricing rules
4 First class seats for deadheading employees rather than paying customers
5 Scheduling 50 flights to take off in one five minute window
6 Contaminated drinking water
7 Constant overuse of PA system
8 Equipment changes a month before flight without reassigning comparable seats
9 Two tier employment systems (unions share blame)
10 Contracts tying skilled workers to a single employer (unions share blame)
Its hard for pillows to break into a top ten list when it competes with geivences like “the culture of casual lies.”
I had a friend who briefly had a job cleaning the planes between flights.
He told me to never even touch the pillows, let alone put my head on one. He said they rarely, if ever, cleaned them and he would find them full of snot, baby drool and godknowswhatelse on them. He usually was picking them up off the floor and dusting off the footprints.
So - no pillows? Consider yourself lucky.
And if you think you really need one for a long flight, bring your own.
Do you realize how snobby this sentence sounds?
Umm…eww.
Does a pillow count as a carryon? That’s why I’ve never brought one - I figure I need my bag with books and CDs and my laptop more than I need the pillow, since I can get one from the overhead. If the pillow counts, I’ll stuff everything in the pillowcase.
E.
I have to second this one all the way through. There are plenty of things to gripe about with air travel, but the loss of those disease-infested, stained, stinky, scratch, flat “pillows” isn’t even on the radar. I suspect they’re probably getting rid of them as much to make more space in the overhead bins (now that every joker tries to carry-on two full-sized roller bags under the theory that one of them should be considered a “personal item”) as to reduce costs.
Air travel sucks, and it’ll keep getting worse as competition increases and margins go down, as long as customers focus on price first. And for people who only fly once or twice a year, taking the spouse and 2.3 kids to grandma’s for Christmas, price is pretty much the only measure.
Don’t like it? Start your own airline for people who are willing to pay for the amenities. Just don’t expect to turn a profit.
Stranger
I totally agree! After seeing the icky things drooled, globbed, plopped, and goobered onto the pillows, I always take my own. I wouldn’t touch one of those nasty things.
Much as I hate to turn this political 
deregulation under Reagan didn’t do any of us any favors.
Maybe if you are 5’10" exactly (isn’t that who they make those seats for?). For nearly any other height, the headrest hits you in exactly the right spot to make sleeping in the seat a rather interesting form of torture. I need a pillow (although I usually use a rolled-up jacket, as the airline pillows aren’t firm enough).
I’m not going to flame you, I’m just going to warm your toes a little.
Have you ever been on a flight that sat at the end of a runway for four hours with no bathroom access, no food or water before taking off for a seven hour flight? I have. I didn’t pass out because it wasn’t the first time I’d been stuck on a plane so I had brought water and mealbars with me.
I have too. Then just as it was our turn to take off, they rolled back to the terminal because it was too late to land in Toronto (only a 1 1/2 hour flight from Chicago) without getting fined. After the other one hundred canceled flights had already taken all the hotel rooms. On my wedding night. No fun, no fun at all.
Considering the vast majority of my flights are 1-2 hours in length, and I often spend longer than that sitting on the floor staring at a wall when I’m at home…hell, I’d fly that.
Two things: number 7 doesn’t sound so bad and number 6 sounds real bad. So, more info please.
No, I haven’t ever been in that exact situation. I have, however, learned a few things.
- No matter how long the flight, bring at least a bottle of water and something to eat. You could, as I once was, be on a flight which’ll be delayed 5 hours at the airport, but the airline keeps lying to you, saying it’ll be any minute, so don’t go far, and the only thing still open in that terminal was a snack bar that had pepperonni pizza and hotdogs - no good for a vegetarian.
- Use the bathroom before getting on the plane. One experience with the seatbelt light on the entire way from Philadelphia to Denver teaches you that.
- If things get really dire, for whatever reason, see those nice people in uniforms? They may not be walking up and down the aisles right now, but there’s a little button over your seat that’ll page them. If you’re about to fall over dead from thirst (which I sincerely doubt), talk to them, and they’ll likely help you out.
Seriously. Unless you’re from some remote 3rd-world country and have never been in an airport, plane, talked to anyone who has, or seen a movie or TV show in which they show air travel, you know that you’re pretty much on your own for comfort. As I said before, an airline is a transportation company, nothing more. I see no reason to hold them to a ridiculous standard of looking out for your own personal comfort.
Actually, I used to book flights for my ex-boss and schedule was as a big a consideration as price. As a rule, if I had a choice between bringing him back at in the evening for a somewhat higher price, that outweighed a cheaper flight the following morning when you factored in the cost of a hotel room, meals, etc. A non-stop flight was also preferable to a one-stop flight and it didn’t matter how cheap the flight was; if there was more than one stop, it was out. Unfortunately, I live in Pittsburgh where US Airways rules the roost, so we didn’t have that much choice. By the way, my boss used to fly at least once a month often on short (less than 3 weeks) notice.
CJ
I’ve never touched an airline pillow - they just have a perceived “ick” factor that’s off the scale with me. I usually carry a shawl or a pashmina on flights & in a pinch I can fold it up & use it as a pillow.
What gets me about PillowGate is the apparent small percentage of savings this will mean for the airline. I’m sorry I don’t have a cite, but I believe the number bandied about yesterday was a savings of something like $300K a year. It just strikes me as penny-pinching at something that was a customer good-will item.
VCNJ~
What will I use to smother people while they sleep?
I think those pillows suck any way. You have grab up five of them for them to actually comfort you but the fact that is only saves 300k a year just demonstrates how cheap those pillows are.
Some people are looking for something else. Like me. I won’t fly Southwest beause its the most uncomfortable flight I’ve even been on, and I only flew from the west coast to Washington DC. Now I mainly fly to Europe, and I won’t sit in cramped little seats the discount carriers try to use (I’m 6’4’). I’ll pay extra for a little comfort on a 10-15 hour flight.