Airlines-22

We were in an airplane in Philadelphia. We were on the ground, full stop, waiting in line to take off. We had been waiting for thirty minutes. Such are the things at airports. The airline industry, naturally, takes these delays into account when calculating your arrival time. In fact, you'd be dead wrong if you thought they can't pinpoint the EXACT moment of your arrival. They can. And they do.

The industry is so finely tuned, it goes off without even the smallest of hiccups and is used as the model for most American businesses.

All the planes in line in front of us were, of course, empty. There were no passengers in these planes. Sometimes the airlines even put decoy mannequins in the windows so as not to arise suspicions. They were only there to create a line, delay our flight, and fly off to the next destination to do the same thing, creating delays all over the country. If they didn't, well, then our flight would have landed early. And their prediction would have been wrong. You can't have a delay without traffic, and you can't have traffic without extra planes. And you can't have extra planes if nobody flies anymore because of all of the delays. It's all very confusing, but it forced the airlines to come up with creative and ingenious ways to make sure that their delay forecasts are correct.

It's an incredibly complex system of accurately coordinated delays and seat shortages. On a given busy day in an airport, I would guess that five, maybe ten percent off all the people in the terminal are actual patrons, the rest being paid actors and extras. These people work tirelessly to fill seats, hold crying babies, complain to the service agents, and make it really look like the airlines are busy, and doing their darndest to get you off at the right time.

Now it wouldn't make any sense for you to pay upwards of $400 for a plane ticket if you thought all the airlines had to do was ship you from point A to point B, and maybe right back to A again. That would be simple. You could probably do that for $100, at the most. So to keep the prices up, they need to order extra planes, extra patrons, and cute little miniature trucks to drive around the tarmac in circles for effect. Suddenly you are paying $500 for a crowded and dirty flight to Milwaukee, and your bags get sent (with mathematical exactness) to Phoenix, where they are in turn shipped to New Delhi and then Baltimore to justify the cost of your ticket. It's a modern marvel, if you take a step back and look at it.

You have to pay more because the industry keeps spending all of this money, and they have to keep spending money to justify charging you so much for a ticket. It makes sense, really.