Insanity

Sitting in my kitchen with a cup of coffee, reading this article in Slate about the bomb cyclone at the beginning of this month and the horrible chaos that resulted at JFK Airport in New York for the better part of a week afterward.  There doesn’t seem to be much doubt that the good folks at JFK could have done a lot of things better, in retrospect: communication, preparation, logistics, you name it.  Hopefully they’ll make some changes before the next storm. But here’s the paragraph from the article that really struck me: I’ve never seen it stated so baldly.

Christopher Schaberg, author, Airportness: “The conundrum of flight that airlines don’t typically want to acknowledge openly, but it might serve them well to be more direct about: This whole thing is always on the verge of being such a total mess. … Perhaps we’d all be a bit better off (psychologically, at least) if we went in expecting, well, if not the worst, at least expecting something to go wrong at some point. … Airlines want to promote images of perfection and idealism. But that’s just not the reality of mortal air travel.

Seems like the system is wired to only work if everything goes perfectly: no bad weather, no mechanical issues.  And goes perfectly *everywhere,* given the globally interconnected nature of modern travel. Since there’s no room for error built into the system, when things go south, they really go south. Starting to understand a little better how our trip back from Christmas vacation got banged up so badly. (And reading this, feeling grateful that we were “only” delayed 8 hours!)