From Frustration to Economy

The problem about boarding is that people seem to have a sudden sugar rush to get into the plane. The worst part is that First Class and Business Class passengers usually make the queue before hand as they have priority and Economy seem not to understand it. In many flights I have heard complaints such as: “I was standing in the line way before him and he came in before me” and the way they express all of that is as if someone would have stolen their fake Louis, with such anguish. People tend to believe and feel that if they are Economy they have the same privileges than upper classes, the true fact is that they don´t. When people say “cattle class” is for something, is not a random choice of words. What is cattle?

Cattle is any of various chiefly domesticated mammals of the genus Bos, including cows, steers, bulls, and oxen, often raised for meat and dairy products. You may find the girl chewing gum as a cow, standing in her crocks with a very grumpy face admiring in her envy the 60´s something year old woman perfectly standing in her high heel shoes, much more elegant and prettier than the young adolescent. Or the man in his 40´s travelling for the third time in his life, extremely angry that he can´t proceed to boarding as his row was still not mentioned. There are various types of domesticated breed passengers but with animal behaviors. People simply don´t want to understand instructions or are not patient enough to do so. That´s why I want to go a step before boarding: immigration.

Usually in all the airports and terminals worldwide there are huge signs indicating which queue you should do depending on the residence of your Passport. Even if you don´t speak the local language or English there are perfectly indicated signs that a child can understand. Once again, there it the typical “distracted” passenger that jumps to the Fast Track lane when he is not travelling in First or Business; or the one that thinks that he is diplomat (when he is not) and can simply go through that designated area in immigration. The most ironic part is that when they are told to go to their correct lane they make a scandal and start shouting and playing dumb by “not understanding” what they are told. And then when they walk through and go to the Duty-Free they start speaking marvelous fluent English. People like to act and play stupid. But let´s go a step before immigration: security but it happens the same exact thing as immigration so let´s skip that step and let´s go to check in.

In many big airports you may find designated terminals exclusively for First and Business and then Cattle Class in another terminal, so thankfully there is not a mixture. But in some airports when they don´t have an exclusive terminal things can get a little bit awkward.

When we proceed to check in (Crew) we do it through the check in counter and in some flights, when the airplane is extremely big and it´s on its full capacity we see this huge line of people in Economy and not so many in First and Business. Each time a premier passenger walks towards the line you can feel the envy from the passenger at Economy watching how the other one gets priority treatment. How in simply 10 minutes (tops) he or she precedes to the counter, dispatch his or her bags, select the seat and walks away. While the other have wait sometimes even to 30 minutes and most of the times doesn´t get the seat the he or she wants (there is when frustration walks in). Standing there you can feel the frustration, the envy and the bad energy from Cattle class.

If you can pay more than U$S 5000 average per ticket you´ll be treated differently and we will personally smile at your face even if we don´t want to. If not, just deal with it, do the queue, shut up, smile and be patient. 

(I don´t own the above picture)