I’m just back from the ACS Meeting in San Francisco. More on that later. Of immediate interest to me is how air travel has changed and how we are blithely accepting the loss of a sort of egalitarianism that has only become apparent as it is lost.

In this age of security theatre, we are being required by Homeland Security to adopt a passive posture as users of airline services. But despite all of the visible security measures, turns out that good old-fashioned police work may be the best approach to terrorism. The Brits defeated IRA terrorism that way.

This afternoon while boarding at Gate 86 at SFO, ticket holders were required to queue up behind two distinct openings that were literally side-by-side and distinguished only by the presence of a short piece of red matting on the floor of one of the two entryways. The strident young male gate attendant (United) was adamant that only First Class passengers and certain other flying gentry were to walk across the red mat. All others were to trod upon the common carpet adjacent to the red mat. He did not come out and vocalize it, but he did demonstrate his intent through the use of crowd control cordons commonly found in airports. It strikes me as tragic yet exquisitely comical that this enthusiastic fellow is forced to perform such an absurd dance at every departure. You pay an extra kilobuck and you get to walk across the red mat.

I pointed this out to other Zone 4 coach passengers and was met with the usual “my-gawd-why-is-this-guy-talking-to-me-why-doesn’t-he-shut-his-cake-hole” look. They looked at their watch or cell phone and found a reason not to talk further. It’s amusing. Most of us are only too happy to adopt a passive stance and tough through it. Humans can adapt to fantastic incursions into their civil liberties and not utter even the most plaintive bleet of protest. Stalin knew this. So did Pol Pot, Hitler, Mao, and others.

Another observation is the recent attention to the seat-belt sign by the flight crew. Flight crews on airlines that I have flown lately, United and Frontier, have been real sticklers for obeying the seat-belt sign and keeping passengers in their ticketed toilets. It doesn’t matter that your bladder is about to discharge a dilute urea solution on their expensive seats. At the slightest indication of turbulence, the pilot switches on the sign and that’s it- gotta sit down pursuant to FAA law.

The facile conclusion is that they are practicing loss avoidance by keeping passengers from being plastered to the ceiling during extreme turbulence. But such events are really scarce. I might suggest that this is a subtle means of keeping passengers in their seats and away from the cockpit or the galley. After all, we need to keep a clear line of fire for the air marshall on board.

<End rant>