Full Upright And Locked Position: Not-So-Comfortable Truths About Air Travel Today, by Mark Gerchick

As a not terribly frequent but also deeply interested air traveler, I have long had an interest in the experience of flying, since the days when as a child I would fly between Tampa and Pittsburgh (at that time on a route run by the now-defunct US Air) between my mother’s and father’s homes. Over the course of my flying, I have seen the transition from flying in tight spaces where one could nonetheless get a meal included, and be treated as a human being, to the experience of being in a cattle car where I have witnessed the embarrassment people suffer to save a few dollars on their flying experience, including trying to move clothes from one bag to another to avoid onerous excess baggage fees. One of my earliest plays takes place on a plane and ends at an airport where family members can meet at the gate, an experience that has not been allowed to happen since the September 11 attacks. I am, in short, probably precisely the sort of person that the author of this book is trying to reach. He comes at it from the point of view of a (somewhat frustrated) air travel insider, who does not quite rise above his obvious pro-Obama and pro-regulation biases, but in fairness American airlines in general appear to be a particularly stupid and unreflective lot, and I have had my own fair share of negative things to say about my experiences flying in recent years in American carriers, having a better time with foreign carriers who either manage to provide a way better flying experience or, in the case of European cutthroat airlines, at least the possibility of fares that no US carrier these days would dream of offering.

Although the author has a pervasive tone of sarcasm and even hostility towards the people who run airlines in the United States–and it should be noted that this book is directed at an American audience, as the author has comparatively little to say about the experience of flying in Europe, Africa, or Asia, except to and from the United States–it is clear that the author has some wisdom to impart to the reader. Perhaps the most pertinent of that advice is that travelers cannot really rely on the US Government to make flying better. Given that it took more than ten years to pass a regulation that forced airlines to let passengers off planes that had been stranded on the tarmac for more than three hours–hardly a strict requirement–dealing with the more mundane horrors of airline travel, including the absolutely ineffective but also intrusive security processes, the hostility that people in airlines feel towards the restive and sullen passengers treated like cows being moved about from place, and the general lack of humanity that people are treated with all while companies seek to ensure their profitability through selling the flying experience bit by bit as dishonestly and opaquely as possible, is something that the government is not equipped by temperament or ability to solve. We’re on our own, sadly.

This book’s contents are a bit less than 300 pages in length. The book begins with a foreword, after which the author talks about the disconnects in how we fly now as opposed to how we used to fly, or perhaps even how we could or should fly (1). This is followed by a discussion of the hassles of contemporary travel (2) for most people, as well as the margin in terms of profitability as well as the amount of people working in aviation between a well-oiled machine and total chaos and disaster (3). The author talks about the pointy end of problems in the air, namely the side directed at travelers (4), as well as the way that companies seek to profit through fares, fees, and other games to increase revenues (5). The author then discusses some sobering and unpleasant aspects about health while flying (6), as well as the difficulty of getting regulations approved and enforced even when they appear to be no-brainers (7). The author talks about the understandable desire that people have to escape from the problems of air travel (8), three unimaginable events that changed everything in air travel (9), as well as some forecasting on how things are likely to go (10). The book then ends with acknowledgements and a bibliography.