There was once a time when flying was a real event. You dressed up in your best clothes, made sure you were on your best behavior, and you probably paid a lot of money, too. The aircraft were large and luxurious, with the biggest in airline fleets containing flying bars and lounges in them. But flying isn’t like that today, and I think we can all agree on one thing.
Jason wrote about how much it sucks when someone reclines their seat in Economy class. I agree. Once, someone managed to crack my laptop’s screen by reclining their seat in just the perfect way to jam the screen between my tray table and their seatback. I’m also a bigger person, and scooting your seat back makes my tiny space even smaller. First Last makes a great point:
Just want to weigh in to say that *this* is the kind of bullshit Americans should be arguing about instead of tearing each other apart over their political grievances.
Jason also wrote a Cold Start about a seriously janky trailer ball on a Toyota, and KYFire gets me with this one:
This is something I imagine my dad doing.
0% Form
50% Functionality
100% Cheap
5VZ-F’Ever and Ever, Amen:
The only thing that would make me happier is if it was towing another Corolla with a similarly bespoke front towbar
Juanmi82 pumps the brakes on this madness. I love how many of our readers are all kinds of engineers:
Ex-towbar mechanical engineer here. The bumper bar is made of tinfoil in comparison to a towbar.
The bumper bar must withstand 1 crash deforming the intended way. As far as I remember, a towbar is fatigue tested to 60% of its rated load for 2 million push-pull cycles.
The Bishop wrote about Pontiac’s attempt at a Malaise Era GTO with the Can Am, and Erik Hancock has me remembering childhood:
That All American interior looks like a bowling alley. From the colors to the shape of the console, it makes me want to type in ‘ASS’ as my player name, dry my hands on the air vent, and go throw some gutter balls with AC/DC on the sound system.
Brian wrote about how the Subaru BRZ is now $5,000 more expensive than a Toyota 86. But don’t worry, Toyota will make up the gap. NC Miata NA:
The BRZ is $5,000 more than the GR86
Toyota dealers: GR86s mandatory add-ons include $999 for paint protection, $999 for fabric protection, $999 for door edge guards, $999 for tire nitrogen, $999 for Lo-jack, $999 for wheel locks, and $999 for 3 oil changes.
Have a great evening, everyone!
All I know is I’m still mad you can’t smoke on the plane anymore ha ha
(or bus, train, inside, etc) Of course you used to be able to WAY before I was born ha ha
I remember going on a few flights as a child that still allowed smoking, and I was born in the early 1980’s. This was in Europe though, no idea when the rules changed in the US.
I propose instead of fighting over an unsustainable (as in, they will continue jamming people tighter and charging more to stay viable as a business) airline industry, Americans unite around something deeply American: Trains.
Trains are a beautiful symbol of America, a country with big open spaces between large population centers.
Since trains benefit from normal force (that is, they don’t fall through the ground) instead of fighting gravity, it’s trivial to offer more legroom. Not only that, but it offers us an opportunity to be even more American.
What do Americans, especially the ones on this site, love? Cars.
Air travel makes you leave your car behind, then you need to get a rental, taxi, rideshare, or a bus at your destination.
Well, since weight is relatively trivial on a train, forget your carry-on limit. There are trains that can carry your car.
You can take your car with you on the train. The most American form of travel possible. There’s like, one autorail service in the entire country right now. We should demand more.
What the airline cartels want us to forget is that crampy seating increases injuries in any crash and makes evacuation delays unsurvivable.
“The bumper bar is made of tinfoil in comparison to a towbar.”
I think for most people who don’t actually work with metal, there are two grades of metal:
Metal you can bend with your handsUnbreakable unbendable adamantium
Before airlines made seats narrower to add more seats, and the distance between rows got much shorter to add even more seats, reclining wasn’t a big deal.
You can thank Alfred E. Kahn for the deregulation of airlines and the current state of the American airline industry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_E._Kahn
I don’t fly, but if I pay for the seat, I’m also paying for the reclining function. Blame the airlines for their garbage stone squeezing layouts.
Torch will enjoy the new seating being planned by WestJet up in Canada.
“The term ‘fixed recline’ refers to the seat having a slight recline that cannot be adjusted,” – WestJet spox.
Common elsewhere in the world, low-cost (and even mainline airlines) EU flights typically are fixed recline.
Invented by the same advertising firm that calls air crashes an involuntary conversion!
Reclining your seat in a spinner on your way to terminate a replicant . . . spoiler alert . . . even though you’re replicant yourself is a Philip K. Dick move.
My grandfather was a commercial airline pilot, flew from ’49-’81, so he was fully engrossed in the “Sky Captain” mindset with a flock of stewardesses trailing along in his wake like ducklings (though he was married at the time…never broached THAT uncomfortable question). But from the time I first flew to the time he passed, he and my grandmother made sure I had nicer outfits I was supposed to wear on the plane. I now get into trouble when I tell my family that we don’t fly looking like we’re lounging on the couch.
Much like the joke in Big Bang Theory about “bus pants”, I have “airplane pants”.
My favourite are a set of very baggy painter’s jeans with pockets everywhere so I can carry so many things for comfort & convenience. Toss a set of headphones, phone charge cables, little bracket that clips your phone to the airline traytable, pack of chewing gum, passport, wallet, keys, snacks. Function > Form.
Same. Just got a new set of plane pants. They are light weight cargo pants that have as much storage space for random crap as my carryon. They are decent enough looking so that if I have on a company logo polo, I meet the dress code for my entire industry.
It’s not my dad’s suit and tie, but I can’t think of many professions, or even churches now that are that formal.
That seems great except at the TSA xray checkpoint.
Back in the late 90’s Gillian Anderson of X files fame hosted a show on Why Airliners Crash. One of the things she mentioned was how melty synthetic fabrics are in a fire and how many people ended up with worse burns because of their clothing. That was enough to encourage me to select less melty clothing while flying.
Over time though flying has become even safer. Now the danger has shifted to lengthy delays sometimes in cramped, sweltering conditions. So now I wear what’s most comfortable.
Synthetics can be a problem even just going down the escape slide, which people sometimes have to do for relatively minor mishaps.
I’ve gone down even concrete slides in synthetics and the only problem I had was wearing out the fabric. If the worst thing to happen to me in a plane crash is showing the world my bare butt I can live with that.
Nomex is recommended.
I dunno, somebody waltzing through security in a flame proof Nomex suit might raise a few TSA eyebrows.
Not if you know what they pay TSA.
The only reason to work for them is if you already have a federal pension.
Oh I didn’t say they’d DO anything about it.
Maybe if you’re a hottie you’ll get a thorough pat down but otherwise just keep moving.
Probably best not to try to get through in a silver reflective volcano ready suit.
Check out Dance Dance Immolation sometime.