Nope, I’m afraid to say I haven’t. Yet another reason to respect our men and women in uniform.
I think my biggest problem with the airlines is that you play a premium to get treated like crap, essentially. Although the seating issue pales in comparision with the TSA nonsense you have to deal with to fly…
I’ve also known plenty of Muslims who eat Kosher foods at least on some things–packaged foods that are kosher are generally alright, since there are lots of similarities between the 2…
In the Age of Sail, a common allotment of sleeping space for the sailors in their hammocks was 14 inches - and this on top of the fact that while you weren’t sleeping in that space, someone else on a different watch was.
I suppose we should be grateful for 17 inches? That and the fact that we can’t be pressed from our homes, flogged, clapped in irons, and/or hanged? 
Lots of other things out there that you pay a high price to get treated like crap. The DMV. And Dominatrixes. . . . Heck, most retail establishments these days. . . .
(evil grin)
As for those who’ve served, you’d probably get ill seeing some of the places I’ve slept and the food I’ve been served.
I recall one deployment, where we had one hot meal a day: breakfast. Except the Bacon was canned in 1943 ( had a friend in the Mess who showed me the cans. . .) and the powdered eggs dated from the early 1950s… .
There’s an opportunity here: start a site like Orbitz and Expedia that allows people to buy flights not only based on price but factors they want, like comfort, food, reliability, etc… (then sell it to the first decent bid so Orbitz, et al don’t crush you).
I think you pay the premium to the dominatrix to get treated that way… 
And actually, the last time at the DMV wasn’t so bad.
Ugh, why I am not surprised… Thank you, thank you, thank you then! I appreciate what you do!
One week salary?!
Wow, I wish my salary would be that high!
Actually, I take it back, we can still be clapped in irons, we just call them handcuffs now because they’ve changed form slightly.
We can also still be pressed from our homes, via the “Selective Service System”. Thank goodness it hasn’t been used or enforced of late, but it’s on the books, quietly waiting until the politicians decide they can get away reinstating a draft, and then they have the punishments all set up and ready to be doled out to anyone who doesn’t want to murder for the sake of political expediency.
And to be honest, flogging and hanging have really just been replaced by different forms of the same thing. Instead of whipping someone, we have “enhanced interrogation techniques” and other forms of torture, alongside regular old police violence, and even new technological pain-provisions such as tear gas, tasers, and pepper spray.
As for hanging, which is no longer fashionable, we now choose to destroy life behind closed doors with lethal injections. Maybe once public executions come back into style, we’ll go back to the electric chair, then work our way up to the guillotine once more?
So… uhh… thank goodness we have 17 inches of space instead of 14? Hooray for progress?
Did. Medically Retired. Argument with an ejection seat. . . and I lost. But that was 25 years ago. I deal with it: no other choice, really.
I’ll take your word on Dominatrixes. (grin) All I really know of that world, is what I learned from Leslie Fish, and that one particular episode of “Sherlock”. Oh, and that I was at the Final Disclave and the Disclave Flood. …
Still, thanks.
Not my thing, but I’ve known folks who are involved in that scene… it is what it is.
Yeah, okay, you ejected and got almost torn apart in the process, fine, fine, Uncle Sam can replace you with some other rube, but DID THE $20,000,000 PLANE MAKE IT?!?
(That’s sarcasm, by the way. )
You must be skinny. And young.
Actually, it did, and cost less to fix the jet than it did to fix ME. Ground accident, a “Murphy Magnet” tripped and smashed his electronic watch in just such a way to fire the man-seat separator without firing the seat itself. They had to re-set the seat and re-install pyrotechnics, and replace a CRT.
Me, it was two broken shoulders and 9 broken vertebrae. . .
He is! Look at that picture in his profile! He’s so young looking! Bless him!
I’m 6’3" and fairly muscular. If I stand as skinny as I can stand against a wall I’m about 22 inches wide (my widest point is actually across my upper arms, not at shoulder width) At the actual shoulder I’m 20 inches. When I travel with my wife she just assumes I am taking 20 % of her space. When I’m flying alone I pray for upgrades, or a skinny neighbor.
My corporate travel policy says I must fly coach domestically and on short international flights. On longer international flights I can upgrade to business class.
I’m a small guy (5’9", 155 lbs) and as best I can measure, my shoulders are about 18" wide. How is that supposed to work? I lose shoulder space to bigger travelers already.
The ability to fall asleep just about anywhere serves me well whenever I fly commercial.
Probably because ‘comfort’ is difficult to express in a single integer, while ‘price’ isn’t, and all airlines are subject to the same set of options(in terms of aircraft cabin volumes and fuel costs per unit weight per unit distance) since they all buy from a fairly small menu of similar aircraft, built by a relatively small number of companies coping with the same technical and physical limitations.
(Also, because buying/leasing a few-hundred-million-dollar aircraft (with attendant logistical bits and bobs to see to its care and feeding) isn’t really a short-term commitment, airlines probably just don’t’ have that much flexibility in the short term about their comfort-level strategies. Ripping out seat type A and replacing it with seat type B is, comparatively, cheap and fast; but you could easily be stuck with a series of tubes with fixed diameter, length, and fuel efficiency for a decade plus, with any remotely economic modifications of the user experience happening inside those constraints.)
True. But in an airlifter, add cold, really uncomfortable seats, no meals you don’t sneak aboard, no entertainment. And all electronics are off, to the point where they’ll pull batteries if they catch you. . . Luckily, I always carried a few paperbacks in the cargo pockets. . .
I’d say the opposite.Burning fuel to ship live meat to a business meeting is stupid. Travel is one of the bests things in the world for well rounded personal development.
