Egalitarianism and Hierarchy I: The airport metaphor

I love airports. Anyone who knows me will know how surprising this is because I hate waiting. And airports, much to my chagrin, seem designed to maximize the amount of dead space they can drag out of every activity. Whether it is the impossibly clueless person at the counter; or the guy ahead of you who has to go through the metal detector 15 times because you forgot to take off his belt, and his keys, and his cellphone and...; or the way calls that weather will delay takeoff seem to occur just after all the passengers have loaded the plane; or how wireless is priced just high enough to never justify you going online to make the most of your time, until you find that your flight has been delayed, but by just long enough to ensure that purchasing wireless at that point will still be profligate. I have a lot of gripes with airports but I still love them. I love airports because of how similar they are all over the world.

I remember landing in Heathrow, on my way to the United States for the first time. I was standing on one of those conveyor belts that connect one terminal to another, staring out of the glass panels that lined one side of the building. The sky was a calming blue, interrupted by wispy dabs of cloud. Below it, airplanes slowly navigated around one another as they made their way to the runways, directed by scurrying, neon-jacketed ants, their navigation signs glinting in the noon day sun. It was a scene I had seen a hundred times, in Heathrow, Dubai, Marrakech, Nairobi and I found my anxiety at my new life dissipating as I realized at that moment I was looking at a place I had never seen, but had always seen, I could be looking out to anywhere in the world, I felt at home. For me, airports have never lost that tranquil sense of being not here but not there; they are that in between place that I can always count on to be familiar. In a space of transition, no one can claim to belong, and so everyone has equal standing. Everyone's accent is foreign, everyone's tastes unusual. There is no standard of reference. And so the airport, probably the most diverse place on the planet, ironically becomes the most egalitarian.

I love airports. But I hate airlines. I don't just find them a nuisance; I don't even just despise them; no, our relationship has deteriorated to the point of hatred and it appears that there is a little chance of reconciliation. Now even in the best of cases, I would not be too fond of this insidious industry. I've already stated the things that cause me discomfort in airports and - when you think about - those are mostly attributable to airlines and their poor service. However, I am willing to offer them clemency for these on the grounds that, in their own twisted way, airlines are serving the greater good of building in me the virtue of patience (clearly very much needed). What I will not stand for, my aviation adversaries, is the sullying of the very essence of the airport, and its metaphor for life!

How do airlines do this? Through the sly use of price discrimination. For those of us who were sleeping through introductory microeconomics (I won't make you raise your hands), the next two paragraphs give a basic introduction to the topic. The rest of you, can feel free to jump ahead! Price discrimination refers to the ability of firms to charge different prices for the same product. Why would they want to do that. Well, for every price there are people who are unwilling to purchase your product, and people who are willing to pay more. Usually, setting the price for a product is figuring out the magic point where you get as much money as you can from those willing to pay without making it so expensive that too few people buy your product. Say you had a form of transportation that could get people from DC to Boston in one hour (your product) that you wanted to sell. There are all kinds of people who would be interested in this, an intern trying to visit family, college students looking for a vacation, business executives needing to make a business deal but they all have a different willingness to pay. The college student is in debt, and won't shell out more than $150 for Spring Break in Boston, the intern is also horribly poor, but these are her grandparents! She'll go into $350 more debt to see them - who knows how long they'll be around. The business executive is going to fill out an expense form and charge this trip to the client. He'd pay $1000 for this trip! So what would you do? Probably charge $1000, and have only one passenger, which is more profit than charging $350 and getting two, or $150 and getting three! Unless, of course, you could ask people why they were traveling and give them the maximum price they would pay so that everyone flew, at a different price, and you got $1500! Price discrimination.

And that is exactly what airlines do. You don't fill out a form that asks you why you are traveling but they have all kinds of ways of figuring this out. What time do you need to fly? (Sunday night/Monday morning probably is business person, middle of week not so much) How inconvenient a flight are you looking at? (willing to arrive at 2AM? probably a college student!) And just by the kind of ticket you are looking at, they can guess who you are and charge you the max you are willing to pay (no less, so they maximize their profit but no more so they don't get nothing at all). Of course, all of this would mean that everyone on a flight was still paying the same price. What about college students who need to leave Monday morning? What about business executives who have a late night board meeting before they return to DC? How do you make sure you aren't pricing out someone who would be willing to fly or undercharging someone else? How can you make people pay different amounts of money for the same service? Invent "classes": Rather than wasting money hiring consultants to figure out who is who, put up different prices and allow people to self-select, revealing their preferences.

One little problem. Why would anyone select into First class, for the same service - a trip on the same plane to Boston - that they could get at a fraction of the price in Economy? I can see the airline execs racking their heads...

Joe: How about slight differences?
Pete: Joe, its the same plane, what differences can we make? We can't make half the plane safer!
Mary: Wait, Joe might be on to something, we could make it more...comfortable?
Pete: [Laughs] Like people would pay an extra $650 for a wider seat?
James: Maybe if we also let them board the plane first...
Mary: Make them feel like they are more important. Aristocracy. Call them, I dunno, first class
[Whole group breaks into laughter]
Pete: I like it. Maybe have the stewards smile at them a little more...
James: This is so crazy it just might work...

And just like that, the airline class system is born. The first cannon against the egalitarian airport is fired. And things between me and the airlines just got personal.

On a recent trip to Boston I experienced this war first hand. I had the pleasure of a one-stop flight through a city that had weather bad enough to halt air traffic but not bad enough for them to realize that the little delay would be an all day (and night) affair. It is at these times of shared frustration that the egalitarian airport shines brightest. Businessmen, grandmothers, navy servicemen on their way home, a thousand walks of life, in this instant on exactly the same path. As the PA announced that we would be an hour late, and then another hour late, and then two after that, the mutual inconvenience became a gateway to interaction. "Looks like we're going to be here forever," "Funny how nature always wins the day." "How about a drink? This will take a while." "I wish I wasn't in my uniform, I'd love to join you" "Anyone want some of my chips?" A joke here, a shared seat there and the lobby of stranded strangers has the din of old friends; the laughter of little children playing new guardians; the quiet murmurings of women admiring the light drizzle; and the animated pontifications of ancient men on modern politics; you momentarily forgot the passing time, suspended in fraternal limbo.

But limbo was broken by the shriek of the speakers as the man at the counter finally admitted (five hours after our supposed departure time) that there was no chance anyone was getting through New York that night. And so, the airline began a crazy scramble to get clients like me, who were merely connecting through New York, on direct flights to our final destinations. There was one catch, having realized too late the futility of waiting for respite from New York weather, the decision to divert traffic was made when only two flights were still going to Boston. Luckily they had about thirteen free seats between them; unluckily there were about forty of us who were scheduled to have been there by now. So who get's to go? And who gets to get jiggy with the airport floor?

Queue deafening awkward silence, as the people who moments ago were bosom buddies, became competition for the coveted seats. Did I deserve to leave? There was a mad rush to the counter as weaving mass of people lined up to press the announcer for more details, trying to weigh their options. But before we could shake out our moral compasses, the decision was made for us: "Could all first class and elite members please approach the counter. First class and elite members only please approach at this time." We stood around uncomfortably at the chilling reminder that we were not indeed all the same. The older woman who had been playing with a child, passes him to his mother, straightened her coat and made her way to the front. A man readjusts his tie, picks up his briefcase and leaves his new football buddies in silence. A handful make their way to the front, unsure whether to feel fortunate or guilty for the privileged status. The rest of us wonder why we hadn't noticed her ostentatious Louis Vuitton bag, or the close fit of his blazer before. As an increasingly agitated crowd made way for the chosen, so did the aura of egalitarian philadelphia that once permeated the air. In its wake, the cold sense that it was every man for himself.

We all did the mental arithmetic at once. Five or six people had made their way to the front. That meant that there were seven or eight more seats available for a trip to Boston that night. And that is when all hell broke loose. Any attempt at control was shattered. As soon as the first class and elite member tickets were issued, everyone lurched for the counter. "I have my fiance waiting for me at the airport" "I've been here since 11am this morning" "Could you please tell the manager that families with small children need to be given priority. We don't have any more diapers or anything." I heard a voice crack and saw a woman begin to cry, "He's been waiting there all day..." "I'm sorry ma'am there's nothing I can do, if you would just..." "Where is the manager? I demand to speak to your boss now!" Anger dries up tears remarkably effectively. "There's no way I'm not leaving this place tonight. You can be sure of that!" declares the Nigerian mother, refusing to leave the counter. The other Africans nod in agreement. "Can't these people tell there is a line?" a middle aged woman whispers a little to loudly to the other white people around her. A stream of frustrated Spanish expletives come from the front, where a group of Latinas are crying for the manager. People are again grouping together, but the divisions now mirror the rest of the world a lot more closely. The airport has ceased to be a safe place, it has joined the ranks of the rest of the world: me versus you, us versus them. Everyone who doesn't look like me is a threat. Trying to use their privilege to muscle themselves into what is rightfully mine. The airport was once egalitarian because no one could claim belonging, we all had equal standing. That is, until the airlines introduce price discrimination, and in true Orwellian fashion "we all have equal standing, but some have more equal standing than others"

I saw the community crumble before my eyes. And that is why I hate airlines. Because they sully one of our few safe places.

But not really.

Because, if we are frank, airlines aren't really to blame here. They - like every other luxury good - merely monetize an apparently inherent desire for us to have what is best, nay, what is better than what the rest have. The reason that an airport's egalitarianism is so special is precisely because it is so rare. We have come to expect that we are not all of equal standing - or at least will not receive equal standing - despite our de jure declarations that "all men are created equal".

And that is what is truly puzzling about our state of affairs. We claim to want equality. And I think most of us do. And yet we seem incapable of maintaining it. From consensus driven hunter-gatherers to extremely stratified empires; the Roman Empire to the Roman Republic; the Emancipation Proclamation to the painfully unjust compromises of reconstruction. Equal standing is an unstable equilibrium, that never lasts long, being subject to complete breakdown at the slightest offense. Airlines are not really at fault, either we or our idea of equality are.