Monday, February 15, 2010

The 'Handling Our Overheads' Department.





A few weeks ago the airlines had a strict no carry-on policy in place. It has changed a little bit now, but when I last travelled to the states it was pretty crazy. This condition was a reaction to the terrorist incident that happened over the Christmas holidays. The whole of the US was on strict alert and so anyone who needed to be traveling to that country had to comply and 'fly naked' so to speak. You wernt allowed to bring anything on board to any plane going to the states except a small hand bag or laptop bag.

I'll admit that in the plane there was a lot less confusion and time wasted jostling around looking for space in an overhead compartment. It was not needed. As we sat quietly waiting to take off it occurred to me as I looked up how much space was not being used. There was nearly two full rows of at least a hundred feet of horizontal cubical space above our heads. Each of the many individual compartments (on this flight anyway) were easily long enough to hold a full length person in a reclining position.

It made me wonder what actually had the over-all over-head been all these years for the airlines? And were they making money storing just 'hand bags' all these years, when whole 'person bags' could be accommodated . This could be a great additional income for the airlines companies. All sorts of people would surely pay extra to be able to sleep in comfortable overhead bins all the way to their destination. I know I would.

It occurs to me that these are the thoughts of thinking hands with too much time on their hands. If they can't keep busy working out ways to bed more rocks into different tight configurations, they just try to find ways to bed more folks having different flight considerations.