By now, you’ve seen the headlines, and maybe you’ve lived them. Airlines losing checked baggage with everything from loved one’s ashes to wedding dresses. Hours-long waits to take off, sometimes when you are already on the tarmac. You’re denied boarding because the flight is overbooked, or told to leave the plane due to weight imbalances (what happened to a fourteen-year-old girl travelling alone from Toronto to Victoria).
Even if everything goes right, you probably feel squeezed for every penny—Air Canada announced its economy basic fare will no longer include carry-on baggage for tickets purchased after January 3, so be prepared to pay $35 for your first bag alone. Economy seats these days average thirty inches of space between you and the customer in front of you, with legroom seemingly shrinking. If you are tall or plus size or have any intention of being comfortable, you’ll likely need to pay extra for a preferred seat for more room (which will run you anywhere from $20 to $199). You might have heard horror stories about lost luggage, so you put everything in a carry-on item and fought tooth and nail to get overhead bin space. Then you might be given a bag of pretzels for a multi-hour journey—if you want to eat more, you’re paying $12 for a ham-and-cheese croissant. The kicker, of course, is that you’ve already paid hundreds of dollars just to be there, fighting for leg space with the manspreader next to you while people cough ominously in the row ahead.
