The Exception that Proves the Rule

Our American Airlines flight left the gate at Boston on time. We landed in St. Louis when we were supposed to. We departed St. Louis on time, and arrived in San Diego right on the schedule. The flight attendants were courteous on both flights, even though the planes were full. Four days later, our flight to San Jose departed and arrived on time. Coming home with a connecting flight through DFW the next week was the same banal on-time performance, same considerate on-board service. Furthermore, our undamaged, checked baggage came around the carrousel within 15 minutes of landing back in Boston.

When do you think this happened? Twenty years ago? Ten years ago? Wrong. It was just last week. Is there a new attitude at the airlines, or did we just get lucky?

This kind of feat in 2008 is startling in contrast to what we’ve come to expect in air travel. The rule in modern commercial air travel is chaos, rudeness, arrogance, total lack of information, and maddening delays. The exception that proves the rule is the experience we had last week, instead of the other way around, as it should be and once was. I wish it weren’t so and that I could report otherwise. But I was just thankful we had the exceptional experience this time.

If you’re old enough to remember listening to your music on vinyl LP records, even now, when you listen to a CD or mpeg version of an old favorite, do you still flinch as you approach the point in the song where that annoying skip used to be? Do you expect it, but are pleasantly surprised when there is no skip?

Ditto with our airline experiences, especially if you’re old enough to remember the good old days when flying was kind of exciting, a pleasant adventure; when everybody wore nice clothes and were on their best behavior; when courtesy in the skies was a competitive advantage for airlines and when the business was, in fact, competitive.

Today, unfortunately, it’s the kind of adventure like hiking into unexplored territory, when you wonder when and where you’ll wind up and who or what is going to make your day miserable: TSA, the airline, the flight attendants, another passenger, the FAA, or the weather. So when the experience goes smoothly, you keep flinching, expecting things to go haywire any minute.

But as one who is quick to write letters of complaint, when my airline experience goes well, I think I owe it to the business to say so, even though I know it is the exception that proves the rule.