Coach Class Life -- Part Two

I've flown first class five or six times in my life. The first couple of times, back in the halcyon days of air travel, I was asked if I wanted to travel in first simply because there were empty seats. I dressed respectably while flying, and I'm sure that was a contributing factor to the offers. The other couple of times I've flown first, it was either because I was using air miles and no coach was available or because first class on a particular route was just a few miles more than coach.

I mention this handful of first class excursions as a segue into something I started noticing about 20 years ago, namely that coach seating began to suffer serious shrinkage. The seats on all airlines became tighter, smaller, and with less legroom, even as Americans got larger, topping out at our current 37% obesity. It was a bad combination. I got increasingly older and less lithe, and the seats kept diminishing. At one point in my youth, I could sit comfortably folded up like a huge praying mantis. Now I creak and adjust myself like a veritable tin woodsman. I'm about to make a point that is obvious but never clearly stated by anyone. People don't bring it up. The airlines fail to mention it, too. Being crammed in coach, especially bottom-dwelling, middle-seat coach, is more dangerous than flying first class. And as we get older, the danger increases.

Sure, the airline magazines mention that we should stretch in our seats, do some in-seat exercises, and take the occasional aisle walk, but nowhere does it actually state that sitting in these narrow-ass coach seats is riskier than sprawling in first class. Flight attendants don't even include exercise suggestions in their pre-flight safety spiels. Yet blood clots and deep vein thrombosis are real potential consequences, and the cheap seats increase the risk of these consequences.

Not only does first class provide drinks and comfort; it provides a healthier, safer trip. But that's not spelled out. I find it fascinating that the safety disparity between coach and first never gets mentioned. I can imagine some lovely ad, "Why let coach kill you when you can live in first class?" An anthropologist friend says that this may be an example of one of western culture's sacred little secrets that every adult implicitly knows but hardly anyone ever mentions. The class disparity between coach and first isn't just about food and drink; it's about space and personal safety. It is, he explains, not something one mentions in polite company. As in, "Hey, look at those DVT suckers back in coach!"

Those decades-old musings on the potential costs of flying coach prepped me for some of the cause-and-effects of the 2020 pandemic. Of course the poor are disproportionately at risk. Of course people of color are disproportionately infected, disproportionately dying, and disproportionately passing it on to friends and family. And of course plutocrats expect them to return to work at pre-pandemic wages while shouldering pandemic risks.

Minorities and the poor are all overrepresented in the 10 most common American occupations:  retail salespersons, cashiers, food prep and servers, office clerks, registered nurses, waiters and waitresses, customer service representatives, laborers, secretaries, and janitors. Not only must virtually all of them interface with the public in a high-volume way, they are (RNs excepted) among the worst compensated. Daily, they will run the gauntlet of facing both a large number of people who might be infected and huge total virus loads.

In addition, when they go home, they and their families are forced to share smaller spaces, which also increases the likelihood of shared contagion. People of color command less square footage per capita at home than the American average. That has become a big, lethal deal.

All of these elements and consequences of the virus equation are obvious. These 10 most common occupations make the American economy run, and they are all being asked to return to work under high risk conditions not experienced by the people living first class.

In terms of the probability of getting the virus, transmitting it to family and friends, and possibly dying, the cost of coach class living is higher than it's ever been. During this pandemic, American inequality has become a vehicle for illness and death. This has always been true, but now it's center stage in the middle of the virus spotlight. Now we not only know, but we cannot hide from it.

If the U.S. economy is opened back up before testing and contact tracing are ubiquitous and enabled, frontline service workers will pay the most severe price. "Risked their lives for minimum wage" will be their epitaph.


April 19, 2020
Bob Dietz