The Umeshism I always disagreed with the most, and agreed with even less after I actually missed some flights (mostly not my fault)...
I’ve wondered if Umesh was just much richer than I, secretly a Buddha, or if the changes in the US air travel system since Umesh was presumably doing most of his travel (pre-9/11, switch from heavily regulated/subsidized direct flights with wasteful regular departures to hub-and-spoke with connections, luxury to mass affordability downplaying of travel agents, and increasing fragility/delays/cascades of failures) means that we are comparing apples and oranges here.
(In particular, I’m thinking of accounts I’ve read of how a lot of flights used to be more ‘bus’-like, where you just hopped onto whatever plane happened to be there when you bothered to stroll in, and they departed 90% empty routinely. I saw an example of this in Hawaii on the local commuter airlines where my sister missed her flight to the next island but it was no big deal because there was another leaving >90% empty in an hour anyway so she just had a snack and chatted with us as we waited for a real flight out—the sort of flight that missing has consequences like ‘missing your connection in LA’ or ‘non-refundable ticket’. If all my flights were like that, and I wasn’t “missing” occasional flights, I would agree with that Umeshism!)
I must quote the original Umeshism here:
The Umeshism I always disagreed with the most, and agreed with even less after I actually missed some flights (mostly not my fault)...
I’ve wondered if Umesh was just much richer than I, secretly a Buddha, or if the changes in the US air travel system since Umesh was presumably doing most of his travel (pre-9/11, switch from heavily regulated/subsidized direct flights with wasteful regular departures to hub-and-spoke with connections, luxury to mass affordability downplaying of travel agents, and increasing fragility/delays/cascades of failures) means that we are comparing apples and oranges here.
(In particular, I’m thinking of accounts I’ve read of how a lot of flights used to be more ‘bus’-like, where you just hopped onto whatever plane happened to be there when you bothered to stroll in, and they departed 90% empty routinely. I saw an example of this in Hawaii on the local commuter airlines where my sister missed her flight to the next island but it was no big deal because there was another leaving >90% empty in an hour anyway so she just had a snack and chatted with us as we waited for a real flight out—the sort of flight that missing has consequences like ‘missing your connection in LA’ or ‘non-refundable ticket’. If all my flights were like that, and I wasn’t “missing” occasional flights, I would agree with that Umeshism!)