Airline shakedowns.

• Author: Hightower, Jim
• Position: Vox Populist - American Airlines Inc. abd RyanAir Ltd.

If you and your family are planning a trip this year, American Airlines has a deal for you: It will make an "effort" to seat you next to each other.

That is, if you pay a fee for it.

Being seated together is no longer a gracious service, but a calculated nickel-and-dime opportunity for the corporation to squeeze more out of you. And, actually, it's quite a bit more than a nickel or a dime. To get "family seat reservations," American says it will hit you up for $25, each way.

Of course, paying this corporate tax won't guarantee that your seats will actually stay attached to the plane. American, you might recall, had a rash of flights grounded last fall, due to the rather startling in-flight experience of passenger seats suddenly coming loose. At the time, the airline's executives rushed to suggest that disgruntled members of the Transportation Workers Union were behind this odd malfunction.

Well, no. Internal documents have now revealed that the sabotage came right out of the executive suite. In order to charge additional fees to customers wanting a bit of extra legroom, the geniuses at the top ordered that the seating plan on American's 757s be reconfigured. Fine ... except they then tried to get the reinstallations done on the cheap.

Rather than having their own highly skilled and experienced mechanics do the work, they outsourced it to low-wage, non-union contractors. The contractors, in turn, "misinterpreted" American's maintenance manual, did "incorrect installations" of seats, and even had students do some of the installations.

Finally admitting to this shoddy management, American's hierarchy resorted to cold corporatethink to rationalize it: "Our competitors [do maintenance] where it is most cost-effective," they explained, so "we must similarly adapt."

Fee-fie-foe-fum, I smell another fee coming on. "You want safety? Hey, we've got a fee for that."

Those who say we should run government like a business must not be frequent flyers.

Flying, which was once a fairly good experience, now amounts to being herded, harassed, barked at, and squeezed while being dunned every step of the way for fee after onerous fee.

Make a reservation? Do it...