If Air Travel Worked Like Health Care

As a frequent traveler, I sometimes whine about the indignities of emptying everything from my pockets, and the inconvenience of canceled and delayed flights.  Tonight, a flight sat on the ground at LaGuardia for 90 minutes, and the person in front of me reclined further than I thought the seats allowed.

On the other hand, I can look up availability and pricing readily on Kayak.com, and figure out what seats are best on seatguru.com. If I have luggage, it gets transferred from plane to plane with no effort on my part, even if I'm using different airlines.  Last week Virgin America not only delivered me from the West Coast to the East Coast for under $500, but gave me free wi-fi while I borrowed a free Chrome netbook with a battery that lasted the entire trip.

Here's a disturbing video superimposing the dysfunction we expect from the health care system upon the airlines.   My airline travel could be far worse!