This month, a video of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. popped up on my feed. Carrying a blue gown shirt and tie, the bronzed, tin-voiced secretary of the US Division of Well being and Human Providers started doing pull-ups. Whereas movies of septuagenarians doing body-weight is perhaps uncommon if not odd, performing workouts on movie has kind of turn into Kennedy’s modus operandi. Watching this man, who was born in 1954, push and pull his physique in aggressive methods is meant to underscore his job as the person accountable for the nation’s well being. If he’s wholesome, the nation have to be. However what made this explicit video unusual was that he was doing these pull-ups at Reagan airport in Washington, DC.
Behind Kennedy is a departures board. Even farther again are restroom and defibrillator indicators. His video is papered with the sounds and sights of hapless vacationers rolling their carry-ons via the terminal.
The stunt was a part of a press convention by which Kennedy and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy introduced that they’d make investments $1 billion in making airports a wellness area. That would come with, the administration says, putting in health club tools, extra youngsters’s play areas, and more healthy meals choices. Extra broadly, the funding follows proclamations from Duffy that he desires to convey extra “civility” to the flying expertise, and as a primary step in that mission, he inspired vacationers to decorate higher.
This didn’t go over too properly, and it’s not obscure why: Airports are a foul place and workouts or dressing higher is not going to repair their badness.
Airports are the place individuals need effectivity. The very best airports are ones the place all the pieces feels much less painful — much less ready in strains, much less delays, much less fluorescent lighting, and all the pieces in between. The truth is, individuals spend cash to make your entire course of much less depressing. They’ll shell out cash for TSA PreCheck, a characteristic that shortens the safety strains and allow you to hold sneakers on (earlier than TSA removed that coverage this yr). They’ll spend cash for entry to already-crowded lounges, simply in order that they don’t must kill time on the even-more miserable gates.
Nobody desires to go to the airport and work out. The one time a health club might come useful is within the occasion of a significant delay or if the health club inadvertently turns into a extra humane place to attend to your flight than the airport bar (mendacity down on a yoga mat in peace and quiet is perhaps good!). More healthy choices at a liminal area like an airport are good in principle, however one of many few joys is that meals guidelines don’t apply. You possibly can have alcohol within the morning, eat at a spot that advertises itself as an abbreviated model of Chili’s, and even check your luck with sushi.
Including gyms and wholesome meals to make air journey higher isn’t immediately making air journey higher.
However maybe the outrage is a part of the purpose. Getting upset over a health club you’re by no means going to make use of, or a foul salad you’re by no means going to eat, or watching an previous tan man battle to do some jungle health club workouts, attracts consideration away from the issues Duffy and his cohort received’t repair.
There’s nonetheless a scarcity of FAA flight controllers, which have led to security issues and flight delays. Within the occasion of flight delays, Duffy and Trump’s administration dissolved a Biden-era initiative for airways to compensate passengers for prolonged delays. Moreover, airfare is costlier in comparison with a yr in the past and people figures don’t embody all of the upcharges (e.g., sitting towards the entrance of the principle cabin, checked baggage, and many others.) that prospects select to make flights extra bearable. Mentioned airways have additionally made seats smaller and smaller to extend income.
The terrible state of air journey is without doubt one of the few issues that transcends political partisanship. Go to the airport proper now, ask anybody ready for his or her flight to board, and they’re going to inform you methods it might enhance. Greater seats, higher offers, much less delays, extra compensation for delays, not being handled like cattle — these are the issues individuals need. Not 15 pull-ups and enterprise informal.
