A question was posed on CNN yesterday, one of those email-us-with-your-thoughts deals, about people who have the flu choosing to fly somewhere, and thus risk infecting everyone else on the airplane, rather than stay home until they’re better.  The countervailing factor is the $150 charge imposed by airlines for changing a ticket.

As expected, most of the responses took the position that it was the height of irresponsibility for someone with the flu to get on a plane and infect everyone around them.  And of course, they’re right.

What was surprising, however, was that few took the airlines to task for the primary stumbling block to rescheduling a flight, or changing out passengers should the ticketholder be ill.  If a flier is irresponsible for getting on board when ill, what of the airline whose “policy” is to charge a $150 penalty for any change once a flight is booked?

And lest we not see the bigger picture, it’s not merely a matter of the penalty, but the ancillary cost of having to purchase another ticket at the going rate, which fluctuates so greatly that it could cost twice or more the price of the ticket in hand.  While it is irresponsible to risk the health of others, the airlines do everything in their power to provide a financial incentive to take that risk.  After all, the sick person, the one who will pay the out-of-pocket costs, is the only one on the plane who isn’t going to suffer for the decision to fly.  He’s already sick. So it’s his cash or everyone else’s health.  And the airlines wins either way.

By removing the taint of our current pandemic from the mix, perhaps a less emotional view of the airline policy can be seen.  As an example, a few days before my flight to beautiful Des Moines, Iowa last month, I threw my back out as I tried to life a car off a young child over whom it accidentally rolled.  Well, actually I sneezed too hard, but that doesn’t make me sound nearly as heroic.  In any event, I was in a great deal of pain, and functionally useless for my trip.  Given that the purpose of trip wouldn’t change because of my back issues, we still had to go.  There was no option of putting it off to another day.

After coming to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to enjoy a medical miracle, it dawned on me that it might be better to have someone else go in my place. So I called Delta Airlines and put on my sweetest CSR voice, explaining my dilemma and asking for an act of kindness of putting someone else in my seat.

Far be it from me to challenge free enterprise, capitalism and the right of an airline to impose any restrictions it wants.  I knew when I bought the ticket online that it was nonrefundable, nonexchangeable, non-anything-at-all-able.  I could have paid full-fare, though I can’t say for sure that it would have meant that I could have changed names at the last minute. Plus, it was inordinately more expensive, and I’m too cheap frugal for that.

Not convinced that this is a problem?  Consider my flight back from New Hampshire on a morning puddle jumper.  There was a flight leaving at around 8 a.m. and another around 9.  Both planes were only half full, and I was ticketed for the 9 a.m. flight, but managed to make it to the gate in time for the 8, along with the three other passengers. 

In my most charming voice,

“Hi, can I jump on this flight even though my ticket is for the next one?” 

“Sure.  But it will cost you $150, plus a new ticket for $279. It’s last minute, you know.”

“But my ticket only cost me $59 in the first place, and your plane has 23 seats and only 3 passengers.”

“Sorry, but that’s our policy.”

“You would rather fly 3 people to New York and leave me here for the next flight?”

“That’s our policy.”

So while I fully support the right to contract, the authority of a business to make decisions that serve to benefit its financial interests and, to a lesser extent, the imposition of punitive rules by airlines enjoying the perks of routes sold them by our government to the exclusion of competition, let’s not be too harsh on irresponsible travelers who get on board an airplane to the potential detriment of others.  At least not if we aren’t similarly harsh on airlines who will soak every penny out of its customers with policies imposed solely to take advantage of the illness, misfortune or simple rational benefit of its customers, even when it costs them nothing to make things a bit easier.

Just maybe, if we’re going to deem our neighbors irresponsible for flying with swine flu, we might want to question why the airlines are all too happy to make money off it.  Their call, of course, but it doesn’t mean we need to applaud their avarice.