Keeping The Lies Straight With Deception Software

The movie Up In The Air has George Clooney as Ryan Bingham, a travelling corporate downsizer, who flies from city to city helping corporations fire people en masse.

He’s a lost soul who prefers being in the air to dealing with whatever is on the ground, though that’s not how he sees it.

In the book, by the brilliant Walter Kirn, even the plane loving Bingham loses it on occasion, noting the gap between what he is being told by airlines and what is actually occurring.

“How do they keep their lies straight in this business?” he asks. “They must use deception software, some suite of programs that synchronizes their falsehoods system-wide…they haven’t spoken the truth to me in years.”

Bingham, remember, is the plane industry’s best customer. He flies every day, even ditching his apartment since he prefers airport lounges.

And they still make him mad.

Today Ryanair and Wizz Air reported a boom in demand for air travel.

Wonderful news, right?

Anything else going on, at all? Anything they might want to tell us about?

There is zero recognition in the statements that flying just now is a miserable experience, even if your flight doesn’t get cancelled.

Heathrow stinks as crippling staff shortages lead to chaos.

At Stansted, customers are sleeping on the floor. 

Ministers say airports and airlines released too many people after furlough, because they didn’t anticipate that there would be huge demand for holidays after two years stuck at home.

Anyone could have foreseen this, but in the travel business, it is always someone else’s fault.

Perhaps it would be good if an airport or an airline admitted to at least one thing they themselves have got wrong, all on their own.

Otherwise, they’re just lying to us, aren’t they?