Indignity is part of the Jetstar experience. This is why we fly with budget airlines. We understand that for a marginally lower air fare, we will participate in what is less a typical flight and closer to a form of live cattle export. You will be hustled towards your gate, spat upon like the scum you are and hosed down as you exit. This is fine. This is what we deserve. We are the underclass. We are dirt. We are pigs. Pigs do not deserve to fly.
As part of this pact with the airline, we also expect to be gouged if we are foolish enough to make unreasonable requests, such as asking for a piece of cheese and three stale crackers to keep body and soul together on the five-hour flight.
But there was one cardinal rule, a warning plastered upon the gate entry to every Jetstar flight: woe be upon ye who exceeds the carry-on baggage limit. Before every flight we, the impoverished few gather to have items that would be waved through by any other airline meticulously weighed and measured by staff, and if we fall a single gram on the wrong side of seven kilos, we will be charged such a hefty fee that we may as well have booked with a carrier that treats you like a human.
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Now, the rules are changing. In what must have felt to those in Jetstar Corporate like a breakthrough as big as the invention of penicillin, the powers that be have come up with a brand new way to charge customers more. Gone are the draconian restrictions on size. It is time for freedom to reign. Unfortunately, freedom is not free. Jetstar will charge customers up to $52 to put items in the overhead locker as part of their “priority carry-on” booking.
Is this new fare fair? That’s not what Jetstar is about. It’s a jungle in there. Every Jetstar flight is a rabid fight for survival as you hold white-knuckled on to your shared seat-divider and pray that the brawl in the back rows isn’t large enough to get the flight turned around before you land in Bali.
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According to the airline, these changes have been made in consultation with customers and crew. One can only assume the customers wrote in and begged them to somehow make the whole experience worse and more expensive. We cannot eliminate the possibility that there is a certain vocal portion of the Jetstar consumer base who have a sadomasochistic kink and get off on getting up.
Will this be enough for us to move away from Jetstar? Of course not. They know this. They know their base. They know they might as well run with the slogan Jetstar: What, like you have a choice?
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And yet, I cannot help but hope for a better world. Flying with Jetstar should feel like that part of Titanic where Jack and Rose head to the third-class party. There should be bagpipes and alcohol and high-energy dancing and a vague sense of foreboding as you realise this whole trip is doomed. It should be dirty but charming, the airline equivalent of a dog who lives in a storm drain. It should be simple, cheap, a little depressing but overall fine, like a Franklins that grew wings. This might not ever happen but we can dream. Except it’s probably best not to dream if you are currently on a Jetstar flight – they will charge you for hallucinating your own in-flight movie.
