The Long Descent: Ads on Boarding Passes

The airlines have found another way to piss me off. Delta, Continental, United, Northwest and US Airways have partnered with Sojern to serve ads to boarding passes. It’s bad enough that passengers have to deal with ads on barf bags and tray tables and in security bins. Now they want us to use our own ink to print ads at home.

What’s worse, though, is the spin. They claim they’re doing travelers a favor by inundating us with targeted ads. “We are eager,” Mark Bergsrud, a spokesman for Houston-based Continental told the Wall Street Journal, “because we expect to make a nice profit while delighting customers.” Delighting customers? How about concentrating on getting travelers from point A to point B comfortably and on time, and not treating us like, in the words of one salivating exec, “250 million billboards”?

That would be delightful.

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