Royal Order of the Rug
The elite-level flyer’s little patch of hallowed ground
I fly often enough to have lost any sense of wonder at the miracle of air travel, but not enough to develop road-warrior expertise in gaming the system for maximum legroom and minimal wait.
I am a permanent citizen of Zone 3, forever loitering at the gate, watching passengers of greater privilege file in ahead of me to take up all the overhead space, and trying to guess which one of these howling infants will end up seated behind me.
It is from precisely this perspective that I first noticed what I now think of as the Status Rug. A number of airlines have them. But even if you fly more frequently than I do, you may have overlooked this common object, or even the details of the system it allegedly serves.
So, quickly: A routine manifestation of the modern air-travel caste system is a stanchion-and-belt divider that theoretically creates two distinct paths to the jetway. One side is for higher-status customers — first class, etc. The other is for the rabble. The function of the Status Rug is to help signal which side is which.
The idea is that passengers of privilege are permitted to tromp across the Status Rug. The rest of us may not. Look for it next time you’re at the airport. It’s there.
Now, this is the moment when you might think that, having identified some easy-to-miss yet commonplace object, I’m going to step back and tell you the story behind the thing — who designed it, its secret history, and so on. Maybe in the style of the famous Humble Masterpieces MoMA show (which highlighted Post-It Notes, safety pins, Bic Lighters, and Chinese take-out boxes), or one of the many design series to follow its lead. I will do no such thing.
I do not admire the Status Rug, and couldn’t care less who dreamed it up or what they thought they were accomplishing. It is not a humble masterpiece. It’s a pompous flop.
First, consider its form. Does it project status? No. It’s a perfunctory and frequently grubby thing that looks to have been constructed of workaday materials and ordered in mass quantities, with a strict eye on the bottom line. While Delta’s version is blue, I’ve seen red ones, too, and I can’t decide which is more ridiculous: Neither suggest the proverbial “red carpet treatment” that they must be meant to connote. In either color, the Status Rug looks like an oversized doormat (and seems particularly absurd and superfluous in carpeted gate areas).
Second, consider its function. Does it work? Not really. Since I’ve begun to study the Status Rug and the behaviors that occur in its immediate proximity, I’ve witnessed regular instances of non-privileged passengers mistakenly heading for the privileged side of the stanchion-belt divider, and vice versa. Both groups simply gravitate (logically) toward the shortest route, ignoring the signal of this floor-level sorting mechanism. Most travelers tromp over it indifferently, or don’t, guided by a formed line.
In short, the Status Rug is a quiet and unwitting farce. And as such, it happens to be an accidentally appropriate symbol of the contemporary air travel experience in general.
I realized this on my most recent encounter with the object, last month. I was, naturally, in Zone 3, and loitering as close to the gate as I could without seeming like a jerk. Idly, I contemplated the Status Rug. Finally the announcement came for “those who need a little extra time” to board. Then I watched and listened as the rococo airline caste system played out — with the Status Rug as its sad little stage.
First class passengers, of course, led the way. There were 16 of them. Then the call went out for “SkyTeam Elite” members, and “diamond, platinum and gold passengers.” The subtle gradations that separate the “elite” or subdivide the precious-material travelers are lost on me, but must mean something to somebody. More than a dozen of these people crossed the Status Rug, and Zone 1 was summoned.
These travelers, I later determined, had paid extra for Priority Boarding. “Once you experience the advantages of early boarding, you’ll want it every time,” according to Delta’s site. “Secure the best overhead bins for your carry-on bags and have time left over to get settled comfortably.” (The cost is listed as “From $10.” You have to go to the terms and conditions for the detail that Priority Boarding boils down to Zone 1 seating, and obviously you still have to defer to all those higher-caste types.)
Anyway, they all crossed the Status Rug, too. So by my count, at least 50 people had experienced this privilege by the time the gate agent finally adjusted the stanchion-belt divider — an action, by the way, that underscores the inadequacy of the Status Rug as a simple wayfinding tool — and called for Zone 2.
The plane (according to the safety-instructions card) was an MD-88, seating (according to the “Fleet” page of Delta Sky magazine) 160 people, and on this flight, there were about five empty seats (according to a passing remark by a flight attendant). In other words, about a third of the passengers received one or another form of “priority” boarding experience. Obviously, that’s a pretty severe dilution of “priority.”
Or maybe it’s just laughable, kind of like the Status Rug itself. Although that abject object succeeds at none of the tasks it was designed to perform, it does do a bit of symbolic labor. A routine and obligatory thing going through the motions of imitating the special, it’s a concise physical embodiment of a vast system’s cold-commerce absurdities: billions of dollars in fees, a side economy of passengers bribing each other for upgrades, and a boarding process that flagrantly defies logic and efficiency. The Status Rug silently reminds us that “priority” means paying ten bucks to avoid the Zone 3 life, the road warriors will always outrank you just the same, and the genuine wonder of flight is the last thing on anybody’s mind.
