This is the worst thing I've read on Slate for a while

Really, it's been a while since I've read anything this bad anywhere. The World's Worst Airline by Elizabeth Spiers.

First, some context.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Wednesday, July 18 — An Airbus 320 with 176 people on board skidded off a runway while landing Tuesday night at the main airport in São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, and crashed into an office building and a gas station across a highway, setting off a conflagration that took firefighters more than six hours to bring under control.

The governor of the state of São Paulo, José Serra, who was at the scene, said that the chances of passengers and the crew having survived the crash and ensuing explosion that broke the airplane into at least two pieces were almost zero, according to the Web site of the local newspaper, Folha de São Paulo.

So what does Elizabeth Spiers feel after a tragedy like this? Self-satisfaction, of course.

TAM Linhas Aereas is the worst airline in the world. I've been saying that repeatedly since early April, when my boyfriend and I took a short vacation in Brazil and returned happy with our stay but traumatized by the air travel. So Tuesday, when a TAM Linhas Aereas Airbus A320 on an inbound domestic route skidded off the São Paulo airport runway, tried to take off again, and crashed into a cargo building owned by the same carrier, exploding on impact and incinerating nearly 200 people, I felt angrily (and OK, smugly) justified in my condemnation.

Well, at least we're being honest about our smug. Doesn't make you any less of a repugnant monster, but at least you're an honest monster.

The question is, what sort of trauma did Elizabeth Spiers endure that made her lip curl up and her head begin nodding involuntarily when she heard that almost two hundred people had died when an airplane skidded into a gas station and exploded?

We flew TAM from New York to São Paulo and then to Manaus, back to São Paulo then to Rio, back to São Paulo again, then back to New York, [...] and every single flight was delayed by several hours or canceled.

Elizabeth Spiers, you are a true American hero.

In many cases, the semblance of order was considered just as good as actual order, and the most obvious manifestation of this pseudo-organization is the creation of neat, orderly lines of people. Passengers are kept in line, literally and figuratively. For our part, this often meant standing in line for an hour in order to be allowed to stand in another line, which in turn led to another line, which was, if we were lucky, the actual ticketing line. Then there was the security line, the boarding line, and sometimes another security line, in case the first one missed the inevitable bottle of breast milk or tube of hair gel the would-be terrorist might use to hijack a plane.

That's right, folks. Elizabeth Spiers was forced to wait in line at the airport. I can only imagine that, ever since she heard the news of this horrific crash, she has found sleep impossible, wondering if tragedy could have been averted if she had only shared her traumatic line-waiting experience with the world. The airline could have been shut down; the airport could have been bulldozed; she and her jet-setting boyfriend could have enjoyed a vacation to an impoverished nation more capable of handling her travel.

Also, "Passengers are kept in line, literally and figuratively." What in the fucking fuck does that mean?

Standing in line was second only to waiting while receiving no new information as the quintessential experience of Brazilian air travel. After finally boarding a flight from Manaus to São Paulo, we sat for several hours and were served dinner by the flight crew—perhaps out of concern that the passengers would begin feeding on each other if left alone much longer, but mostly to compensate for not being able to update the passengers lest they grow mutinous.

Not like I'm jetting across the world as often as Elizabeth Spiers and her glamorous traveler boyfriend, but I haven't been served a meal on an airplane in like seven years. They stopped doing that forever ago. But of course, none of my planes were anything like the Lord of the Flies Darwinian nightmare that Elizabeth Spiers and her mild-mannered travel companions were transformed into after being forced to wait in line in a small Brazilian terminal. The endurance here is superhuman, really.

When it was manifestly clear that everyone had forced themselves to eat,

God I hate you, Elizabeth Spiers.

perhaps fearing an overnight stay on the Manaus tarmac, we were told to disembark because the flight was canceled. More than an hour later, the luggage arrived. Not content to leave the airport without one last episode of standing in line, we queued to get vouchers for the designated hotel, grandiosely named the "Taj Mahal," which in giant faux gold letters affixed to the entrance declared itself to be a five-star establishment—because no one else would possibly declare it as such—and featured a revolving rooftop restaurant with an Astroturf floor that creaked slowly clockwise to give diners a 360-degree view of Manaus' more colorful Dumpsters.

Ha ha! Take that, developing nation!

After our scenic breakfast in motion the next morning, we arrived several hours early at the airport, stood in line for the requisite half-day, and waited expectantly to be told that our flight was delayed. We were not disappointed.

Alternate version of the preceding passage: "After our scenic breakfast in motion the next morning, we arrived several hours early at the airport, stood in line for the requisite half-day, and waited expectantly to be told that our flight was delayed. We were not incinerated."

TAM's Monty Python-esque bumbling

That's right, the airplane bumbled off the runway and stumbled across a highway into an office building, whereupon the gasoline clumsily ignited, the plane oafishly exploded and 200 people were buffoonishly consumed by flame.

From this point on, Elizabeth Spiers stops comparing the fiery deaths of a couple hundred people to her own experiences standing in line and seeing her flights delayed. The reasons she finally gives for aviation problems in Brazil (short runways, too many flights through too few airports, poorly trained and poorly paid employees) are actually legitimate. Her own first-world bitching and moaning (nicely summed up in this sidebar--an account of the typical TAM flight that does not blow up and kill everyone on board) is frivolous and, taking into account the context of the article, positively odious.

It basically comes down to this. Elizabeth Spiers: you are a horrible person. After almost 200 people died in a disaster at an airport, you decided to vent your brainless frustrations with the airline in question by relating an inane series of personal anecdotes, implicitly likening your run-of-the-mill inconveniences to a brush with death. You have no perspective whatsoever. Do yourself a favor and join the Peace Corps.