A commercial airplane costs what to make? Tens, even hundreds, of millions of dollars. That's a lot of money to spend on something. If I were spending that much money on anything I would want mine to be perfect.
But as anyone who has ever flown on an airplane knows that airplanes aren't perfect. They usually get the basics down: staying in the air, not suddenly losing cabin pressure, wings not soldered on backwards. But the details inside the cabin aren't great.
Here's an example from earlier this week. I relegated myself to the back row on my flight back from Salt Lake City and glanced down at the tray table in from of me. This is what I saw:
Apparently Frontier (a fantastic airline) doesn't even get proper grammar for their millions. If this was a luxury automobile the owner would be outraged. It's amazing how tiny details like this get glossed over. It's not going to make or break how much someone enjoys a flight but it does seem tremendously lazy.
It's still fairly amazing we've conquered the sky. Now we have plenty of time to work on getting our language right.