The partition was gone.
From the podium, she could see all the way to the runway windows.
Leonard walked beside her with his silver cane.
Renee Alvarez introduced herself and offered no speech about improvement. "Tell me what doesn't work," she said.
Leonard tested the main aisle first.
He walked slowly, turning at different points, checking whether his cane caught chair legs or luggage stands. At the rear seating, he lowered himself into a chair with low arms and immediately frowned.
"Too soft."
Renee wrote it down.
"Hard to stand up from?"
"Yes. Give me something firm with arms I can push against."
They tested three chair types before Leonard approved one.
Gloria compared the printed menus at the front, center, and rear tables.
"Same food everywhere?"
"Same access, same quality," Renee said.
"Not 'same menu unless someone asks'?"
"Same menu."
Gloria nodded. "Keep it that way."
At service door three, she watched an employee demonstrate the revised inventory scan. One worker scanned the case. A second confirmed the reason code. The transaction appeared on a central dashboard.
"Looks complicated," Leonard said.
Daniel, standing nearby, answered, "It is more complicated than trusting one person."
"Good."
They reached the place where the annex had once begun.
Gloria stood there for a moment.
"You know what bothered me most?" she said.
Adrian waited.
"It wasn't that we sat in the back. I've sat in bad seats my whole life. It was the way everyone acted like the back was better for us. Like they were doing us a favor while taking something away."
Adrian nodded.
"People can survive a lot of inconvenience," Gloria said. "What wears you down is being told the inconvenience is for your own good when you can see someone else getting a choice."
Maya, taking notes nearby, looked up.
Gloria noticed.
"Write that one if you want," she said. "Just don't put my face on a poster."
Everyone laughed, including Gloria.
Before leaving, she added one more sentence.
"Respect is not an upgrade benefit."