A Beginner's Guide to Air Travel
My dislike for air travel is well documented, or at least was well documented years ago when some poor unsuspecting schlub asked me what the hell my problem was. (Of course, this is a very probing question, the answers to which could well populate the pages of countless doctoral dissertations for years to come, but I think he was just asking about why I disliked air travel.) The following is the reply I gave him. Although I wrote it over 10 years ago, it is still just as relevant to me today.
All the domestic flights I've been on have met most, if not all the following criteria:
- The flight is always more than 15 minutes late
- The flight is usually more than 30 minutes late
- At least one flight in the round trip is more than 60 minutes late
- The para-prandial abuse that they fob off as "food" ends up sitting in the pit of my stomach like a brick for, oh, about a week
- I always get stuck with either seat "B" or "E", no matter how early I show up (on 3+3 seating. Modify accordingly on widebodies)
- I always get stuck too close to the smoking section. (Amazingly, this still happens to me, even though there aren't any smoking sections anymore)
- I invariably get stuck behind someone with his seat fully reclined so that there's no place for my knees.
- I always get stuck in front of someone who won't let me recline my seat, even a little bit
- I often end up next to someone who loses his cookies, and we're not talkin' girl scout here
- The flight spends so much time on the ground waiting for clearance to take off, that I've already read all the articles in the airline magazine before we're even off the ground
- The flight spends forever waiting for clearance without the air conditioning running. I swelter, and the person next to me takes on the complexion of someone who's going to lose his cookies as soon as we're airborne.
- My luggage is the last off the luggage carousel. This Always happens. I'd like to know how they do this, as the phenomenon seems totally unrelated to how early or late I show up.
- My final flight into the destination city always arrives after the last decent restaurant in town has closed
Let me explain:
For me, air travel goes like this: I get into a big traffic jam to get to the airport, only to have to park my car in an area that's heavily populated by street people carrying lug wrenches and ghetto blasters made of old car radios. I get to jostle my way into the terminal to be greeted by a huge line. If I don't have tickets, the "have tickets" line will be empty; if I have tickets, both the "don't have tickets" and "express check in" lines will be empty. If I have express check-in, the "don't have tickets" and "have regular tickets" line will be empty. Basically, any line I'm not supposed to be in will be empty. Naturally, any line that I am in will stretch into the next terminal.
After having waited on line for 30 minutes, and having amused myself by kicking my luggage against the back of the guy's legs in front of me (because the guy behind me has been doing the same thing), I'll finally be the second person in line - behind someone who has suddenly decided to change his entire travel plans for the next year, and who wants to do so in a fashion that transgresses every single company and airline regulation. If I'm lucky, I'll get to referee the affair, but usually, I only get to watch.
By the time I'm up in line, the agent is really pissed from the last guy, and hears "Smoking, aisle" when I said "Non, window," (in spite of the aforementioned ban on smoking sections) and ends up giving me seat number "B" or "E" back by the rear toilet, and curiously tags my luggage with the "ORD" tag, no matter where I'm going. If he's really pissed (and he usually is), he'll also put a transfer tag on it to route it via Ouagadougou.
After being frisked at the checkpoint, I get to wait at the appointed gate for my flight. I usually get a hint that it's going to be late, because there isn't even a plane at the gate yet. Checking my watch usually tells me that the flight I'm leaving on is supposed to leave in 30 minutes. I look at the monitor for a flight that's due to arrive at that same gate, and find that its status is "on time." One hour later, I look at the monitor again, and the numbers presented indicate that the originating flight hadn't even taken off from its source airport yet when I looked at the monitor the first time. Obviously, the airline was either: (A) lying, (B) lying to themselves, (C) not in communication with itself, (D) expecting the first hypersonic flight of a stretch DC-8, or (E) just kidding. Talking to the person at the gate desk invariably leaves me with the lasting impression that they don't kid about anything.
When the originating flight finally arrives, I look at the monitor to find numbers indicating that they plan on putting the plane back into the air five minutes after it touched down. Back at the gate, I watch 352 people walk off.. meander off.. crawl off a 737. All of them have tearful family reunions for the first time in 20 years right at the source of the tube, so the remaining people have to wait for 20 years of family history to be recounted before they can get out.
It is at this point that everyone usually disappears from the gate area (including the airline employees, pilot, and other passengers). After a while, the plane leaves the gate too, so I look at the monitor again, to find that they've decided to move the flight to another gate. So, I wrestle my way over to the other gate (getting knocked down twice by arriving passengers doing an "O.J. Simpson" number to the rental desk (I'll admit that since I wrote this 10 years ago, the phrase "doing an 'O.J. Simpson' number" has taken on whole new meaning. Interestingly, it still works.)), and check in again.
Sometime later, I'll be allowed onto the plane. There I'll be treated to an hour long sit in the plane, on the ground with no engines running, and therefore, no air conditioning. All on a 90 degree day. Everyone stays in their seats happy as clams, except for the guy sitting next to me who'll be busy inventing new colors of green for his complexion. As soon as the aircraft starts taxiing out to the runway, all the suits on the plane (middle managers who do this for a living) will jump out of their seats and spontaneously decide to re-arrange all their luggage in the overhead storage bins (or more accurately, they just dump it all into the aisles). The flight attendants join in by shouting at them at the top of their lungs over a heavily distorted PA system to take their seats because "we're about to take off." This only prompts a few more suit to join in the game.
Once in the air, I usually get to listen to the guy behind me talking incessantly into his portable Dictaphone. For some reason, I can't hear anything over the sound of the engines except for this. I am let in on the following tidbits of information: He's the executive vice president of his company, he wants to make sure everyone else on the plane knows it, he's dictating a few dozen letters informing soon to be ex-employees that they're fired, and that he has absolutely no command or understanding of the rules of grammar of his own native tongue (assuming he has one).
The "meal" is so traumatic, that I'll block it out of my description here. The service is entertaining, though, because all the children on the plane have to squeeze by the meal cart on the way back and forth to the bathroom, which only gets the flight attendants into a homicidal rage. This is not a happy state of affairs, later when I have to "dispose" of that flat Coke I drank an hour before, and have to get past the service trolley on the way to the restroom.
While standing in line at the restroom, I will have an entertaining time watching the only two people on the plane who really do like airline food anxiously awaiting the arrival of their dinner trays. It is clear from watching that this will not be done until shortly before the wheels touch the runway.
Getting into the restroom rarely provides any relief, as it reveals that the people who had been in there before had no concept of hygiene or neatness. And once I start my business, the Captain gets on the PA and instructs everyone to return to their seats immediately. They do this just to watch the look on my face as I come waddling out of the restroom.
As we arrive over the destination terminal, a nasty thunderstorm will break out. The plane will bounce around, the seatbelt light will come on, and all the suits will jump out of their seats and start rearranging their luggage again. Meanwhile, the guy next to me frantically discovers that the row of seatback pockets in front of him doesn't have a single "accident" bag. An even more frantic discussion with the flight attendant reveals that they almost don't have them anymore, since "no one ever really uses them." This doesn't seem to help the guy out a bit, but thankfully, they find one in time.
Unfortunately, his aim is never as good as his luck.
Everyone prays that they'll land the plane now, before there's further demand for emergency bags; everyone knows that one whiff of that butyric acid can set off a regurgitory chain reaction that could well redecorate the interior of the plane. Of course, when the pilot gets a whiff, the plane lands immediately. As soon as it's on the ground, the flight attendants start shouting over the PA that everyone should stay in their seats until the plane is stopped, whereupon all the suits jump out of their seats to remove all their luggage from the overhead storage, and throw it on the floor.
Once the plane does stop at the terminal, the suits plot out homestead claims in the aisles, so no one can get off the plane. In the mean time, the ground crew has opened the rear exit to the plane, and injected a couple hundred ersatz passengers into the plane from the rear, so they can shove against everyone waiting in the aisle.
All that remains is the family reunions to push out of the way, finding that the only car left at the Hertz desk is an '81 Fairmont running on one cylinder, and that they've delivered the luggage from your flight to three different baggage claim areas. The punch line is that my baggage will be the last off the plane, and will only arrive after it's been reported it as lost to the baggage claim attendant, who first makes me wait while some friend of his tells him about his 7 month vacation to Hawaii.
All of this assumes that I don't have any connecting flights along the way to miss. If so, my problems are predictably compounded. I will say that this can be a bright stop on the trip. If it's St. Louis airport, I can sit in one of the bars and sip a strawberry daiquiri, munch some honey roasted peanuts, and watch "Abdul" and his brother picking up their shiny new F-15s from the McDonnell Douglas hangar across the way, and nearly knock all the glass out of the terminal as they take off under full military throttle and afterburner. That'll be the high point of the trip.
And you ask why I don't like flying?
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