The Insanity Of Air Travel
July 25, 2022
I don’t like writing about problems if I can’t offer some ideas for solutions; it seems like a waste of time and energy. I’d rather discuss ideas, or at least inspire some introspection. This won’t do any of those, and may only serve as a form of catharsis for my fellow road warriors. Hopefully it will at least provide some entertainment value. After all, you have to laugh at some of this stuff, because it’s beyond absurd.
As a frequent flier, I thought I had seen it all until two recent trips through Europe. The lines at Schipol and the baggage fiascos at Heathrow have become absolutely mind-boggling. We waited several times through security lines over 3 hours long, one of which stretched almost two miles outside the airport. If I didn’t have video evidence, no one would believe it. One friend missed his flight despite checking in over 4 hours early.
Unless you’re taking a shorter flight to/from smaller airports, the entire air travel experience feels hopelessly broken most of the time: It’s stressful, claustrophobic, chaotic, and uncomfortable. It might as well be addressed in the Geneva Convention as a legitimate form of torture. While the following is just one set of scenarios you might experience, there are many others: hours-long tarmac waits with no food or air conditioning; canceled flights, broken toilets, lost bags, overcrowded airports, and lots of cranky people. And while this may be an unlikely compilation of “greatest hits”, I have experienced every one of these things countless times. Most are the norm and occur almost every time I fly.
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF AN INTERNATIONAL TRAVELER
You start your day by getting up at 3:00 AM for your 6:00 flight and grab a quick shower, which is useless given what you’re about to experience. You pull up to the curb which is a chaotic scene, walk inside the stiflingly hot terminal packed with thousands of people, and take your place in a long line to check in and hand over your bags. You then proceed to the security line, which could very well occupy the next 3 hours. Finally, it’s your turn to take off half your clothes, belt, and hat, revealing your less-than-flattering, sweaty hat-hair. So much for that shower.
Next, if you’re a musician, you get to empty two large carry-ons full of delicate and carefully-packed laptops, iPads, electronics, cables, and adapters into 6 large trays in order to show it all to a baggage screener, attempt to explain what it all does, and then quickly try to repack it all while your still-beltless pants keep falling down. All of this provides simultaneous amusement and frustration for everyone behind you. You should have played the flute.
After you’ve endured the security gauntlet and start running to your gate, you quickly join the sea of people walking (painfully slowly) to theirs. Most of these people are blissfully unaware of anything or anyone around them, staring at their phones like zombies and pausing inexplicably to do who-knows-what. This is where the “character building” starts to kick in. At your gate, the time comes to start boarding, so you join the claustrophobic cluster of 200 or more people who all ignore their boarding group number so they can try to board the plane first and get their bags on before everyone else. You’re in boarding group 3, but you have the pleasure of seeing the guy in front of you - with boarding group 6 on his ticket - get waved through while the agent wishes him a “pleasant flight.” Frankly, I wish him the aftermath of eating an entire bag of Haribo Sugar-Free Gummy Worms. If you’re not familiar with that phenomenon, Google it.
Congratulations on making it past those outer circles of Hell. You’ve finally boarded a stiflingly hot airplane, only to be stuck standing in First Class, watching those around you enjoying their martinis and extravagant amounts of legroom, with full sets of metal silverware at their disposal. So much for that 3-hour security line you endured so they could throw away your grandpa’s Swiss Army Knife, which you forgot to leave at home. You’re stuck here because people ahead of you are slowly getting situated, pulling their iDevices out of their carry-ons, and proceeding to wrestle their larger-than-legal bags into the overhead bins.
Finally you make it back to 36A, your little 18-inch wide slice of hard plastic and woefully under-padded purgatory. 36A is the aisle seat you chose so you’re not trapped in a middle seat or window. Yes, window seats can be nice on shorter flights, especially for we traveling introverts. That is, until those 2 cups of airport coffee and bran muffins kick in around 90 minutes into your flight and your seat mates are sound asleep. And of course one of them wears a CPAP machine that makes Darth Vader sound like he’s softly crooning Sinatra, while the other is about 200 pounds too large for the middle seat and consequently spilling over into 6 of your precious 18 inches of horizontal space. At least you can stretch your legs… assuming you’re only 4 feet tall. We 6-footers are out of luck; I’ve inadvertently played footsie with pretty much everyone in front of me over the years. Not to worry; they always repay the favor by reclining their seat forcefully into my sternum. So much for trying to redeem some of this time by getting some work done on my laptop or watching a movie from the screen 2 inches in front of my nose.
Soon the real fun begins, especially if you’re even slightly grossed out by other people’s noises, smells, coughs, sneezes, nose-blows, or toots. Yes, it’s a veritable cornucopia of the full human experience, all within a few cubic feet. If you’re at all claustrophobic, this is it: you’ve arrived in Hell itself. You start attempting to breathe deeply and suppress the thought that you’re trapped in this 12-inch wide “seat” (I use that term loosely) for the next 9 hours. Or 17 if you’re headed to South Africa. The attempt to stay calm is quickly interrupted by the inevitable battle for armrest supremacy, of course.
But wait, there’s more! The person next to you (who should probably skip a few meals and ponder showering) keeps falling asleep and involuntarily flopping over onto your shoulder, while snoring and making other occasional noises. Then there’s the guy in front of you who really enjoyed his greasy garlic pastrami sandwich & fries just after boarding, which filled the whole cabin with an assault on your olfactory system. As if that were the end of that particular storyline, his meal revisits the cabin about an hour later, and with a vengeance: he probably farted an entire John Grisham novel between JFK and Halifax. Some of this was silent, but all of it was deadly.
Right about now, the toddler behind you starts screaming for the next hour - probably due to the damage inflicted on his still-developing nervous system, thanks to a certain pastrami sandwich - until finally he goes unconscious. This is just after filling his diaper with something so toxic, it cannot be of this world. His parents must be oblivious or used to it, because they never change him. Your mind is only diverted from this latest olfactory offense when he wakes up and starts kicking the back of your seat. Meanwhile, there’s more uncovered coughing, burping, sneezing, and nose-blowing all around you, so you wonder what disease(s) you will develop over the next few days. Finally, exhaustion sets in and you start dozing off, despite the headrest pushing your cranium forward instead of allowing you to relax into the posture of a normal human being.
After a few moments of relative quiet, an elderly lady nearby starts rifling through her purse and loudly rustling plastic candy wrappers from those mints no one likes, which must be left over from Halloween 1956. This reminds the guy a few seats over that he has a snack of his own, so he starts wrestling with a bag of Doritos for the next 30 minutes. I’m curious - just what properties do plastic wrappers have which allow them to violate the laws of physics, and be louder than a Rolls Royce jet engine at full throttle?
Now, it might seem crazy to think that an airplane lavatory might be a place of solace and refuge - but desperate times call for desperate measures. You get up and make your way back there to stand in line behind 6 other people awaiting their turn. The noises you hear coming through that door make you rethink your plan, but at this point the desperate need for personal space wins out. 25 minutes later you get in there and start the “drop your pants dance” in a space one fourth the size of Clark Kent’s phone booth.
At this point it’s worth noting for those of you who are less-traveled: LEAVE YOUR SHOES ON, because the floor of that bathroom will trigger the fight or flight reflex. Why can’t people aim?!? Anyway, you don the rubber gloves you smartly packed and cover the seat with an entire roll of toilet paper, and sit down for a few moments to collect what remains of your sanity. Just then, the captain comes on the PA to warn of turbulence and asks everyone to return to their seats. You think to yourself “Fat chance, Cap’n, this IS my seat now.”
So, you finish your alone time and return to 36A, where the occupant of 36B is now fully lumped over into your seat, and you have to figure out how to wedge yourself into the 9 remaining inches available to you. You eventually doze off again, and because you’re leaning into the aisle (thanks to 36B), the drink cart comes barreling down the aisle and makes impact with your skull. The blunt force is a lesson in both physics and biology.
Eventually the plane lands, and so begins that inexplicable ritual where everyone jumps to their feet before the engines have even spun down - as if you’re going to be able to disembark within the next 10 minutes, let alone from 36A. But doggone it, people are determined to prove a plane can be disembarked in 30 seconds, despite the group of elderly passengers up front who all have bags in overhead and need a little more time than might be ideal.
Finally you make it off that aluminum tube of tribulation into the arrival gate, which must be in compliance with an unwritten rule that airports should be a stifling 85 degrees and 98% humidity. And that’s just in places with air conditioning; if you landed in Europe or other parts of the world, just plan on not being able to breathe. Thankfully it’s only a 4 mile walk to customs, down a completely barren corridor. Don’t worry though, there are restrooms - after you’ve completed the customs and immigration process. Another note to the less traveled: use the plane’s restroom before the end of the flight.
Now you arrive at baggage claim, which is your next opportunity to delight in the full human experience, with all its sights, sounds, and smells. This a great time for the sport of people-watching, though. I’ve been long-winded enough, so I’ll just provide one observation here: there are precious few people on the planet who should ever contemplate wearing yoga pants, let alone 12 hours past their prime. If you must prioritize your comfort, please consider the eyesight of others. You can’t unsee some things, people.
So, bags now in hand (unless you’ve drawn that short straw and have to stand in another line at the baggage office), you head for the exit. It’s like a shimmering oasis in the desert; you can see sunlight and imagine that first breath of fresh air. Your pace quickens. You try to speed through the rotating door, but your bag gets caught. All things considered, this is a minor detail at this point. With superhuman strength and determination, you wrestle it free and burst through the other side.
Your journey through one of the worst experiences devised by modern man has come to an end, and the moment arrives. You gulp two lungs full of air and sunshine… but there’s one last cruelty to endure: the thick cloud of cigarette smoke you can’t avoid. All those desperate nicotine addicts are finally able to give way to their cravings. And after all we’ve just been through, I can’t blame them. There are few things I abhor more than cigarette smoke and the inconsiderate, cancerous clouds the rest of us have to walk through at this point in our journey.
Frankly, I’m about to take up smoking myself; I’ll just need something stronger than tobacco. Good thing we just landed in Amsterdam.
In the words of the great Seinfeldian poet Frank Costanza: “SERENITY NOW!!!”
