The Perils of Air Travel

Because I fly a lot, the perils of air travel are often on my mind.   Naturally the one where a 75-ton piece of gravity defying metal plummets from the sky puts all other perils to shame.  I usually try not to think about that one, although I have always been amused by the phrase, “In the unlikely event of a water landing…” A water landing? That almost sounds routine.

     “What do you think Joe, shall we go for a water landing today?”

      “Sounds good to me, would you like some tea?”

Sure that Sully guy pulled it off. But isn’t he retired now? The point is it is way more than “unlikely”, and no one, including me, wants to think about those kinds of perils. Besides there are plenty of less life threatening perils to consider. 

Delays and flight cancellations are on the list. I know plenty of people who’ve spent the night in a strange airport after having their flight canceled. I’ve somehow managed to avoid that one so far, although last summer, rather than curl up on the not so inviting floor of the Baltimore airport, I rented a car and drove six hours to the much more inviting bed in my house in Connecticut.

Many people would count losing luggage as another peril of the so-called friendly skies. Again I’ve been fairly lucky in that regard but there have been a few times when my luggage has traveled separately. You can read about one of those times here:

http://www.jeffvibes.com/therandomvibes/2015/02/bags-fly-free.html

As I’ve yet to have an airline flat out lose a bag forever, that particular peril is not so high on my list. The one that is high (just after the 75-ton plummeting hunk of metal) involves the great mystery of who will sit next to me.

On most airlines, the seats are assigned so your seatmate is predetermined. But I fly almost exclusively on Southwest where you can sit anywhere you want. Because I’m a frequent flyer, I board fairly early, grab an aisle seat, and the game begins.

People who already have seats employ a variety of tactics to discourage anyone from plopping down next to them. Some avoid eye contact, apparently assuming that as long as they don’t look up, no one will sit next to them. Others go with the, “look as surly as possible” method of keeping the seat next to them unoccupied. After years of observation (and admittedly a little personal experimentation with both methods), I can report that neither of these approaches have great success rates.  

Also it seems that most of the Southwest flights I’m on are full anyway, so no amount of surliness (which I’m not good at) or lack of eye contact (which I am expert in) will prevent me from having to share my armrest with someone.

The real peril comes with just exactly who that someone will turn out to be. Despite my normally ebullient manner, while jetting across the country, I prefer to sit quietly with the New York Times crossword. So while some might fantasize about rubbing elbows on that armrest with a super model, my own preferred seatmate would be more along the lines of a deaf mute, ideally a very small one.

Just this past week I was in my aisle seat, neither avoiding eye contact nor projecting surliness, when a soft-spoken, unassuming man inquired about the window seat. “He seems perfect,” I thought as he settled in. Moments later he plugged his headphones into his ipad and began watching a video that involved the changing of tires with a loud torque wrench. I know this because his headphones appeared to be malfunctioning and everyone within a 5-row radius was now listening to the wrench.

Just as I was thinking, “This is going to be a problem”, another soft-spoken man, albeit a huge one, asked about the middle seat. He sat down, spilling well into my personal space and somehow, the torque wrench was now less of a concern.

Meanwhile, up in the cockpit, the pilot was experiencing similar angst about his seat mate. Technically his angst concerned his lack of a seat mate; the co-pilot was a no show. Since there were no other pilots to be found (although one passenger did announce he’d stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night), eventually none of us had seat mates, and instead we found ourselves in line rebooking our flights.

Over the years I’ve had all kinds of people share the ride across the country with me. There was the 300 lb. man who took the window and told me with a smile, “Don’t worry, there’s no way anyone will take the middle seat now.” And he was right.

There’ve been lots of people who somehow close their eyes in Chicago and don’t open them again until the wheels hit the tarmac at LAX. Those people are great to sit next to but I admit to being jealous of anyone who can sleep like that on a plane.

There was the quiet teenage girl who suddenly began to draw with quick, frantic movements causing her elbow to become a literal thorn in my side. Quiet is good but the elbow, not so much.

There was also the chatty woman who didn’t like to fly but loved to talk, and seemed to be able to do it without stopping to breathe. Fortunately that one was only an hour-long flight.

And there were the knitters. Two tiny women (neither one was much more than 5’ tall) and their knitting needles spent most of the flight, predictably, knitting. I don’t know if you’ve ever encountered a tiny knitter. If so, your experience possibly differed but these women, in addition to being tiny, were the quietest knitters I’ve ever seen.  And knitting, unlike frantic drawing, produces no jabs from elbows.

I’ll be flying again next week and if you come across me on the plane, I’m sorry that is the best surly look I can manage, and if your elbows are sharp, maybe my row is not for you. But if you’re a knitter, by all means, have a seat.