Isn’t flying fun! I don’t mean those delirious dreams where you are sound asleep, twitching with REM and you jump into the air and just keep on floating around over people’s heads like Mary or Fred Poppins only without the umbrella, I mean flying somewhere on an actual airplane with one of those big honkin’ airlines.
And I’m being as sarcastic as possible.
Many of us can probably remember when you used to get a boarding pass from a real person instead of a machine that looks suspiciously like a one-armed bandit, and when you didn’t have to spend 15 minutes trying to figure out how to attach you luggage tag to your suitcase. (Peel yellow part A halfway to part B, slide part C upside down into handle D, attach part E to yellow part F, put your right foot in and shake it all about. …)
And remember when you didn’t have to pay a bunch of extra dough for having the audacity to bring two suitcases? This is a pathetic nickel-and-dime airline rule that causes 90 per cent of the passengers to lug large “carry on” bags onto the plane and fill up the overhead bins long before it’s your turn to board.
And get this young people – airlines used to serve actual dinners and breakfasts etc. for no charge! And some even had real plates and cutlery and everything, which caused the plane to weigh about 400 extra tonnes and fly at half the speed, and of course it was still in the dubious culinary category of “airline food,” but believe me, it was way better than a tiny package with eight small pretzels or a handful of stale nuts.
All of this is fresh in what’s left of my mind on account of last weekend Yours Truly and the Better Half and the Sister-Out-Law flew to Vancouver to see the Rotten Kid, the daughter/niece one, and attend her repertory dance performance at her university. The visit and the performance was excellent and I don’t have to tell you who was absolutely the best dancer on stage and a good time was had by all and we spoiled her as much as possible for the three days we were there.
It’s just getting there that drives you nuts, as any flyer, frequent or otherwise, will surely attest.
So we book our flight several long weeks in advance only to find, upon checking in by wrestling with a confusing and possibly evil computer ticket machine, that none of us are sitting anywhere near each other, let alone side by side. Oh, there are available seats all right — I pushed a bunch of buttons on the evil ticket machine to find some nice ones all together and when I confirmed the fact that I wanted to choose my own seat so I could sit with someone familiar, like a member of my family, a price of $30 came up. Per seat! I don’t think so.
I prefer the aisle seat. That way I can stretch my faulty knees and occasionally trip the stewardesses for fun. Window seats aren’t too bad for the planes that have two seats in either row, at least you can press your face against the glass to stifle your claustrophobic screams. The real madness starts with a three-seat row, and the middle seat. I don’t have to tell you which seat I was granted by the airline.
OK, fine, so somebody has to sit there, but does it have to be the very back row of the plane between two grumpy oversized males with heavy sharp elbows and a body odour that causes your pretzels to melt?
And the back row means the seatbacks don’t tilt back on account of they are smunched against the bathroom wall behind you, but the seat of the person in front of you certainly reclines just fine. Right into your face.
So the one grumpy guy, the window guy, he likes his elbow room, which apparently includes most of your own personal space and several of your ribs.
The guy on the other side was so grouchy that there was nowhere to put his three oversized carry-on bags that he plunked one of them, the heaviest one, right on the lap of Yours Truly while he attempted to shove a suitcase-sized suitcase into a space in the overhead bin that might fit a pair of socks if you try real hard. Finally, without so much as a “How do ya do” he plunks himself down, mostly in my seat, and proceeds to stuff luggage all over his feet and mine.
Mercifully, the flight was a relatively short one, and I managed to survive in a seat designed for an eight-year-old child, in a space that was almost exactly like I would image being stuffed into a high school locker would be like, and no hospitalization was required upon arrival.
The trip back wasn’t much better.
The airline deigned that my BH and I could actually sit together, but when a bored young lady took her spot in the aisle seat beside us I knew we were in trouble. She practically refused to shut off her cellphone, in spite of half a dozen requests from the stewardess (not kidding) and wouldn’t remove her headphones on takeoff and landing. And in the middle of the flight, one of her leather string bracelets came untied. She’s digging around and we look over and she’s lighting a cigarette lighter to burn the ends of the leather cord! (Again, not kidding.)
I don’t know about you, but I think using an open flame to light what looks exactly like some kind of fuse whilst on board an operating airplane might be a federal offence. Of course, the stewardesses were too busy handing out pretzels to notice.
So in closing, the next time I fly, maybe I’ll just drive. And the way the airport lineups are these days, I won’t even have to leave that much earlier.
Harley Hay is a local freelance writer, award-winning author, filmmaker and musician. His column appears on Saturdays in the Advocate. His books can be found at Chapters, Coles and Sunworks in Red Deer.