I get back on an airplane on Monday. It’ll be barely a week since I was last on one. Gah! No matter what airline I’m on, no matter whether I’ve been upgraded or not, whether it’s short-haul or long-haul, very little fun is had.
Today I had an epiphany: I must stop expecting air travel to go smoothly. I must lower my expectations. In the last few years of constant travel the vast majority of my flights have been awful. So it is reasonable to expect that will continue.
From now on I will expect the check-in person not to be able to find our reservations, and the flight to be delayed or cancelled, our luggage to not get on the same plane as us, and that our reserved seats next to each other will become middle seats far far far apart where I will be seated between two extremely large men who have no concept of armrest sharing, smell bad and listen to really loud music, and are deeply resentful when I ask them to move so I can get up. My seat will be broken.
Scott will not get his vegetarian meal and will be reduced to stale bread rolls or starvation. I will get my meal but it will be so foul I’ll be eating the stale bread rolls with him. I will have seen all the films before. Or they’ll be films I really want to see but every headset is broken and the DVD/video tape will conk out halfway through. The babies will constantly cry and/or projectile vomit. The turbulence will never end. (A little bit can be fun, but a fourteen-hour flight where it’s so constant you can’t get up to pee? Much less fun.)
If some of that is averted I’ll be laughing. We’re sitting together? Score! Seat actually reclines? Bonus! Flight leaves within an hour of stated departure time? I’m in heaven!
It would be so wonderful never to have to fly again. If only transmat beams were real. Stupid lying science fiction. Stupid airports and airplanes. I spit on them all!
Is there anyone out there who still enjoys flying?
I used to love flying so much, and I don’t anymore. I’m always wary when people say things have gotten objectively worse because it’s an old-fogey mentality, but I think the fact is that airlines really have gotten worse. The little things add up to a big change in overall quality of the flight: seats crammed closer together, crappier food, more delays and cancellations.
There was a good article about this in a magazine sometime in the past year, but I can’t remember where… it had to do with how much the experience of flying is affected by people’s changing attitudes: the luxury and futuristic hope it used to represent, and how that excitement dimmed as the social function of flying changed, and it all became rather workaday and grim when you strip away the sense of specialness. I imagine it’s even more so for those of you who practically commute by plane.
Here’s wishing you adjoining seats and friendly skies…
What I have discovered on this little holiday I’m on at the moment is that if you’re travelling in America, your flight will be cancelled and/or delayed, probably both at once. The fact that there’s considerably more leg-room than on Australian flights will only slightly compensate for this fact.
Admittedly we’ve had one flight which went smoothly. Thanks Air Canada! Sorry that you f*cked up our next one though!
I wish you luck.
PS I just finished Scott’s Risen Empire (the one volume version) while I was on this trip, and it was awesome 🙂 I promise I will read some of your work soon! The Magic or Madness trilogy is on my list…
I actually love flying, but this is probably because I only do it about twice a year, and then the short one-hour hop to London.
Though I do get very very grumpy about the stupid ‘safety’ procedures. Bag + laptop bag allowed from Amsterdam, but only one bag allowed from London! Take of your shoes!!! Mind the 100ml max on toothpaste!! Stupid stupid.
never mind. Soon you’ll be going first class, I’m sure!
oh dear. i am filled with dread. thus far every flight i have ever had has gone smoothly, so i am due some bad flight karma, no?
My mum and dad don’t enjoy flying, and neither do I (I find it boring). But I have little brother’s and a little sister, and they love it. We all went on a flight together to melbourne and my dad said is was the first flight he’d been on since his very first that he actually enjoyed, because it was fun seeing their reactions as we took off (my sister, who was about eight, was bouncing up and down and saying “This is so fun, it’s like a rollercoaster ride.”) and when they saw the views and the dramas of their (incredibly small) bladders being full. The flight was two hours, my brother had to get up 3 times. Weird, I know. So, yeah, apparently travelling with children (must be over six) can be fun, but only the first few times…I ran out of books, so I didn’t have any fun.
Oh, I really enjoy flying. Especially the hanging-around-the-airport-waiting-for-a-flight part. I love being in between places all on my own with nothing to do but read and write. It makes me feel self-sufficient and fierce!
Thanks for the chuckle this morning. Lowering expectations is a good thing. Here’s what I love about flying though: all of that time to read good books! Seriously, a flight of mine from Florida to Washington, DC was delayed, delayed, delayed, and then when we finally arrived, we sat on the tarmac for an hour before a gate was available, but I finished a novel, read two books of poetry, updated my task lists and drafted two reviews. It was more productive than I have ever been at home!
Hallo… first time here. I started flying when I was a few months old, in 1958 (Beirut to London via Istanbul, I am told). I have travelled on business and for pleasure in Europe, Middle East, USA and various other places, going through 100 different airports all told (I counted once, delayed at an airport I should think) from Addis Ababa to Xian (actually Aberdeen to Zurich but it doesn’t sound as good) and Muscat to Nairobi.
And I still enjoy it, for some reason!… the airports (especially small ones where you can walk out to the planes) and the view out the windows, and a long flight over Africa. And I have never lost any luggage or had more than minor hiccups – so far. The planes aren’t as interesting to look at now as in the days of Caravelles and Comets and Viscounts, though.
My father, on the other hand, was a pilot from the RAF in 1941 till he retired on airliners in 1974 but he just wasn’t that interested in planes; he would rather have driven steam engines.
I’m with you.
I hate airports and the whole “air travel experience” that you so colourfully outline so much that I will do some strange things to avoid them.
For example, when I have to go to Boston for work, I routinely drive down. It’s about an 11 hour drive, each way. To many of the people in the office this seem more than passing strange, given that it’s a 90 minute flight. However, when you factor in:
* 40 minutes to get to the airport from my place, plus another 20 minutes in case the main parking lot is full and I have to use “Park’n’Fly”
* The 90 minutes I have to be there before my flight, because it’s an international flight, and because I _always_ get the extra screening
* The minimum 45 minutes late the flight always is
* The minimum 45 minutes it will take to wait for my checked bag, get a bus to the rental car terminal, go through the line and paperwork at the car rental place, and actually be ready to leave in the rental
* The nigh-60 minute drive (if it’s not rush hour) to the office.
Well, take that into account and that 90 minute flight is suddenly 6.5 hours door-to-door. And nowhere in that 6.5 hours am I happy or comfortable.
Balance that against the 11 hour drive, which I make in my own car, at my own pace, listening to my own music, stopping when and where I want to stop. A drive that goes through some really beautiful country.
And, of course, I can decide when the trip starts and finishes, rather than needing to get up at 4:00 in the morning to make a 6:30 flight.
I don’t have to deal with the “this plane is so small I can’t stand up in the aisle, and I have to incline my neck to fit in the seat if I happen to have a window seat” factor.
I don’t have to deal with the stereotypical business travellers who are so convinced that they are more important than everyone else.
And so on…
Of course, when I went to Melbourne last month I didn’t really have a driving option, and I given how much I just complained about a 90 minute flight, I probably shouldn’t get onto multi-leg flights that are more than 30 hours in duration, or onto the dubious pleasures of Heathrow.
i only really think flying is a hassle when i’m going on vacation and want so badly to be someplace warm and sunny with fruity drinks. when i travel for work, i’ve adopted a different mentality. that’s one of the joys of being a lawyer. flight is late? client still gets billed, i still get credit for working. plus i get to relax – no one nagging me, needing me. i’m all alone with my new favorite book and i get lost in it. all the while, getting credit for working 🙂
I don’t mind the short flights around Australia. I can generally stand a couple of hours.
Flying overseas, however, is bloody awful. I get plane sick, can’t sleep, and vomit, and it’s gross disgusting hell, and everytime I do it, I swear I’ll never travel again.
Love flying? No. Beam me up, Scotty.
The Australian Airlines flights from Australia to Japan are really good, the flight attendants are really friendly and actually chat to you instead of going back to their little room, and before you get off the plane they give you a little bag of Australian goodies, like tim tams and jatz and cheese and lollies that you can take with you. I’m going to Japan again in a few weeks, but this time I’ll be with my sister and her 6 kids, so hopefully that won’t ruin my previously pleasant runs with a bad memory…
I love flying. I love airports. I don’t care how often I fly or how many children I have (and I promise you, constantly crying/projectile vomiting babies are worse when they’re yours…though in fairness Fred once spent an entire three hour flight putting a straw in a bottle and taking it out again) I just love being in the air, going somewhere, travelling beyond the bounds of earth…perhaps being from an island aeroplanes represent connectedness, travelling through a space where the island is no longer an island.
Penni: One question for you: Have you ever travelled domestic in the US after 11 September 2001? And if the answer is yes I’m genuinely astonished.
I certainly don’t fly as often as you. I make a couple domestic flights a year and a couple to England. Except for sleep deprivation (I’ve never been able to sleep on a plane) I love the time. Quiet time. No phones. Someone else driving. Nothing else to do but read time.
I loathe flying. Airports are worse than airplanes — especially now that I have a toddler (currently happily eating cocktail onions), which means that I can’t just break out the earplugs, curl up somewhere with a book, and shut out the world. Or I guess I could, but Alice would probably wander away and end up on the next plane to Peoria.
A new peeve is the “special boarding” call for people who have mobility problems or are traveling with small children — they give you about 30 seconds, so by the time I actually get myself and said toddler up to the gate, they’ve already started general boarding, which defeats the purpose of giving us a couple of extra minutes to gate-check the stroller, get myself and the kid onto the plane, and make sure that the crucial toys and sippy cups and so forth are accessible. Luckily she’s a pretty good traveler, so far. In a month or so we are traveling from SF via Madison Wisconsin to Italy, and then a couple of weeks later back from Zurich. I am really looking forward to seeing Venice but God, I wish we could teleport!!!!
awwe i wish i could travel..but i am just a mere kid who haseth no money 🙁