INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Whether it’s cabin pressure or simply hurtling through the air at the speed of sound (R.I.P. Concorde), long-haul flights these days can be hilarious, bizarre or downright obnoxious.
The first hurdle is that one can’t choose the person that will be seated next to you for the next fourteen or fifteen hours, or even longer, if you fly Singapore to New York (SIN/JFK). That’s about 9,537 miles in 18 hours.
Being assigned to the middle seat is the ultimate nightmare. Odds are that you will be flanked by the two most obese people you saw earlier in the departure lounge, forcing you to ride with your elbows tucked firmly together and your lungs frozen at inhale mode.
If you’re middle-aged or over, you can bet that the stunningly attractive young person you spotted in the departure lounge won’t be seated next to you. On the other hand, you’ll find that the least frequent bather is likely to be aromatically at your side from takeoff to landing. And it’s an absolutely proven airline statistic that people seated at the window go to the bathroom at least three times as often as those seated in an aisle seat.
If you’re really unlucky, you could find yourself sitting next to the passenger you assumed could never exist. It doesn’t matter if they’re fat or thin, they’re going to suffer from a catalogue of nervous tics, involuntary jerks, constant farting or flailing arms. They might also practice open-mouthed chewing, slurping and shovelling their food followed by loud belching during the meal service and then continue to drink alcohol to the point of unconsciousness. And selfish beyond belief is the guy behind who feels entitled to put his bare, smelly feet on your armrest.
Believe me, I’ve experienced all of these passengers.
Once you are seated and praying that your neighbor is ‘normal,’ you then have to contend with conversation. “Hello? Was that you I saw at the maximum security psychiatric hospital recently?”
Conversation in the air is unusual in that it is generally done in reverse: One starts with exchanges of where you are going and what you will do. If this goes well, you rapidly progress to your innermost hopes and fears for the future. Finally, after baring your soul to a complete stranger it might occur to you to ask them their name. As soon as you have done this, the spell is broken and you begin to feel obliged to be friends and to stay in touch forever — which stops the conversation dead.
Your designated seat on the aircraft is critical to the type of in-flight conversation you will get. The further forward you are in the plane means you are far too important to sit with the other phlebs at the back of the plane. You simply don’t have the time to speak to other human beings unless they’re willing to accept a colossal invoice for the value you are adding to their in-flight comfort. These, of course, are the first-class passengers who merely allow themselves a slight nod of the head to others before taking their seat. This is their way of conveying, “You may be a pop star but I am a chief executive of a multinational company, and what’s more, I am a woman to boot.”
Business class on the other hand is different. In Business Class, people don’t talk to each other for the simple reason they’re actually minding their own business and cooped up in those blasted pods. On rare occasions when conversation does break out, the talk is of everything except business. Talk tends to drift towards the nerdy with comparisons of flights, routings and timetables, swapping of air mile totals and the revelation of the color of their executive club cards.
The friendliest and warmest conversations occur in coach. Here, magazines are swapped, romances ignited, business cards are exchanged and lifetime friendships started.
For any airborne conversations to flourish, they should be conducted eloquently and given the right conditions in which to blossom. For example, it won’t work on any flight under two hours, which rules out most domestic or European flights. This is because all the time in the air is taken up with eating, reading or landing.
Flights from London to Moscow or Istanbul are just about the right length because there is some time left over after eating and reading, but not quite long enough for a movie. Best of all are the long-haul flights, which include a night’s sleep. You often find yourself waking up next to a complete stranger, which brings you immediately to the intimacy level of marriage and asking, “how did you sleep?”
Once you’ve entered into an in-flight conversation, you’ll swiftly realize that there are two distinct types; one is a pleasant exchange of information; the other is an uninterrupted seminar on the other person’s specialist subject, which happens to be everything in the universe. If you find yourself involved in the latter, that’s when you find out that the only two movies you’ve seen in a given year are the ones that are being shown on this flight. This is where you pull your blanket up, your blindfold down and remain motionless for the next 14 hours, taking great care not to mention your name in your sleep.
The International Perspective column next Week in the Hernando Sun is “The Future of Flying.”
Sue Quigley writes regularly for The Hernando Sun. She can be contacted at [email protected] or 727.247.6308.
