I have come
to loathe air travel intensely. The airline staff is rude, the food is
dreadful, the lines are sinuously long at the airport, and the guy sitting next
to you in the plane has a repulsive smell. If it is a woman, you are in
imminent danger of getting poked in the eyes by her knitting accessories.
Occasionally, it is a man knitting a sweater and lo and behold you have a
double whammy. This led me sometimes mistakenly to go for the emergency exit. As
you rightly guessed, I was restrained by the marshals on more than one
occasion.
Airline
staff is surprised when you show up at the airport with your bags. They ask you
if you have anything to check in while eying the two large bags you are
struggling to hold on to. This is a loaded question and if you played smarty
pants by saying ‘what do you think?’ or something like that you have just
successfully thrown a large log on the already burning fire. The counter staff
is perpetually out on an emotional ledge. You are on thin ice if you made one
wrong move or took a fateful step towards the weighing scale. The disdain they
show is so palpable that only a teenager is capable of missing it. They rarely
make eye contact with you unless you casually declare upon arrival your
intention to keep the hand grenades in your hand bag.
The security
check-in, I believe, is the birthplace of staring contest. The officer looks at
your ID card, your face, and then the boarding pass. He repeats this process several
times until something in him clicks and then he proceeds to stamp the boarding
pass. Since you have nothing better to do and eager to be available when the
officer is looking, you are also staring at him during the whole process. This
contest ends peacefully and he then hands over the boarding pass and ID to you with
a look that makes others nearby think that you were perhaps the one responsible
for stealing his only child.
The baggage
screening area is another area where there is potential for your standing in your
community to be diminished. If you have bulges, love handles and a few ugly
curves, I suggest that you grow long hairs so you can pull them over your face
and remain totally anonymous until the coast is clear. After you have stripped
down to your bare minimum and are bare footed, you go inside a scanner and pose
with your arms up and legs spread out as though you are about to deliver a newly
invented karate chop. The lady monitoring the scanner knows you look silly
because she has a face that cannot hide her smirk.
The boarding
area is designed to mimic a fish market and it does. If my gate is not changed
at least a couple of times, it is almost a given the airline is toying with the
idea of cancelling my flight. So gate change is a crucial metric for frequent
travelers and we all greet that with relief. Some of us even occasionally wager
bets on gate changes to see if it will be in the same terminal or a different
one. Predicting airline behavior is above our pay grade but we try.
Once you
board the flight and are settled in comfortably in your aisle seat, you start
cat napping. You are suddenly awakened by
a gentle tap on your shoulder. A big
guy, who looks as sharp as mashed potatoes, standing next to you, tells you
that you are occupying his seat and gives you the
are-you-traveling-for-the-first-time look. A lesser mortal will be decimated by
this experience but a seasoned traveler like you will fish out your boarding
pass to see if you still have the winning combination. Not surprisingly, you
both have the same seat assigned. The flight attendant after very carefully
examining the situation for one long nano second, decides in her infinite
wisdom that you will move to the middle seat in the last row between a guy who
has an aversion to showering and a woman participating in a non-stop knitting competition.
That is when you head for the emergency exit and the marshals decide to tangle
with you. I am sure you get the drift now.
It will be
unconscionable on my part if I do not mention the airline food. Eating airline food has given me a whole new
perspective on life and I have gained a great measure of respect for card
boards and other inedible items. Once I happened to spill some coffee, while
trying to dodge a sharp object advancing in my direction (yes, it is exactly
what you think), and it did not even stain my pants. Airline food technology
has certainly advanced! The saying goes ‘You can’t make chicken salad out of
chicken feathers’. Are you kidding me? Ask the airlines, they figured it out
all.
It is really
a slap in your face that you have to pay thru your nose for all these
shenanigans. Airlines are constantly wooing us with promotional emails promising
us world-class service and competitive fares and to them I want to say ‘don’t
pee down my leg and tell me it is raining’.
