Travel is a chaotic, exhausting experience exacerbated by people who forget the social contract the moment they step foot in an airport. I travel constantly. I chase miles and have status on three airlines. I read websites about how to best manage airline and hotel loyalty programs, airline credit cards, and the like. I have an app that shows me where every single plane currently flying is and other aviation geek information. I have an app that lets me listen to air traffic control chatter. There is a small park near the edge of LAX where I sit and watch incoming planes landing. I have favorite planes (Airbus 380, Boeing 787, Boeing 757, Boeing 737) and planes I truly despise (CRJ 700, Embraer 145). In short, I have made a necessary condition of my work something of a hobby.
As you might expect, I have a great many travel-related opinions, most but not all of which are wildly uncharitable. For instance, United is Satan’s airline and I will take almost any convoluted route to avoid flying them. Alaska Airlines planes smell weird. The food on American Airlines flights is worse than what I imagine dog food tastes like. Delta serves delicious Biscoff cookies and the flight attendants wear festive purple uniforms. The Atlanta airport is a cruel mistress. There is a bathroom attendant in the Charlotte Airport who likes to sing gospel as she does her work, serenading weary passengers and she is a delight. LaGuardia is unspeakable. You basically have to walk ten miles from the gate to customs in Montreal. The Indianapolis airport is the best airport in the United States; fight me. There aren’t nearly enough women or people of color serving as pilots. It is incredibly grating to get a chatty pilot who wants to narrate the entire flight when all you want to do is sleep or stare into the Grand Canyon. The way people treat flight attendants is, for the most part, absolutely disgraceful.
People have no sense of personal space when sitting at the gate. They use the seats around them for their personal items and luggage as if it is entirely reasonable to take up three seats while countless people stand, staring at them with fatigued malice. People are strangely obsessed with boarding early as if they want to sit on the plane longer than necessary. They hover around the boarding gate, no matter how often the gate agents provide clear, concise instructions about boarding. There is signage. There are often overhead monitors detailing the process. And still people hover whether they are in Group 1 or Group 7 and boarding has yet to begin. Then there are those who feel the need to monitor the boarding line, questioning the presence of anyone they deem wrongly positioned within the hierarchy of the travel universe. They love to ask if you are in the appropriate line or they try, inelegantly, to glance at your boarding pass, or they huff aggressively, desperate for you to acknowledge that they have something to say.
Airlines oversell flights and then act like they had no hand in it as they frantically call for volunteers to change their travel plans and take later flights. There are all kinds of mysterious “mechanical issues” that delay flights in infuriating fifteen-minute increments until the airline gives up and stops communicating to passengers altogether. When flights are cancelled, airlines will do anything to abdicate responsibility, handing you a $10 meal voucher even though there is nothing open and $10 in an airport will probably only get you a bottle of water because the prices, for everything, are outrageous.
I pick my seat on any given flight for specific reasons but all too often, some couple didn’t pick seats together and just have to sit next to each other or, like, they won’t survive the flight. They plead for someone, anyone, to switch seats with them and then the flight attendants get in on it and everyone is staring at you, judging you for being reluctant to give up your seat when all you want to do is put your noise-cancelling headphones on and get to your destination. Some flights feel more like a menagerie, so many little dogs in overpriced purses, yipping and yapping while their owners coo at them and expect you to be charmed. I’m allergic, no thank you.
There are, inevitably, crying babies and overexcited children who have simply had enough four hours into a seven-hour flight. I actually don’t mind the children and feel quite a lot of tenderness toward them on a plane because I, too, want to not be on a plane. I, too, want to cry and be held. What I mind is all the adults who sigh and roll their eyes and mutter under their breath while children act like children and are generally doing the best they can as their parents pray for mercy or death. (...)
I have opinions about how people walk through the concourse, how people should go through security, how there should be separate lanes for experienced travelers and infrequent travelers, how people watch videos on their phones without headphones, how they stand, even in the last row, the minute the plane pulls into the gate, even though it will be quite some time before they deplane, and on and on and on the list goes.
I reserve my most passionate opinions, however, for carry-on luggage. If you are ever wondering if you should check your luggage or carry-on, the answer is that you should check your luggage. I don’t care why you want to carry-on your luggage. You should check your bag. I say this with the caveat that air travel is prohibitively expensive and baggage fees are horrible and if you can’t afford the fees, you do what you must. For everyone else, check your bag.
In 2007, airlines began instituting baggage fees to offset the cost of jet fuel and once they realized they could charge for luggage and other basic amenities of air travel, there was no looking back. Once people realized they were going to have to pay even more than the cost of their plane ticket to travel, all hell broke loose with carry-ons. Suddenly packing for trips of most any length became an exercise in austerity.
Writers, in particular, love to discuss the ways in which they contort themselves toward austerity to go on book tour. Nearly every writer active on social media has discussed, at length, how they will travel or have traveled with only a carry-on suitcase for a five-day trip or ten-day trip or three-week trip. It is something of a competition, as if there is valor in self-imposed deprivation. They offer tips, like rolling your clothes or stuffing your socks in your shoes or traveling without toiletries. They talk about wearing the same, increasingly soiled outfit for days on end because hey, you can wash it in the hotel bathroom sink or not.
When people talk about checking a bag, the conversations are ominous. There is always a story, a dark, dark story about the one time a suitcase was lost. Ultimately, life went on but there were moments of unbearable inconvenience. This story of the lost suitcase is so terrifying, people are willing to do anything to avoid it even though in reality, most airlines have a pretty solid grasp on luggage handling. In April 2019, airlines only mishandled 5.44 of every 1,000 bags they processed.
This fear of lost luggage is so wildly blown out of proportion that sometimes, checking a bag feels like an act of rebellion. I almost always check a bag. I check a very big bag.
[ed. Spare me. Here's the kicker: "In 2007, airlines began instituting baggage fees to offset the cost of jet fuel and once they realized they could charge for luggage and other basic amenities of air travel, there was no looking back."]
As you might expect, I have a great many travel-related opinions, most but not all of which are wildly uncharitable. For instance, United is Satan’s airline and I will take almost any convoluted route to avoid flying them. Alaska Airlines planes smell weird. The food on American Airlines flights is worse than what I imagine dog food tastes like. Delta serves delicious Biscoff cookies and the flight attendants wear festive purple uniforms. The Atlanta airport is a cruel mistress. There is a bathroom attendant in the Charlotte Airport who likes to sing gospel as she does her work, serenading weary passengers and she is a delight. LaGuardia is unspeakable. You basically have to walk ten miles from the gate to customs in Montreal. The Indianapolis airport is the best airport in the United States; fight me. There aren’t nearly enough women or people of color serving as pilots. It is incredibly grating to get a chatty pilot who wants to narrate the entire flight when all you want to do is sleep or stare into the Grand Canyon. The way people treat flight attendants is, for the most part, absolutely disgraceful.People have no sense of personal space when sitting at the gate. They use the seats around them for their personal items and luggage as if it is entirely reasonable to take up three seats while countless people stand, staring at them with fatigued malice. People are strangely obsessed with boarding early as if they want to sit on the plane longer than necessary. They hover around the boarding gate, no matter how often the gate agents provide clear, concise instructions about boarding. There is signage. There are often overhead monitors detailing the process. And still people hover whether they are in Group 1 or Group 7 and boarding has yet to begin. Then there are those who feel the need to monitor the boarding line, questioning the presence of anyone they deem wrongly positioned within the hierarchy of the travel universe. They love to ask if you are in the appropriate line or they try, inelegantly, to glance at your boarding pass, or they huff aggressively, desperate for you to acknowledge that they have something to say.
Airlines oversell flights and then act like they had no hand in it as they frantically call for volunteers to change their travel plans and take later flights. There are all kinds of mysterious “mechanical issues” that delay flights in infuriating fifteen-minute increments until the airline gives up and stops communicating to passengers altogether. When flights are cancelled, airlines will do anything to abdicate responsibility, handing you a $10 meal voucher even though there is nothing open and $10 in an airport will probably only get you a bottle of water because the prices, for everything, are outrageous.
I pick my seat on any given flight for specific reasons but all too often, some couple didn’t pick seats together and just have to sit next to each other or, like, they won’t survive the flight. They plead for someone, anyone, to switch seats with them and then the flight attendants get in on it and everyone is staring at you, judging you for being reluctant to give up your seat when all you want to do is put your noise-cancelling headphones on and get to your destination. Some flights feel more like a menagerie, so many little dogs in overpriced purses, yipping and yapping while their owners coo at them and expect you to be charmed. I’m allergic, no thank you.
There are, inevitably, crying babies and overexcited children who have simply had enough four hours into a seven-hour flight. I actually don’t mind the children and feel quite a lot of tenderness toward them on a plane because I, too, want to not be on a plane. I, too, want to cry and be held. What I mind is all the adults who sigh and roll their eyes and mutter under their breath while children act like children and are generally doing the best they can as their parents pray for mercy or death. (...)
I have opinions about how people walk through the concourse, how people should go through security, how there should be separate lanes for experienced travelers and infrequent travelers, how people watch videos on their phones without headphones, how they stand, even in the last row, the minute the plane pulls into the gate, even though it will be quite some time before they deplane, and on and on and on the list goes.
I reserve my most passionate opinions, however, for carry-on luggage. If you are ever wondering if you should check your luggage or carry-on, the answer is that you should check your luggage. I don’t care why you want to carry-on your luggage. You should check your bag. I say this with the caveat that air travel is prohibitively expensive and baggage fees are horrible and if you can’t afford the fees, you do what you must. For everyone else, check your bag.
In 2007, airlines began instituting baggage fees to offset the cost of jet fuel and once they realized they could charge for luggage and other basic amenities of air travel, there was no looking back. Once people realized they were going to have to pay even more than the cost of their plane ticket to travel, all hell broke loose with carry-ons. Suddenly packing for trips of most any length became an exercise in austerity.
Writers, in particular, love to discuss the ways in which they contort themselves toward austerity to go on book tour. Nearly every writer active on social media has discussed, at length, how they will travel or have traveled with only a carry-on suitcase for a five-day trip or ten-day trip or three-week trip. It is something of a competition, as if there is valor in self-imposed deprivation. They offer tips, like rolling your clothes or stuffing your socks in your shoes or traveling without toiletries. They talk about wearing the same, increasingly soiled outfit for days on end because hey, you can wash it in the hotel bathroom sink or not.
When people talk about checking a bag, the conversations are ominous. There is always a story, a dark, dark story about the one time a suitcase was lost. Ultimately, life went on but there were moments of unbearable inconvenience. This story of the lost suitcase is so terrifying, people are willing to do anything to avoid it even though in reality, most airlines have a pretty solid grasp on luggage handling. In April 2019, airlines only mishandled 5.44 of every 1,000 bags they processed.
This fear of lost luggage is so wildly blown out of proportion that sometimes, checking a bag feels like an act of rebellion. I almost always check a bag. I check a very big bag.
by Roxanne Gay, Medium | Read more:
Image: Kyle Griggs[ed. Spare me. Here's the kicker: "In 2007, airlines began instituting baggage fees to offset the cost of jet fuel and once they realized they could charge for luggage and other basic amenities of air travel, there was no looking back."]
