Fear of Flying
2025 Summer Rerun 1 of 7
Author's Note: Lori and I will be traveling quite a bit the rest of July and August, so loyal Laughable Feast readers will be treated (or subjected) to a few weeks of summer reruns. Some of you have seen these golden oldies before, and hopefully they have stood the test of time.
Soon we will be flying for the first time in eight years, so it seemed apropos to start with the Up With a Twist essay Fear of Flying. And since we are flying to Las Vegas, the following week will be a repost of Leaving Las Vegas. From The Way Back you will have the chance to read two stories – Freeze Frame and naturally The Way Back – both of which give you an indication of how hellish my family vacations were; two more stiff Up With a Twist drinks – I’m Just a Caveman and Free Bird – and a repost of Slack Tide from The Claustrophobia of Wide Open Space.
I hope all of you are having a wonderful summer and will indulge us in this short vacation. New posts will resume on September 5th.
Can I tell you something?
I love to fly. Or I used to at any rate.
I’m old enough to remember when flying in an airplane was an uncommon, thrill-inducing, and even awe-inspiring experience. It was a form of travel that smacked of status and wealth and privilege, and people who did it had a sense of occasion.
Women wore dresses with coats and gloves, men wore suits with hats, and children wore whatever embarrassing matching outfits their mother insisted they wear. Seats were wide and comfortable with ample leg room and there were no annoying safety belts to wrinkle your clothes. With the exception of take-off and landing, passengers moved freely about the cabin, or lounged in the aforementioned comfy seats talking, reading Life magazine, drinking cocktails, and smoking cigarettes, cigars, and pipes.
Now I’m not saying any of this was particularly safe or healthy, but it was indulgent, elegant and fun – things that seem to be mutually exclusive these days – and it struck me at the time that humans had reached the pinnacle of civilization. In retrospect maybe they had.
Flying was not inexpensive, but there were no added or hidden fees and the price of your ticket included an actual meal served with actual silverware, and you could actually eat it.
Well-dressed and neatly-coiffed stewardesses – the highest level of employment airlines could evidently entrust women with at the time – provided first-class service to the passengers, attending to their every need and whim. In fact, there was no first-class section because the entire cabin was treated as such.
But that’s not what I wanted to tell you.
I still like flying, especially if I’m flying someplace warm to have fun, but it sure ain’t the same. I don’t want to go so far as to say it sucks, but it does.
To be fair, airline companies have made air travel affordable and accessible to the masses and for that we owe them a huge debt of gratitude, although a big reason flying sucks is that everyone and their mother does it now. But again, to be fair, they’ve also insidiously implemented myriad inhumane ways to enrich their shareholders by separating people from their money. Starting with the seats you sit in – those of you who can afford first or business class due to extreme wealth and/or frequent flyer miles can stop reading now and go find something else to do – which are comfortable only if you are a child under the age of seven and have lost all your baby fat. Flying coach today may be the only time those unfortunate enough to have lost their legs feel grateful. But that’s just for openers.
Checking expensive, stylish bags at the ticket counter, however many you might have, used to be included in the cost of your fare, and they were treated with kid gloves until returned to your custody. Now, we pay fifty bucks a pop to avoid dragging our belongings through the airport and have our checked baggage battered mercilessly by heartless handlers.
The intended and very unfortunate consequence of this policy is that now nearly everyone and their mother carries, or more accurately rolls, their luggage onto the aircraft and stows it in the overhead bins – bins that I might add were formerly used exclusively to store ladies’ coats and men’s suit jackets, leather attaché cases, and the occasional guitar brought onboard by some traveling minstrel.
And depending on the size of the plane and how many itty-bitty seats there are, and how many numbskulls try to wedge an oversized suitcase into a full overhead bin, the boarding process takes anywhere from ten minutes to half an hour longer. And don’t get me started on the ubiquitous rolling black suitcases that can’t be distinguished from one another save by ribbons or small stuffed animals on the handles.
Of course the aforementioned sumptuous meals and strong drinks have also disappeared, and we now pay steep prices to acquire alcoholic beverages and snacks or light meals, none of which could be described as sumptuous.
Unless you consider gummy ravioli in a cold congealed cheese sauce to be sumptuous. It should be noted that bags of snacks – a soupçon of remnants from assembly lines which despite their varied shapes taste like nothing whatsoever – are generously offered free of charge with beverage service. Which again, depending on the size of the plane and what row of itty-bitty seats you are in, can take anywhere from five minutes to an hour.
I am inured to all of this now, and the drink does somehow taste better after an hour wait, but I’m still haunted by the suspicion that at the front of the aircraft, behind the curtain, people are being served sumptuous meals and strong drinks by well-coiffed flight attendants and probably reading Life magazine and smoking.
The good news is that the experience in the terminal before and after you fly is still every bit as pleasant as it was back in the salad days of air travel. I’ll pause here for you to collect yourselves.
The problem with today’s experience largely exists of course because a couple of decades ago 19 assholes flew planes into buildings and murdered nearly 3,000 people, and now we are required to slog through a mare’s nest of serpentine lines, security agents and scanners so all our carry-on luggage can be checked for guns, knives, explosive devices, and overly-large bottles of shampoo. And to have our person checked for all of the above as well. Also, the size of my manhood apparently. The TSA insists their scanner technology does not permit such tom-peepery, but snickering from the agent at the screen belies that assertion.
Still, I think we all agree this extensive prolonged probe is an acceptable price to pay for avoiding another 9/11 catastrophe, so after putting on whatever items of clothing and jewelry we were required to remove, we trudge to our gate confident that the rest of the boarding process will go smoothly. Again, I’ll pause.
The fact is that everyone flies everywhere now – their mothers might be on different flights but are still flying – so the gates are crowded, the planes are packed, and air traffic is often delayed by bad weather, mechanical failures, the sheer volume of tin cans buzzing around in the air, or trying to find a parking place on the ground. And now because of Covid there is also a shortage of qualified people in the industry. But even if your flight is actually on time, the fun has just begun.
It used to be that gates at the airport were a happy place where you, and your companion if you weren’t flying solo, and your extended family for that matter if they wished to see you off, could hunker down in one of the many empty chairs to await the announcement that you could board the plane. At this point, you would casually proceed to the jetway where a friendly attendant would casually check your ticket and you’d casually make your way onto the aircraft to take up residence in your wide seat with ample leg room. This of course is no longer the case.
Nowadays, the gates are teeming with anxious people and few seats are available because eager beavers arrive at the airport hours before scheduled take-off so they can sit in one of the available seats. These are the same people who leap from their seats to get in line when boarding begins because they don’t want to lose the opportunity to stuff their rolling black suitcase with the bunny on the handle into one of the overstuffed overhead bins. Although many of them seem genuinely terrified they’ll miss the flight altogether.
I don’t begrudge them their earnest, if annoying, approach because the penalty for getting on late is that there will be no room for their rolling black suitcase with the bunny on the handle and it will be shuffled off to the cargo hold – they have yet to come up with a proper name for a fee, so this disservice is free of charge for now – and then lost forever or at least gone for a week on an extended trip to some other destination.
Which brings me to what I really wanted to tell you.
What club you belong to, and therefore when you are permitted to board the aircraft, is now the name of the game.
Let me start by saying that I wholeheartedly endorse the policy of people with infirmities or disabilities and parents with colicky babies going first. This is referred to as pre-boarding, which is a term that makes absolutely no sense at all. I also think airlines that invite service veterans on early are to be commended. Airlines that invite fans of a certain sports team who are wearing some item of team clothing or paraphernalia to board next are to be condemned and should be fined by the FAA. But when these groups are all boarded pre-the-rest-of-us the real games begin. And by that, I mean the Hunger Games. Chances of finding room in the overhead bins and arriving in the same city as your luggage, or even getting a drink before you land, depend entirely on your social strata and how frequently you fly.
Of course, first-class passengers are the first to board at this point. It is first-class after all, right? Seemingly this is done so that captains of industry and high hats of society, and the fortunate sons and daughters of captains and high hats, can sit in their extra-wide, first-class lounge chairs, sip champagne, thumb through the Wall Street Journal, and smirk as the hoi polloi trudge past dragging their bunny-bedecked black rolling suitcases on the long death march to the back of the plane.
The one and only time I’ve flown first class – this happened by accident because I was bumped off an over-booked flight and the upgrade was deemed fair compensation for the two hours I spent in an airport bar drinking vodka and eating a bad burrito – I found that facing the parade of coach passengers to be incredibly awkward and avoided their lean and hungry looks by reading and re-reading the in-flight magazine. But the folks who regularly fly first class seem to enjoy it so why deny them the privilege?
What happens next is at first humorous but gradually insulting and infuriating, then depressing, and ultimately soul crushing. It is a long sequence of invitations to board, announced in descending order of your importance to the airline as a customer and as a human being, first delivered to an elite club with a snazzy name, and then lesser groups designated by precious metals.
Presumably this is based on how many miles you’ve logged with the airline, but I really wouldn’t know because I don’t fly very often, and more so because I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member. Since we have not even achieved tin or pewter, let alone bronze status, this means my wife and I are often the only people left in the waiting area when the nice lady at the desk chirps that all remaining passengers are now free to board. We often pay a couple hundred bucks to check our non-rolling luggage, so the overhead bin capacity is not a concern, and available seats in the boarding area are plentiful by this time, but it’s still sad.
I have even endured this mortification in very small airports while waiting to board very small planes with no more than a dozen people in the waiting area. You’d think at some point they’d say, “oh, fuck it, just get on the plane”, but airline policy requires strict adherence to boarding protocol, so each group was invited in turn and I of course was the last one on.
Have things changed for the better since Covid hit, you ask? The answer is no, it’s actually worse. It’s true that early in the pandemic you could breeze through security and waltz right on the plane without any visible disability, sports jersey, or membership in any club, and have the whole cabin to yourself. And fly anywhere in the world that wasn’t completely locked down. But who wanted to?
I haven’t flown in more than three years because of the pandemic, but based on unimpeachable anecdotal evidence provided by people I know who have, I can assure you that air travel sucks every bit as much as it did before. In fact, due to a huge surge in demand and the shortage of available airplanes and employees, chances are fifty-fifty you won’t fly at all because your flight was cancelled. Which really sucks. And sadly, even the amenity of having ringside seats to live boxing matches between flight attendants and unmasked drunks has been discontinued.
Okay, I know what you’re thinking. Stop whining, join a frequent flyer club, buy a black rolling suitcase and a bunny, and buck up. Flying isn’t that bad.
Well, I’m 65 years old and stuck in the past, so this treatise is by definition hopelessly out of touch. Sue me. The truth is I still love flying. Sure, there’s the fare and fees and crappy food, but they can’t charge you extra for the thrill of a surging take-off, the wonder of viewing the world from 30,000 feet, the amazement at crossing a continent or an ocean in a matter of hours, and the joy of seeing friends and loved ones in person rather than on Zoom. It remains the safest, fastest, and most fun way to travel.
And in the unlikely event of a water landing you can still use the seat cushion to kiss your ass print goodbye. For a small fee.
Thanks for listening. Talk soon.