It all starts with the airport. There isn’t a close one to me, so I invariably have to get up at some ungodly hour and drive eighty miles in the middle of the night to be allowed to check in three days before the flight’s actually due to leave. Once there you’re also presented with the privilege of paying almost as much as the cost of the flight in order to park the car a 20-minute bus ride from the actual airport. Of course, at 4am the buses only pick up every fifteen minutes too, so you’d better hope it’s not raining.
I perfectly understand why airlines want you there early because if they said “It’ll be fine if you turn up ten minutes before your flight” you would still get simpletons who thought that ten minutes was two minutes. However, don’t make me turn up three hours early and then think you can use it as a cost cutting exercise by only opening one check-in counter for five flights. If I wanted to queue for an hour I’d try and get out of Wembley after an England football match.
Here’s some advice; when asked whether you packed your bag yourself, it’s not original or funny to quip that a Muslim gentleman kindly helped while you went to the toilet. It’s also not original for the purveyor of said joke to be dragged away to have a fist shoved up his arse either, but the staff will find that part funny at least. Sensibly, you should stick to a rigid ‘yes/no’ answer formula and head through to security... where you have the pleasure of queuing again.
Since the rise in terrorist attack attempts at airports it’s fair to say that security take their job seriously. I can’t say that I blame them, although it’s always a minor irritation to be asked to remove random articles of clothing. When was the last time you heard of an AK-47 being concealed in a belt? Anyway, without fail I set off the metal detectors. I then get touched up by a bloke who, following his grope, waves a wand at me which picks up absolutely nothing. This always makes me wonder where in my body the metal is hiding and why I don’t know about it.
Onto the departure lounge and ‘duty free’; the chance to make back some of that cash you’ve been plundered for up until that point. Or not, as the case actually is. Firstly, I always wonder (after I’ve strolled into an electrical shop to marvel at things with flashing lights) who the hell buys a 42” TV on their way to Brazil? Where the hell are they going to put it? I’m damn sure it won’t fit in one of the little baskets they have to check your hand luggage size and it won’t fit in your overhead locker either. Anyway, we all know how manufacturers put RRP prices on things? That’s some fantasy price that they wished they could sell the product for and, coincidentally, is exactly the price that no-one would pay. Well, it’s when you get to ‘duty free’ that these RRP prices are plastered everywhere. Because if something has an RRP of £49.99 and ‘duty free’ are selling it for £42.99 then you’re getting a bargain. Unless, of course, it can be had for £39.99 at your local shop and a fiver cheaper still on the internet.
Eventually you’ll be ripped off for some average food and you’ll sit and watch the TV screens, waiting for your flight to be called to its gate. When it is you will witness the biggest rush of sheep imaginable. Assuming your flight isn’t with the cheapest of the cheap airlines your boarding card will have a seat number on it. That’s your seat and no-one else’s. It’s not first come, first served and as long as you don’t actually miss the flight, it’ll still be yours ten minutes after the boarding call’s gone out. I generally sit at the gate, continuing to read my book, as the rest of the flight has almost beaten each other to death in the rush to be the first in the massive queue to board. Why do it? Feel free to stand in another queue for ten minutes for all I care. When that queue diminishes to one or two people I’ll take a leisurely walk up, but even then I won’t rush. You know why? Because you hand in your boarding card, take the walk towards the plane and there’ll be another queue.What’s this queue for? Well, that’s the queue for your seat and it’s unavoidable unless you really were the first person in the last queue. The reason? People are stupid. Space on planes is fairly limited and that means they don’t have sweeping, spacious corridors to move around in. Therefore aeroplane etiquette apparently dictates that if you’re the first person aboard you should stand in the middle of the aisle while you comically fail to put bags in overhead lockers and rummage around for your book, iPod and pack of Werthers’ Originals. Take no heed to the three hundred people that you’re stopping getting to their seats, they don’t mind. If you’re the second person in the queue, you should stand and wait impatiently, before doing exactly the same thing when you reach your seat. And so on.
Eventually I’ll reach my seat and it will be a window seat. You know why? There are a couple of reasons, and none of them are the “I like to see the sky!” one you might be expecting. Firstly, I’m not a girl and consequently I don’t have a thimble sized bladder which requires me to visit the toilet every six minutes. Get seated between one of those people and the aisle and you’ll know what I mean. You just get settled, about to nod off to sleep, and BAM! “Sorry, can I just squeeze past again please?” I once did a round the world trip, stopping in twelve countries and taking a huge number international and domestic flights. In the whole time I went to the toilet once on a plane (and it was on a twelve hour flight). I have self control (unless there's beer involved).
The next reason for blagging the window seat is simple dynamics; it literally halves the number of elbows you’re likely to be clobbered with. We’ve established that planes aren’t big. The more seats the airline crams onboard, the more money they make. So, sit in the middle of two people and you’ll come out the other side with bruised ribs. Or, worse still, you’ll double your chances of being next to a person that cannot physically sit still. Once again, just as you’re nodding off to sleep his arm will whack yours as he attempts to re-arrange his blanket for the thirteenth time, drops his book or decides he needs to read his broadsheet newspaper at full width.
The one thing you likely won’t get away from (in economy class at least), is the fool seated behind you. After having shoved your seat back and forth so he can get to the glossy mags stuffed down the back he will then use your seat to pull himself to his feet on his constant trips to the toilet (or to ‘stretch his legs’… on a two hour flight for God’s sake). The seat is bolted to the floor, you’d hope, but that doesn’t stop it rocking back several inches every time someone pulls ninety kilos to their feet because their legs have inexplicably stopped working. For the same ‘non-functioning leg’ reason they will, upon returning to their seat, not lower themselves down as any normal person would. They’ll simply assume the position and collapse. When the person in front of you does this you can look forward to your dinner bouncing off its tray and into your lap.
Oh, I nearly forgot; children. Under no circumstances should kids be allowed on planes until they can prove they can sit still for the duration of the flight without crying, shouting, screaming or throwing things around. If I wanted to see kids do that I wouldn’t be jetting off to another country, I’d be at home.
What’s the issue with simple instructions, by the way? ‘Turn off your phone as it might interfere with the plane’s navigation and communication equipment’ surely isn’t that hard to comprehend? I’m not saying that I buy into the reasoning for a second, in the same way that, despite being told, I don’t turn off my mobile phone at petrol stations because I’ve yet to see any proof that an incoming text message will cause the nearest petrol pump to explode. However, I’m fairly sure that my network provider’s coverage does not extend to 37,000 feet over the Atlantic and to that end it makes no difference to me if it’s turned off; no-one’s going to be able to call me. And yet, your flight will come in to land (you know the crucial bit where, if it’s going to go wrong that’s where it’ll happen) and you’ll hear the familiar ‘bleep, bleep’ of incoming text messages from a couple of imbeciles who need to have their message delivered one minute faster and to hell with the (alleged) risk of ending up in a fiery grave in the middle of the runway.
Having written all this has anyone considered that the 9/11 terrorists weren’t actually terrorists but normal travellers who had been pushed beyond the brink of rational behaviour and decided to end it for them all?
Anyway, the flight lands and, in another display proving that people cannot think more than two minutes into the future, everyone jumps to their feet, grabbing for their bags… so they can stand in the aisle for ten minutes. I'm yet to witness a plane screeching to a halt and with the doors instantaneously flying open. Once again, I’ll stay seated (and undisturbed because I’m at the window seat) until people are actually getting off the plane but there is still no need to rush. When was the last time you reached baggage claim and your bags were there waiting? No, it’s never happened to me either. In fact, when has the conveyor belt even been turned on? Why people expect that the baggage
Back to instructions and not being able to follow them. In a museum (I’m told that’s where they keep old stuff), if you slap a sign on something saying “do not touch”, people will whack their mucky paws all over it. There are many similar examples but the one that irritates me most is baggage claims. The concept is really simple. You stand behind the yellow line and when your bag comes round you step forward and take it from the belt. It really is not that hard.
What happens in reality? Everyone pushes forward to the edge of the conveyor belt, so close that their feet are wedged underneath it. This means that the people behind, who understood the concept of not being impatient morons, can’t see anything. The muppet who is front of you, never straying more than half an inch from the belt for fear of his bag being lost forever, then proceeds to pick up (and inspect) virtually every suitcase that passes him. It’s made all the more absurd by the fact that he eventually selects his distinctive blue holdall, after having scrutinised every green or black case that passed him – just to make sure. Those pesky baggage throwers may have swapped his case, just for a laugh.
All this means, of course, that not only do others struggle to see their bags but they also have to push past a dozen people to get to them – none of whom want to move and lose ‘their spot’.
On my last trip through Gatwick airport I developed a solution to this particular annoyance. You place a number of guards on each belt... armed with cattle prods. Once you cross that yellow line you have ten seconds to retrieve your bag otherwise you get a stab of electricity to the base of your skull. Sure, the rest of us might have to clamber over a few bodies to eventually collect our bags, but at least we'd be able to see when they were coming.
