"Please sit back and enjoy your flight", they said
You’ve made it past security and it’s time to board your flight. “Thank God the worst part is over!”, you think to yourself as you go down the airbridge that leads to your airplane. You enter the airplane and are immediately greeted by some welcoming Flight Attendants who direct you towards your assigned seat. As you start down your aisle towards your seat (32A), you first pass the “First Class or Business Class seating area. There are already people sitting in these seats because they got to board the flight “at their leisure”, while you had to wait for your “group” to be called. “They all look so comfortable”, you think as you go past them into the “Economy Cabin”. That’s when it first becomes noticeable. The seats back here are no where near as luxurious as the ones you just passed!
When you arrive at your seat on this international flight, you see that they’ve placed some large items on top of every seat. Further inspection reveals that they are a blanket in a plastic bag, a pillow, and a smaller bag that contains items such as slippers, little toothbrushes and other niceties to possibly make your trip more comfortable. But my first thought always is, “Where in the world am I going to put this stuff? There’s not one place that these things fit once I sit down in my seat!” They are too bulky to put in the tiny storage sleeve in the seat in front of me, and if I put them under the seat in front of me, it will be humanly impossible to reach them once I am seated. Heck, once I’m seated, I can no longer even see my feet! (In a little while, I won’t even be able to feel them!) In the end, these additional items are stuffed in under and around me, just in case I need them later. (It turned out that I never did!)
The safety briefing begins. On these international flights, it’s normally a video that goes through all of the safety precautions needed to make the flight as safe as possible. On the screen in front of me, I see a cartoon family of 4, happily boarding their flight and taking their very large, comfortable, and plush looking cartoon seats. (I notice that they don’t have the blankets, pillows, and additional little bag taking up every inch of their seat when they go to sit down like I did). Then they go through how to put on the seatbelt, how to unbuckle it, what to do if the oxygen mask drops down out of the ceiling, and finally how to put on the “flotation device” that is supposedly packed underneath our seats. My first thought is, “how would I ever be able to reach this supposed flotation device if I needed to? I can’t even move up two inches to get to my seatbelt that I’m sitting on right now! There is no way I’m going to be able to reach anything that is “safely stowed” underneath my own seat!” If someone told me there was one million dollars under there free for the taking, I’d have to let it go, because I know I’ll simply never be able to physically get to it without doing permanent damage to myself.
Because this is an international flight, the video is shown 4 times, in 4 different languages so I get to see this cartoon family of 4, 4 different times happily finding their large, plush, comfortable looking cartoon seats. Meanwhile, my legs are already starting to cramp up and I can’t feel my toes.
It’s finally time to take off! We go down the runway and into the sky! This is a 12 1/2 hour flight. I think to myself, “I can do this! Only 12 hours and 20 minutes to go”. That’s when the guy in front of me slams his seat all the way back, which means I have to open my legs up as far as possible (sort of like I’m straddling a barrel in front of me), and now the screen (which was roughly 12 inches in front of my face before is now 2.5 inches and is down at my chest level). But at least the guy in front of me is comfortable! I, on the other hand, feel like I’m going to have a panic attack because I can’t move any of my extremities, nor can I feel any part of my legs, except the parts that hurt.
After a minute or so of this, I think to myself, “I can’t fly for the next 12 hours and 15 minutes like this”, so I gently touch the man’s shoulder (which is basically in my lap), and ask him nicely if he could move his seat up just a little bit so that he’s not crushing my knee caps. I’m pleasantly surprised when he does and my knee caps immediately get some relief. But only temporarily, because about 10 minutes later, he does it again (slams his seat back without warning). To me this is rude, so I tap him on the shoulder and ask him politely once again if he could put his seat up just a little. That’s when he gets mad! I can’t understand what he’s saying because he’s speaking in another language, but his eyes say it all! He jumps up out of his seat and I wonder if he’s going to try to start a fight, but he storms back the aisle towards the back of the plane. A few minutes later, he comes back, grabs all of his things, and moves to a seat somewhere several rows behind me. I’m amazed at this sequence of events because now this means that no-one is sitting in front of me. So I reach up, press the button on the arm rest (which is still all the way back) and the seat snaps back to its “upright position”, giving me my full 4 inches of legroom once again! (And yes, I’m thankful for this 4 inches because now I know how easily it can be taken away from me!)
It Didn't used to be this way
I know it didn’t used to be this way! When I first started flying 40 years ago, the seats were not this tiny. They were not huge, but it was possible to sit in them and be relatively comfortable during the flight. And when the person in front of me reclined his seat back then, it went back a few inches but I never felt physically and emotionally violated like I do now. Back then airline seats were made “human sized”, made to fit real human beings. Sure, it might mean that the airline lost a few dollars on each flight because they carried a few less passengers, but at least the passengers it carried weren’t stuffed into seats that look like they were made for ancient tribes of Pygmies.
I’d say that we are stuffed into these tiny seats like sardines, but that’s an insult to sardines. Sardines are still able to fully stretch out in their assigned cans. (Try stretching out like that in your airline seat. You can’t!) Besides, sardines are dead. They don’t feel anything.
Interestingly, the seats that certainly have increased in size are the First Class seats! Years ago, these seats were simply a bit larger and fatter than economy seats. Now they are the size of New York City studio apartments, large enough to host dinner parties. It’s my opinion that airlines are sacrificing the size of economy seats to make more room for first class seats so that they can make as much money as possible.
I’ve also noticed that there’s been a change over the years in the sizes of the airplanes being used for longer trips. In years past, whenever I flew on an international flight, the airplanes were much larger than the ones that airlines used domestically. I remember international flights long ago, where I thought to myself as I got to my seat, “This is going to be great!” I haven’t had that feeling now in about 20 years! International flights used to mean that the airplane you flew in was going to be the newest and largest of the fleet. Not anymore! I think airlines realized back then that passengers needed a bit more room whenever the flight was going to be more than 6 hours in duration. Now, there’s no difference. Fourteen hour flight? You get a small airplane. Sixteen hour flight? The bathroom on your airplane will be so small that you will need to stand back from the toilet quite a long way to pee because the ceiling curves down at such a sharp angle that unless you are 4 foot 7, you can’t physically get any closer to the toilet. (I find myself wrestling with whether I should just concede to it and pee sitting down, but then I decide against it. It just doesn’t seem right to me).
Put your seatbacks upright and stow your tray tables
You’ve made it to the final descent into your destination city. Congratulations!! This flight is almost over! You tell yourself that you’ll never do another flight this long again for as long as you live! But then you land, and once you get off the airplane in your new city, you begin to see the sights and then realize what an exciting place you’ve just traveled to! Things are so different here, but in a good way! These people drive on the left side of the road! And there are motor scooters everywhere! And things smell different here! What a wonderful new adventure!!
It only takes a short time after your arrival to forget what you just went through on your flight. (Unless you’re like me and want to blog about it!). Maybe it’s kind of like giving birth to a child. It’s painful while it’s happening, but once you see what the pain produced, you begin to see that it was all worth it!
Would I like to go through that pain again very soon? No way! But will I do it again? Yeah, probably!
Have a great day everyone, and SAFE TRAVELS!
You are so good at putting most peoples feelings about air travel in words! Thanks for your (and everyone’s) insight to all of this!