Fuck Flying (Seven Reasons)

“Hell is other people” – Jean Paul Sartre

Nothing brings into focus sharper the contemptible, claustrophobic press that is humanity than does air travel. Nothing makes the gorge rise so quickly, the bile duct pump so furiously, the blood boil so hot as does the madding crowd of fools breathing and mumbling and farting and taking my armrest on an airplane.

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I don’t fly so regularly, anymore. Writers take a vow of poverty, for one, and for two I have children, and god knows travelling with infants is a special kind of torture. Don’t lock the baddies up in Guantanamo indefinitely; rather, put them in charge of a pair of babies on a long-haul flight, Sydney to London. They will break. They will fall apart like a janitor stuck in an industrial microwave.

But I did fly recently. It brought back many suppressed rages, from the time before, when I once did travel frequently. Here’s seven of those hates.

#1: People who can’t count to 30 or recite the alphabet

You know that little entry on your boarding pass that says “17 C”? What that means is this: in the 17^th row of the plane, there will be around four to six seats. There will be a little diagram above the row of seats telling you which particular seat is the ‘C’ seat. That’s where you sit.

Not 16A. Not 17B. Not in the aisle. Not in the cockpit. 17-fucking-C.

You got that? I don’t care how stupid you are – if you acquire your political opinions from the red carpet set; or think climate change is a Chinese conspiracy; or believe sincerely Thetans have possessed your soul – finding that seat marked with a 17 and a C is still within your capability.

I cannot count the times I have looked down at the glazed, confused eyes of a passenger as they discover they are – whoops – in the wrong seat. Apologetic, with brows furrowed, looking back at the ticket in their hand as if Eddie had just passed them the final question in Who Wants to be a Millionaire

It’s not fucking rocket science – it’s 17C.

#2: Old people in hats

Let’s get something straight, you old people in hats there standing in the aisle, telling anecdotes and exchanging pleasantries WHILE PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO BOARD. These are the facts: this isn’t the fifties, on a cruise ship making its way at a leisurely pace across the ocean. It’s an economy class flight in the year 2018. The aisle is narrow, the flight is Virgin and therefore already late, and PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO GET TO THEIR SEATS.

Further fact about the year 2018: efficiency is god. We walk fast, staring at our mobile phones, catching up on work emails; we let automation takes our jobs without a fight; we do not engage in pleasantries (including eye contact with strangers) because it is inefficient, especially when boarding a goddamn aeroplane.

#3: People with no spatial judgement

They stand there in the aisle, trying to shove their oversized carry-on luggage into the overhead lockers. It is clear it won’t fit. Their attempt to cunningly avoid the few dollars it costs to check an extra bag has come a cropper. Yet these geniuses stand there, interminably, not quite able to figure out why there 3 by 3 foot bag won’t fit into a 1.5 foot-wide hole. I’ll tell you why: your bag is too big, moron.

Which leads us to a particular subset of this rule: 2b. The law of overhead compartments is the law of the jungle. Might is right. You can only put in your hand luggage what you can lift over your own head. Those frail, trembling arms can’t find the heft to put the case overhead? FUCK YOU. Check it in.

Am I being insensitive? Not insensitive enough, goddamn it. Cabin attendants should be issued cattle prods. Can’t lift your bag? ZAP. “Where’s my seat?” ZAP. “In my day, a quarter-acre block cost a nickel. So we bought them all in order to immiserate future generations.” ZAP ZAP ZAP.

#4: Business class travellers

Here they come, fresh-faced, walking past the huddled masses yearning to be free of the check-in line. Here they strut with their Botox smoothness and sunbed glow. Their vintage leather jackets (read: second hand, for twelve times the price) designer handbags, slightly high pants with brown leather belts, and white shirts with those clean white buttons.  

Damn you your legroom and easy egress. Damn the attentive stewards treating you like a human being, damn the edible food and your vacant toilet. Damn you your stock options and negative gearing and let me tell you something: no amount of ‘organic’ eggs for breakfast is going to put a dent in your massive carbon footprint

Knowing they’ll die first in a crash is small comfort. But it is the only one you’ll find in economy.

#5: People who don’t like babies

Ah – you thought I was going the other way with this one, didn’t you? Screaming babies are, after all, one of the most teeth-grating, distracting things on a flight, are they not?

Well you are wrong. Infinitely worse are the baby-haters. As a new parent, I’ve walked the aisle with a crying baby in my arms, a hundred angry eyes cast in my direction. I’ve felt the passive-aggressive animus of the cattle, as if somehow I have the power of baby-whispering in my remit and yet have chosen not to use it.

Here’s why you can’t criticise babies – they can’t help it. Decaying baby boomers in hats don’t have to stand in the aisle. Credulous conspiracy theorists can still find their seats. Even the innumerate can ask the hostess where to sit. But babies can’t help being babies. Unlike you, they are yet to develop the self-restraint and common sense required as a passenger in a plane.

You don’t like Babies? Then go live in North Korea, fuckface, where the dear leader, Kim Jong-un, expects babies scattered before him like rose petals as he makes his daily walk from hair salon to leaking nuclear power plant.

6#: Airlines

The strategy of the modern airline is thus: eliminate all service staff. These days you book your own ticket, check-in remotely, and on arrival print out the tags and place them on your bag.

The lines for human-to-human check-in are meandering and endless for one very simple reason: so the customer is conditioned to start doing the work the airline once provided as a service.

In the near future you’ll be provided the uniform of an airline steward as you enter the plane so you can hand out stale crackers and explain how to do up a seat belt.

In the far future you’ll have to push your way through a picket line at the airport, where the last dregs of the human workforce of pilots and baggage handlers will be protesting their replacement by artificial intelligence. You and your luggage will be scanned by a supercomputer linked to the security wing of GoogleFly as you enter the premises. You’ll be injected with prescription opioids as a condition of boarding, fall into a deep sleep, slotted into a metal coffin, and transported to your destination.

#7: Airports

Burnt coffee served lukewarm by a surly barista for five dollars accompanied by stale, nine-dollar banana bread? No problem.

Egg sandwich that puts you in hospital for three days over New Year? Of course and thank you Brisbane airport, thank you, you god damn sons-of-bitches (the year was 2013, and that egg sandwich damn near killed me).

Car-parks owned by the airport and which constitute a monopoly on any sort of parking space within a 20-mile radius? With pricing scales designed by Don Corleone? Well, welcome to Sydney airport, proud holder of the record for most expensive parking in Australia, and the nine dollar bottle of water.

Random explosive residue tests that pick me every single time? I know I look – and act – like an angry homeless person, but… Oh what am I saying. I can handle the bomb tests. Crazy hair, coffee-stained tracksuit pants, rage eyes rolling around in my head like a wild horse. I’m asking for it. It’s the salmonella sandwiches that really grind my gears.

In his play No Exit where the line, “hell is other people” appears, John-Paul Sartre envisions hell as being locked in a room – forever – with two people you don’t know. Sartre was nearly right. Hell is being forced to fly domestic airlines, forever, with a hundred people you loathe. It is an appointment for eternity in a world designed by Qantas and Virgin, with the lowest circle being governed by Tiger Airways.