Flying Is Fiendish

It is so refreshing to see how excited children get about flying. Their little eyes glow with pleasure and their faces shine with wonder at the sheer JOY of the whole experience.

I remember those days.

I also used to glow with joy when boarding a plane. We didn’t fly to many places when I was young (we weren’t a particularly well off or extravagant family) and so the joy of flying lasted well into my adult years.

I can say without a trace of doubt, however, that the short haul flights that I have experienced between Jhb and Cape Town over the past year have killed the wonder. Killed it dead.

Along with the Santa Claus fable, the Easter Bunny fantasy and the Tooth Mouse notion, I now know that “flying is fun” is a big, fat myth. Thanks ACSA, and a certain low cost carrier, for disabusing me of that childish notion.

In my experience, approximately one in three flights has been delayed. They also regularly run out of anything decent to eat. “Oh sorry. We don’t have biltong. No, we don’t have Pringles. No. No – not that either. I’m sorry, we ran out because the last people ate everything.”
Huh??? What kind of excuse is that? When you undertake to provide a catering service, surely you should take into account that people will actually eat?
It’s like me saying “Yes please. I will gorge myself on the delicious sparkling water and the solitary packet of Niknaks that you have left. What? You want money for them? Oh, I’m so sorry – I spent it all at the last place.”

Last night’s flight was particularly unpleasant.
After the customary delay we were allowed to board and we stampeded onto the plane, pushing and shoving to grab the best overhead space for our bags. Nothing like a little friendly competition amongst fellow passengers… If any of those bright eyed children got slightly crushed, well I’m sorry, but shouldn’t they be standing back for adults anyway?
Having herded most of us into our coops, the annoyingly jovial cabin staff encouraged the stragglers on with cattle prods. (Don’t I wish – there’s always some tosser who thinks that a couple of hundred people would love to add another 10 minutes to an already unacceptable delay.) To the accompaniment of inane jokes, we were treated to a takeoff talk instead of the complimentary cocktails that we would so much have preferred. After we were airborne, the food trolley was wheeled down the aisle and a litany of sold out items was recited. Damn the passengers that went before and their totally unreasonable desire to eat!!

I think they revived Sunday night’s plane from the Ark. The pocket on the back of the chair in front of me was broken so it was difficult to manage my bottle of over-priced mineral water. The fold down tray was broken too, and so it was difficult to work. The only part of the general decrepitude of the plane that worked in my favour was the fact that the reclining mechanism of the chair in front of me was also broken. This meant that the man in front of me had to snooze bolt upright. I doubt it did much for his enjoyment of the flight, but at least I had more space in which to manage my laptop and my water. Of course, “more space” is a very relative term. What I mean is that I was not physically pressing my nose onto my laptop screen. One and a half square foot each is probably overstating things. I was in closer physical proximity to my fellow passengers on Friday night than I have been to most of my relatives. The man behind me pressed his bony knees into my spine for two hours solid. I couldn’t even be cross with him. It wasn’t his fault - battery chickens have more space than we did.

I won’t bore you any longer because my boyfriend says that I should write about nice things in case people think I am just a sour, grumpy person. Since I have nothing nice to say about Sunday’s flight, I will say nothing at all.

Oh wait! They were very nice about my excess luggage! I had a bag with just a laptop in it, and then a small tog bag. (Allowed, ok!) The small tog bag was, unfortunately, a couple of kilos over the allowed limit for hand luggage because I had it stuffed with cds. At the check in counter, they insisted that I check the bag in. I said I wasn’t really thrilled with that because I was worried about things being stolen from it and was there anywhere I could plastic wrap it? No, they said, did I have anything valuable in it?
Well, just my passport, the title deeds to my house, my lease agreement with my tenant, two old and rather expensive bottles of wine, a R2000 pair of boots and a bunch of cd’s. Oh yes, and my undies and one shirt, but they aren’t valuable. Too bad, said the check-in chick. You’ll have to put your valuables into your carry on bag and check the rest in.
So they watched me (as did the entire queue of passengers waiting to board) unpack my tog bag and begin to repack the most valuable and fragile items into my laptop bag. I tell you, they let me get 90% of the way through the job before they said “Oh, ok – We’ll make an exception. You can take both bags onto the plane.” By this stage of course, the entire queue of fascinated passengers knew that I had taken my blue Wonderbra, my pink knickers and some grey socks to Jhb for the weekend. So I removed all of my underwear from the airport floor and packed it back into the tog bag and off I went, trying to smile and practising being grateful.

And that’s about as much positivity as I can muster for Sunday night’s experience.