Why the flying experience feels so much worse
Nothing is more valuable on a plane than space. There are mathematical reasons for that, but if you’ve ever spent hours stuck in a middle seat or had the person in front of you demolish your knees while shooting backward into nap mode, you also just know it in your heart. Every inch of cabin space is carefully meted out; there’s no wiggle room, literally.
Flying is nothing short of magical. You get into an aluminum box and teleport from one part of the world to another. Explaining this to a child is fun. You don’t think in terms of days of travel but hours.
I have a love hate relationship with flying. Throughout most of my life it’s made me nauseous. As a child my uncle took me up into a small plane and spun us around. My emptying the contents of my stomach into his favorite cap quickly put an end to that particular adventure. The smallest bit of turbulence or acceleration and I’m done for.
But that said I’ve still flown, often.
My deep apologies to the elderly woman who watched me struggling with the little baggies they give you. One moment I’m fine, the next I’m deep into the contents of my previous meal. The saddest moment was that I couldn’t easily disgard of the bag after that particular episode, so I carefully tucked it into the seatback pocket, where it promptly tilted to the side. A sad day for all of us. To her credit my seat partner in crime said nothing, staring forward, pretending that the most embarassing moment of my year hadn’t happened. Thank you, I’ll always appreciate you for that.
Flying wrecks me for the whole day. Forget about getting any work done on a trip. I’m just trying to survive. So when airlines cram us tighter and tighter it adds to the misery. I’m 6’ 2”, just tall enough to be uncomfortable in economy class. I’m also cheap. I don’t want to pay extra. So I suffer.
On an economic level, the results have been fabulous for these airlines. They’ve poached low-cost carrier customers and found ways to sell seats that used to go empty. And though the extra fees do provide revenue, they also accomplish something that’s arguably more important to airlines’ business: They push flyers to change their behavior in ways the carriers prefer. If fewer people check bags, there’s more capacity under the cabin to sell for cargo shipping.
I get it. More money, happier airlines. Great. Fine. But at some point this has to change. I like to joke that they’ll have us standing up soon, ala bus style, holding onto a bar to steady us. Cattle class, that’s where I spend my time.
That said, I’ve finally found a way to make the experience less worse. On a recent trip from Florida to Washington state I wore a wrist band that shocks you. No joke. It’s probably just a placebo, but I don’t care. It took me from not functioning on a plane to feeling just slightly uncomfortable. I can handle that. I’ll never fly again without the band.
That said, an inch or two space from my knee cap to the seat in front of me would be nice.