October 1, 1999

More Flying

by Joshua Carden

Since I can no longer afford to take flying lessons (See article entitled Some Glad Morning…), my air travel is now limited exclusively to commercial flights.  You would think that I wouldn’t have enough time to fly somewhere while going to law school.  You think correctly – but I do it anyway!  The chief reason so far?  Weddings.  My new motto is: Never make friends until everyone around you is already married.  I’m joking of course.  But it’s amazing to me how many people get married between the ages of 20 and 30.  Since college, I have had approximately 40 friends get married.  For many of these, I either played the piano or served as a groomsman.  In fact, I am writing this article on a plane headed to Houston, Texas for the second wedding of a three-weddings-in-Texas-in-three-weekends marathon.  But I digress; this article is supposed to be about flying.  I’ll do a “homeschool wedding” article at some point. 

            The first thing I always notice when I walk into an airport - any airport - are the people immediately in front of and behind me in the ticket counter line.  These are important people to notice, because, thanks to the modern technology used by today’s airlines, you could be spending the next 32 hours in that line and it’s nice to have someone to talk to.  Assuming you speak the same language, of course. 

The next thing I notice are the canned announcements coming from the loudspeaker.  During one particularly long stretch in a ticket line, I heard the “There will be no smoking in the terminal” announcement approximately 395 times.  I don’t smoke; but after hearing those words that many times, I was ready to walk out of the terminal and light one up just to not be smoking INSIDE the terminal.  Then there are the “pages.”  These are highly amusing, because they are made by workers in the “Paper-wad Division” of the airport.  You can hear those workers diligently crumpling sheets of paper (hence the name “pages”) as they call out highly important messages for passengers over the loudspeaker.  I wish they would wad the paper a little further from the microphone. 

When you finally make it through the line, it’s time to find your gate.  Here we have a principle of commercial flight as basic as thrust, lift, and gravity: No matter where you enter the airport, your gate is on the diametrically opposite side of the terminal.  This is also true of connecting flights. 

At the gate, it’s time to board the aircraft.  This is done using a highly organized system developed in secret underground laboratories by scientists who REALLY enjoyed the Sixties, if you catch my drift.  The first class passengers get to board first (Duh!), and then they board the rest of the plane from the back to the front.  This sounds great on paper, but some poor little old lady in seat 9A will always sneak on early and spend thirty minutes trying to hoist her carry-on bag the size of Rhode Island into the overhead bin. 

This is where the flight gets interesting.  As you may know, I am 6’1” (now you know!).  The same secret underground laboratories responsible for the boarding system also managed to come up with the conclusion that the average height of an airline passenger is 5’6” (I will not say which airline I am using, but the name is contained within the phrase “United States).  This presents problems.  Fortunately there are a few remedies available, making amputation the very last resort.  For example, if you sit in the exit row, you get a few extra inches of leg room.  The risk in sitting there is that you may be called on to assist in an emergency, as this nice lady with the uniform and the yellow mask that is not connected to anything has just informed all of us.  We all nod as if we understand, but everyone knows that those doors don’t really open.  What it REALLY means is that you get used as a battering ram by the flight attendants to break out of the airplane if it crashes.  They used to call it the “Battering Ram Row,” but they couldn’t ever seem to find customers for those seats.  “Exit Row” sounds much better.  Besides the exit row, the other option is first class.  Sigh.  When I grow up, I’m going to be a first class passenger.  In first class, you eat real food.  In first class, you have plenty of leg room. In first class, they have a symphony orchestra.  In first class, they have “Co-pilot for a Day” raffles.  In first class, the sun always shines, and there is no such thing as turbulence.  To be honest, I’ve been blessed of God to ride in first class on three wonderful occasions.  Actually, I usually don’t count the first time, because I was eleven and my feet didn’t touch the ground to begin with.  Oh, and they didn’t have a symphony orchestra.  But the string quartet was nice.

With all of these weddings and the other times that I’ve flown, I have learned one of the most important skills in the world: sleeping on the plane!  It took flying 17 hours to Korea, but I finally fell asleep.  It’s like riding a bike, once you’ve done it, you can do it again! 

Assuming you got on the right plane, you will arrive at your destination –Houston, in my present example- and, hopefully, meet whoever is picking you up.  If you checked bags at the ticket counter, hopefully they also got on the right plane.  Coming back from Romania this summer, mine did not.  Somewhere between Detroit and Washington, D.C., my bags took a little sightseeing detour.  I was fortunate.  When my friends came back from Romania, their bags almost went to (I am not making this up): Madagascar.  Really. 

Well, it’s good to be on solid ground again.  I have two whole days before I have to go through this process again.  I am flying stand-by, which means one of two things: “Get to the airport three hours early and ‘stand by’ the counter looking alternately friendly and pitiful until they let you on the plane” OR “Get to the airport three hours early and ‘stand by’ the window and wave to the departing plane filled with passengers who paid full price.”  So far I’m 5 for 6. 

I just thought of a third option to the leg room issue: the President of the United States gets his own plane with all the leg room he wants.  I guess I’ll have to wait until I am 35 before I can officially announce my candidacy.  My platform will be based on Biblical principles, family values, and taller airplane seats.  My fellow Americans and travelers, I covet your votes…