The Seven People You Meet On An Airplane (and the Eighth you need to)

As I write this the captain just told us that the reason we moved down from 35,000 feet to 17,000 feet was the deterioration in ride quality. Sounds more like a comment from an auto reviewer than an airline pilot, but I do appreciate his concern for our comfort and safety. After all, when you're a frequent business traveler, you can't help but appreciate comfort and peace, when you can get it.

While there are supposedly five people you meet in heaven, I don’t want to see any of them any time soon, and especially on this plane because I fear I may have to spend eternity with the person who fell asleep, slumped over on me and drooled on my shoulder – pinning me to the “window” seat wall. Yes, that oddly curved wall that somehow offers the promise of additional shoulder room for us wide-wingspan shoulder types, but fails to offer much more than a porthole window with dirt and smudges somehow trapped inside its layers of plexiglastic and that little hole drilled and filled with a little metal thingy, and then the taper of the side down just enough so your feet have no where to go, especially while you’re foot pumping and twisting to avoid Deep Vein Thrombosis, which I do believe would be a hell of a name for a rock band. 

I think there are seven people you meet in an airplane.

1.    There are some of the people up front who think they are royalty traveling with Pitbull and Diddy on the G650 to Ibiza for tapas with JLo. They are all about the image of spending five times the cost to sit in front of the see through shower curtain enjoying their 3.5 ounces of Chablis. Yes, the ones who look at you with disdain as you pass through trying to find a seat on your way to do something legitimate while they indulge in knowing they wasted enough money to take another vacation in exchange for 2.5” more of hip room. Leave the snobbery at home. We’re all in the same aluminum tube, relax, you're not on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous with Robin Leach. These are the Firstclassholes.

2.    There are the people who feel so compelled to make everyone within 9 rows away from them have watery eyes as they crunch their obnoxious onion-packed sandwich like a starving Tom Hanks after his rescue from Castaway Island. There ought to be some government regulation or TSA bulletin prohibiting the sale of anything with onions, garlic or curry in the airport food concessions. Do us a favor, Martha, next time buy a freaking Twix bar. It’s a 90 minute flight, you won’t starve. Someone give me some eyedrops. These are the Onionnoying. 

3.    The people who look above them and struggle with discerning whether the visual of the little lightbulb is a male flight attendant with a fat head or the outline of the cartoon person holding a tray with a martini glass is actually reaching for a light switch. It’s like their overhead panel hasn’t yet dropped the much needed oxygen mask and they are not thinking clearly. Once they’ve boarded the plane, all common sense and logic somehow get vaporized out a window that doesn’t open. Hopefully. These are the Overhead Airheads.

4.    There’s the guy who is on his way back from a West Coast trade show and like John Candy in Planes, Trains and Automobiles, feels compelled to pull off the size 15 Hush Puppies and two pairs of compression socks because he walked 15,001 steps around the “consumer electronics show” according to his FitBit. Yanking the sock off at the last minute yields a poof of foot powder. I wish his seat, 14D, was an ejection seat like in a James Bond movie. My friend Dan was unfortunate enough to have this experience on a rare first-class upgrade trip to a telecommunications conference while I was across the aisle corned by some crazy septuagenarian lady who actually knew quite a bit about mid-year C2 fuel injected Corvettes. This is the Agony of Da Feet.

5.    There are the clueless travelers on Southwest who don’t understand the way the 24 hour advance boarding pass works, and wait until the very last minute to login, or worse, don’t know what a login is, and have to print the pass out “old school.” Usually the largest human being in the airport is the one who needs the center seat and is fumbling to squeeze their nonstandard size nonoverhead nonluggage in the nonspace in the nonoverhead. Too late for an A or B seat, and they get graded a “C” for center seat and “C+” for plus sized and a “C-“ for spilling over the two armrests. Please check-in ahead next time, Hank, or spend the extra $15 to be an Early Bird. This is the CMinus CPlus.

6.    Saved this one for number 6. The person who tries to cram the proverbial 6 lbs of potatoes into the 5 lbs bag. Their luggage is bowed out from bringing every worldly possession to Orlando and acquiring every souvenir for the trip back, along with a few puffy white hotel towels (Shhhh) and little jelly containers from the breakfast buffet. This bag is usually more like 60 lbs and they can hardly lift it above their shoulders to attempt to cram it into the overhead it won’t fit in. Usually has six name tags and a bright red flower and a nylon belt tightly strapped around the center to prevent the luggage from spewing its contents. This is the 6-Pounder.

7.    Lastly, that shameless person whose unpredictable-interval body aromas waft around you in a dense punitive fog, virtually paralyzing you as you try to cup your hands to preserve the last .3 cubic yards of breathable oxygen. Frighteningly, gender doesn’t apply here. It’s usually a flight to or from somewhere in Florida and the oxygen-displacing nerve gas episodes are deliberately masked with nebulous conversations about their grandchildren, golf or the must read from their book club. Good thing they’re not in a garden club, the flowers would die. These are the Passersby. They are passing, you wish you could wave bye and what they are passing is not glances or peanuts.

You just have to take it all in stride. It's air travel. It's all just in-flight entertainment. All humor aside, you just may well be seated next to the most valuable person - the eighth - your next client or beneficial professional relationship, so despite the challenges, or, if you're stuck in the middle and next to one of the seven, look toward the other side and have an open mind.