Sometimes Flying Sucks

Plane rides can be brutal. You can be two rows back from a screaming infant or sitting next to an elderly woman who needs to use the restroom 50 times in a two-hour flight. Or in my most recent travel experience, sitting next to an overweight Yankee fan with no concept of her own space and how to not be spewing crumbs like a sputtering sprinkler and “accidentally” touching me every few minutes.  I am almost certain was a lesbian and had the hots for me. If only she knew I were a Boston fan.

Minutes before take off, she’s jacking around on her iPhone and I glance over to see her obsessively updating the score on the ongoing Yankee/Texas game. I was overwhelmed with a sense of sadness and helplessness knowing I’d have to endure a six-hour flight with a pinstripe lover.

Soon we’re up in the air, bidding adieu to June-gloomy Los Angeles and bound for sticky humidity-ridden Boston. Anxious to delve into my latest reading material: “The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption and Pee,” by Sarah Silverman, I cozy up to it only to notice I’m being brushed against every few minutes by an enormously oversized purple hoodie with the zipper gnawing at my elbow. Headphones in, glasses-clad eyeballs glued to the TV and feverishly flipping the channels or shifting the volume up and down a hundred thousand times, this girl was all up in my armrest grill the entire flight. I hate JetBlue for putting her TV buttons on the shared armrest. Who wears their hoodie with just the sleeves on anyways?? Was it too difficult to put the whole thing on so that your zipper teeth didn’t chomp at my skin with your every move?

Intent to not let this bother me (which I’m sure you can see, clearly it WAS bothering me), I tried focusing on the hilarity that is Sarah Silverman, only to again be distracted by my new friend to the left. She was plowing through bags of chips like a chipmunk stocking up on food for the winter. Her behavior actually reminded me of the hamster I had as a child, who shoved food into his mouth at lightning speed and passed out minutes later with bulging food-filled cheeks. I knew she was going to be interesting to observe when I noticed several pretzels lying on her sweatpants-clad man-style crossed legs (you know, the kind of crossed legs where your ankle is at your knee? Not the girl kind of crossed legs) as she dove her hand into the bag every five seconds, eyes still glued to the tiny TV screen inches from her face. This is hilarious, I thought.

Not so hilarious, was the fact that her little trail of junk food bags were accumulating on the floor and slowly migrating over to my two feet of space. Every time I glanced down or woke up from a little snooze, there was another bag nestled against my feet. And speaking of feet, this girl had no qualms at all about bearing her brightly blue painted toenails (sans shoes) up against the seat in front of her. I think she was a hippie. At one point in the flight when she finally decided to stop stuffing her face and watching trash TV (I qualify “Two and a Half Men” to fit that category) she dozes off and I jump on the opportunity to take a picture of what validated my assumption of her being a Yankee fan (see picture below).

Ewww. But at least her shoes were back on.

Her nap was short lived, and in no time she was at the point where instead of moving her arm to press armrest buttons every two minutes, she’d rather just leave her pudgy little arm hanging over the armrest with her hand neatly clasped to the edge. Just in case. Because you can never be too prepared to press airplane TV buttons at a moment’s notice. I think we can all learn something from her.

At one point her boarding pass made it to the floor and also tried nuzzling my feet, relentlessly returning to me despite my semi-polite attempts to push it back to her side with my left foot. Why I was trying to be polite and discrete about this, I don’t know. I should have made it more obvious and maybe she would have tried to contain her sloppiness.

While my ranting and smartass comments about enduring bicoastal travel with this frumpy, perpetually hungry, blue-toed, Teva sandal circa 1990-wearing girl, can you blame me? She was a YANKEE fan. Oh, and while we’re still on the subject of this girl, I think it’s appropriate to note she ordered not just one free snack, but TWO! “Hi, I’ll have the Blue Chips and a bag of Animal Crackers.” I looked at her like, excuse me; you are the reason we have to pay luggage fees and ten dollars for a glass of shitty in-flight wine. I think it’s safe to assume her overzealous snack demands are responsible for jacked fees at airlines everywhere.

Compared to other flights I’ve had in the past, this one actually wasn’t so bad. At least I wasn’t in the middle seat. Or sitting by that screaming baby or the incontinent elderly woman. I suppose I really should be more grateful I was next to the sloppy, armrest-hogging Yankee fan.

My personal ‘you’re welcome’ to the airlines

Given my frequent traveling, I am happy to help out what (was once) a financially struggling industry, but I am absolutely not ok with the heftiness of my most recent credit card contributions. I knew that going home for the holidays meant I would later return to Los Angeles with a heavier suitcase (which actually turned into two extremely full suitcases. I blame that on Christmas presents and my determination to do as much shopping as possible in a state with lower sales tax). California’s sales tax is just ludicrous.

So, armed with two bulging suitcases, a carry-on and a packed purse, I approached the ticket counter only to learn that the airlines wouldn’t be able to transfer luggage from my connection in DC to LA. The miserable man behind the ticket counter explained, sans empathy, that because my first flight was on a different airline – not affiliated with the second airline – I would have to retrieve my luggage in DC and re-check it in there. And re-checking in meant re-paying baggage fees. You’re welcome, United Airlines and Virgin America. I despise you both.

Had I known this when I booked my flights I absolutely wouldn’t have chosen that roundtrip package. I huffed and puffed at the man behind the counter who was hardly phased by my performance, and ultimately handed him my credit card.

The entire process took me an hour to get from one end of the airport, grab my 120 pounds-worth of luggage and drag it back up to the check-in counter where I proceeded to flip out on the Virgin America woman behind the counter about their stupid policies. Sweating and panting from my work out around the DC airport, I looked like a frightening hot mess. But apparently I wasn’t scary enough because in the end I had to give her my credit card too.

So 11 hours, 3,000 miles and $115 in baggage fees later, I made it safely to Los Angeles, relieved and semi-tranquilized from taking Sominex.

For the industry that lost an estimated $58 billion from 2001 to 2009, I am fairly certain my baggage fee contributions have helped bring airlines out of that financial slump. In fact, the LA Times recently reported that 2010 brought them record high profits. No surprise there. Jacked with new fees to check luggage, have in-flight meals, in-flight peanuts and to use crappy headphones to listen to crappy in-flight movies, it’s no wonder United States airlines posted the highest quarterly profit margins in at least four years.

But don’t think it stops there. 2011 has exciting potential fees in store for us. Analysts and industry experts predict charges for having an infant on your lap, international baggage fees and fees for talking to an agent at the ticket counter. Yes, really. While these fees are purely speculative at this point, it wouldn’t be surprising to see them materialize. With the global airline industry expected to earn roughly $22 billion from à la carte fees and other ancillary sources in 2010, it’s easy to see them proliferate in efforts t0 increase profits.

Lesson learned from my expensive holiday travel experience: do more research when booking flights. Many airlines are able to post inexpensive or reasonable ticket prices because they know they can nab you with pricy add-on fees that sometimes you are forced to pay in the end (like paying for checked baggage twice in one trip). This is probably going to bother me for a long time. So the least I can do is gripe about it publicly and warn travelers to beware expensive add-on fees when you book your next trip.

Above photo is property of Imre Solt via Wikimedia Commons

Bottom photo is property of sun dazed via Creative Commons