The Wrought Iron Age of Air Travel

Perhaps it should be called the Gilded Age of Air Travel instead. Just regular steel for Economy, but coated in gold for anything higher. Everyone hassles through security, everyone has to wait to get their luggage, and delays and cancellations plague everyone, but the airline staff are so much nicer and more accommodating when you're ticket isn't marked "Economy". Anyway, I just got back from London the other day, and I managed to weasel my way into Premium Economy (Virgin Atlantic's version of Business Class) on the flight home. Although I didn't even get the full bump to Upper Class, the stewardesses were like a thousand times nicer to me than when I sat in plain-old-economy. This is absurdly cliche.

Don't get me wrong, Virgin is a great airline no matter what price point. But I must say, they really step it up a notch for the upper classes. For one thing, I was literally plied with booze the entire time in Premium Economy. Glass of champagne before we took off, and three glasses of pre-dinner wine before we were in the air. Another two glasses of wine with dinner, and a glass of Bailey's Irish Cream as an aperitif. Total cost to me: $0. Also, the seats were much nicer. They had substantially more leg room, reclined a lot more, and were much more comfortable. All-in-all, a very pleasurable ambiance indeed.

Or so it would appear. One thing you can't escape from in any kind of travel is the people. In my experiences, my seatmate has usually been good or neutral. Which is great, I usually sit next to interesting people, or at least someone who has the courtesy to leave their iPod in the entire time rather than say they don't want to talk to me. (Full disclosure: I am guilty of the latter behavior myself.) Let's take a minute to visualize the plane. The rows were set up in a 2-3-2 configuration, and I was sitting in the right most seat in the middle. Got it? Good. The two nitwits I sat next to were quite possibly the most socially retarded people I've ever met.

I mean for one, (and this is going back to me being insanely judgmental), they were dressed like shit. Cheap ratty sneakers, jeans that looked like they were of the K-Mart persuasion and hoodies that looked like they hadn't been taken off in a week, let alone washed. They were in college. We were sitting at a bulkhead, so everything had to be stowed in the overhead bins. Our two compatriots clearly had a lot of shit with them sitting at their feet. After being told repeatedly that they needed to put their stuff in the overhead bins and barely responding, the flight attendant asked for each item to be handed to her as she put it in the bins. She didn't look happy.

When the flight took off, they got all their shit out of the overhead bins and splayed it back out where it was. Being the nosy bastard I am, I couldn't help but look over and check on them. The kid next to me was watching this soccer simulation. It involved red and blue dots moving around in no particular fashion. Whatever. When he was tired with that (after about an hour) he switched over to the in-flight entertainment system. Our young friend then proceeded to watch The Simpsons Movie in fast forward in its entirety, then proceeded to watch it again in normal speed. The two oddballs would whisper short sayings to each other, and would generally act weird. By this point, I stopped paying attention.

I guess my point is that you'd think that the more expensive your ticket, the more normal your fellow passengers would be. I have found that more often than not the complete opposite is true. Maybe paying more means that people get to act more eccentric, more bizarre than usual.

As usual, now that I have completely lost my train of thought and the end of the post is completely different than the beginning, it is time for me to depart. Goodbye!