Fear of flying

David Sherman

Airports have become shopping centres. They know travellers, at least when leaving, have credit cards yet to be maxed out or money and they want it. The preamble to a dream vacation is now a forced march through booze stores, lingerie boutiques, perfume, jewelry, shoe, soccer sweater shops and other finery like emporiums serving Big Macs and KFC chicken at 6 a.m.  

In Montreal, moving sidewalks disappear once you hit a retail corridor and you’re on your own. Arthritic knees, back? Too bad. Nothing a bottle of Jameson’s or Chanel No. whatever won’t soothe? Maybe a box of M&Ms to chew across the sea?

Surviving the scents and seduction of 100 shops, you get to drag yourself and a bag or two through a half-mile and 45 minutes of snaking rows of herds of people like herds of cattle in a slaughter chute. To avoid waiting 30 minutes to claim their baggage at the carousels, most are dragging suitcases and back packs to stow in the overhead bins.

Now to give 300 passengers time to stow their luggage in the overhead bins, you board 60 minutes before takeoff to stand in line with 300 strangers on a jet way and go nowhere and do nothing but exchange germs for 45 minutes waiting for every passenger to wrestle their luggage into overhead bins. This way they avoid waiting at a baggage carousel for 30 minutes.

This is your reward for emptying your pockets and taking your belt off in front of 1,000 strangers, all of whom seem to have been injected with amphetamines, hoping your pants won’t slip to your knees, revealing you ran out of clean underwear three days ago. The climax of this systemic chaos is to get felt up by a bearded, venal human with bad breath who resents he doesn’t have the opportunity to do the same to female passengers.

If all goes well, you then sit for hours with your knees in your mouth, fighting for the arm rest with a Weight Watchers candidate who has overflowed into your seat coveting your two-kilo box of M&Ms.

But there are options. You can pay hundreds of dollars extra to have leg room in what they call the bulk head or the emergency exit seats. Yes, your legs have room but, surprise, the seat doesn’t recline. You get to spend six or seven hours sitting bolt upright and discover upon landing your spine no longer functions. As a bonus, proper ventilation cuts into profit margins, and you have a good chance to bring home a variety of unidentified viruses. If you’re really lucky, a good case of Covid.

If you’re a man, you get to pee with your knees and neck bent as you get bounced up and down, your head playing bass drum against the interior of the curving fuselage. This is even more exciting when they announce you’re 32,000 feet in the air but you’re hopping through turbulence and you have to stay seated and strap yourself in. This is not an opportune time to be thrown around by turbulence, especially when only one hand is, well, free, to stop your head from exiting the aircraft. If you’re a woman, I have no idea.

You also get to pay 10 times the retail price for ear buds that fall out of your ears every time you take a breath. If you fly Air Canada you also pay to eat a sandwich your dog would, well, piss on.

Watch an execrable film with Hugh Grant, who’s wondering what he’s doing here, and Drew Barrymore, who changes from simple shirt into low-cut, bright red, breast-revealing evening gown because screenwriters had run out of the few ideas they had and resorted to exposing female flesh. Other “classic films” include Creed II and Hangover Part III, probably ‘cause it would take a triple scotch to sit through it, even when strapped in.

Count the minutes, constantly check the altitude and airspeed for reassurance. When the plane starts to rock ‘n’ roll and the seatbelt sign goes on, you check the attendants’ eyes for fear and wonder if you’ll feel anything if the plane explodes mid-air or how long you can tread water if it ditches in the Atlantic.

You can pass some time by falling asleep for an hour or two, waking with a paralyzed neck, drool-stained shirt and legs that no longer function.

Once you’ve reached your destination without crashing and burning or blowing up at 32,000 feet, you again experience the joy of snaking through the slaughter chute with a thousand others for 30 minutes or more to get to customs to confirm you look somewhat like the photo in your passport. But, yes, you have something to declare. Other than the Titanic, ocean liners would be a better option.