Sunday, November 6, 2011

Seat 28B


I had to travel like a layman the other day. I had forgotten the smells, the sounds and the people who actually sit in the back of the planes that I travel on each week. For I am one of the "lucky ones". I have status with a certain airline . . . . .and with that status comes an aisle seat in the front of the plane with more leg room, flight attendants who actually recognize me on frequently traveled routes and the ability to get on the plane early so there is always room for my bag. And the other thing? Most of the people who sit in the front of the plane are "just like me", business people who have a place that they have to be and who use air travel like a bus to get to their next meeting.

Not so much is the case in the back of the plane. Lest I sound like a "travel snob", I want to preface this that years ago when I first started traveling- I was always in the back. But it has been ages since I had a trip like this one and I realized that the segregation that exists in the world is also on a plane . . .it may not be a neighborhood or have a designation, but there are definitely boundaries that should not be crossed.

Nestled between a pilot who was deadheading to LA, and a man who must have taken in a large amount of liquids before boarding the plan, I just knew that for the next four hours, I would have a glimpse of the "real world" as my friend calls it.

As I sat for the duration of the flight with my knees pressed up against the seat in front of me, watching the countless people file by to the bathroom, putting bags that were far too large for the overhead bin over my head, being bumped and jostled when all I wanted to do was sleep, I was reminded that all of these people had somewhere to go, someone to see. So why were they so darn irritating? The people in the front of the plane have the same needs, yet it just seemed so much more obnoxious in the back , like there was less air to breathe and so much less room.

Was it a personal bias that I held? A knowledge that those in the front of the plane knew how to travel and wouldn't try to bring all their worldly possessions on the plane? A resentment that my normal carrier had re booked me on an airline that would get me to my destination but that the experience would suffer? Or had I just become that "travel snob" that my friend purports me to be?

I shifted slightly in my seat to push the sleeping pilot off of my shoulder and pondered this for a moment. And in that instant, the clarity of the situation came to me. For those of us who have to travel for their jobs, a little preferential treatment is not wrong. After all, it is the full priced, refundable ticketed, business traveler who keeps many of these airlines in the air. And if they give us a few perks along the way, so be it, as we all know there is nothing glamorous about traveling for work today.

I poked the sleeping pilot to wake him up as the man in the window seat needed to get up for the third time during this trip. And as his eyes focused on me, I saw the same irritation, the same resentment in his eyes that I felt. And then in a flash it was gone. For he knew, just as I did, that the "back of the plane" while never an enviable position, carries people who deserve the same consideration as those in the front, no matter how much their "travel savvy" was lacking.

It was a long trip. But one that made me appreciate what I have just that much more.