On Air Travel
Dara Lind offers a great perspective here:
Travel crises do a lot to bring this [camaraderie] out, in a we’re-all-in-this-together sort of way. But at the same time, any obstacle or antagonism reinforces each passenger’s belief in the importance of his own narrative. Personal significance, professional significance, plain old urgency: all of these are invoked with an air of ruffled indignation and the conclusion that “This can’t be happening to me.” But arguing one’s way through the security line means putting one’s own narrative ahead of other passengers’, quite literally, and I’m uncomfortable with that.
The competition for personal relevance in the face of shared crisis is not a pretty sight, and the ready availability of the phone as a prop has not helped. When our flight from the west coast was rerouted and delayed last month, we worked to set an example for our own kids and remain out of the scrum. If all our encouragements and admonitions could be boiled down into a single lecture, it would probably read something like this:
Flying across the country is a spectacular privilege; it succeeds only by the sufferance of physics and weather and should never be taken for granted. Even though we have been traveling all day and are now jammed in the back seat of a stationary plane on a runway we never planned on seeing, and even though your mom is conspicuously pregnant with triplets, there is no reason we deserve more than anyone else to escape from Saginaw, Michigan and sleep in our own beds tonight.
I try not to be the kind of person who speaks as though life is always getting gradually worse, and things were so much better in the good old days, etc. But I can’t help thinking that the demon of American self-obsession has eaten the social contract to such a degree that we just can’t live with each other anymore.
And god bless you for not using your kids or your wife’s pregnancy as a crutch. Children seem to have become just more fuel for self-involvement. “It’s not just me— it’s for my child!” It brings righteous indignation into the typical me-me-me equation.
— Freddie · Apr 9, 08:02 PM · #
I have no idea where my sense of ettiquette comes from on this. IMHO,
1) Winning the competition for limited airport resources by being faster, smarter, or luckier (e.g., calling a phone agent while people are piled up in a line, switching flights 10 minutes before everyone else starts to panic, grabbing the last rental car while everyone else is flying, being more polite to the airline staff) is not only acceptable, it’s kind of admirable.
2) Telling a true and legitimate story to the airline staff is morally acceptable, but somewhat pathetic. To borrow Lind’s terminology, it doesn’t “privilege” my “narrative” to have the airport staff consider it — if they have three seats to give away, I want them to give it to the most “deserving” passengers. I don’t have a strong opinion on whether the rule for “deserving” is first-come, first-served, or the person who will suffer the most if not given the seat, but if they are applying the latter rule and I think I might actually be the most deserving, then I have no problem with them considering my situation.
3) Lying and rudeness are right out.
— J Mann · Apr 10, 01:25 PM · #
P.s.: Notwithstanding all that, I have to confess some sympathy when Billy Zane steals someone’s child to get on a life boat in Titanic. It would be monstrous in real life, but when performed by an attractive actor using a pommy accent in a historical movie, it’s kind of plucky.
— J Mann · Apr 10, 01:27 PM · #