A Polite Appeal To My Fellow Airplane Travellers

Dear Delightful Strangers who are travelling with me today,

I am highly optimistic that if we work together, if we get a few ground rules settled right upfront, we can have a very pleasant mutual journey towards the adventures that await us all. 

Let’s start with the obvious requests one might have when embarking on a trip via commercial airline. We can probably all agree that the seating in coach, where most of us travel, is a tad limiting. So, I have just a few small, easy-to-comply-with requests:

Please bathe.

Please do not clip your fingernails (or toenails!) in the seat next to me.

Please do not recline so thoroughly that your hair is dipping into the coffee cup of the person seated behind you.

Please, when using our shared armrest, keep your elbows tucked in toward your own body, not painfully poking into my arm, rib, or in some misfortunate cases, ear.

Please do not eat tuna salad. Ever.

Please don’t sing under your breath, for the entire flight.

Please don’t hog up the overhead compartment with small items like thin coats, shopping bags, that odd rubber chicken you bought from a street vendor. If you can fit something under your seat, please be considerate and leave enough space for my carry-on, so that the flight attendant doesn’t wrestle it away from me moments before take off and gate-check it, adding 40 minutes at the baggage carousel to my travel day, all because you didn’t want to put the oversized NFL jersey you just bought in the duty-free shop down by your feet.

Please, despite your obvious reluctance to do so, keep your shoes on. Especially if you have ignored request number one.

Please at least pretend to soothe your howling toddler. If you act like you’re trying, her continual shriek won’t be quite as unsettling for the rest of us.

Please do not pinch, slap, wink at, or fondle our flight attendant. She’s the one serving the drinks, and we’re going to need those.

Please stop elbowing me in the neck every time you try to haul yourself out of your seat. There’s a pretty good chance that you decided to get up (once again) the minute I had finally dozed off. 

Please smile occasionally. Especially when the resident howling toddler also finally dozes off.

Gum? Great. I know flying is tough on your ears. Snapping, popping, chomping and bubble-blowing? No, no, no thank you.

Please do not share with me your stories of infected surgical wounds, impacted wisdom teeth, swollen sores, bloody warts, or any other recent medical crises, especially when it’s clear that I’m reading my book.

No, thank you. I would not like a back rub. (We just met!)

Please don’t call your work associate the moment the wheels touch down and expose me to the private details of your recent sales coup. It might be lovely if you waited until we were off the plane to talk loudly of the terms of your contract, because I’m not sure I should know in exact dollars and cents, the amount of your year-end bonus.

Please exit the aircraft in a mature and orderly fashion. We can all agree to wait the extra moment or two for the elderly lady in 17C to gather her knitting. There’s no need to bum-rush the aisle and hurdle over four rows just to beat her out the door.

And please, for the love of God, don’t crowd the baggage carousel. Please stop craning and straining for a glimpse of your particular black rolling bag, identical (almost) to all of the other rolling bags sliding out of the baggage chute, so that you’re ruthlessly blocking the view of all of the other exhausted, eager-to-get-their-rolling bags-and-get-going travellers. If you could leave a polite ring of space around the carousel, almost like a moat, a fellow traveller could spot her bag, then casually step forward to retrieve it without a) ripping her arm out of the socket and/or b) being forced to apologize for severely clipping the kneecaps and shins of those of you standing absurdly squished and smashed right up against the conveyor belt.

I trust that we can all agree to abide by these simple guidelines. It’s mostly common sense. Who knows? After our perfectly harmonious behavior on this trip, we all might start a travel revolution, and every airplane ride could be as magical as this one. Right? Just spread the word.