The Friendly Skies

by CKR

I remember a long-ago flight to London from Dallas on American Airlines. My flying companion and I were called to the podium (as they say) to hear that we had been upgraded to first class. Just like that, no reason given, although in retrospect I think it must have been because they wanted to fit in some standbys, and we must have been fairly high in the newly-introduced frequent flyer miles.

That was when I could just ask for an upgrade and sometimes get one. No silver, gold, platinum.

I’ve always valued my frequent flyer miles most for the premium cards and the upgrades to first class. Then Delta decided to inflate their frequent flyer miles a few years back, late in the year, and screwed me out of the card I otherwise would have had.

But there was the time I decided to use those miles so I could attend a day-before-Valentine’s wedding in Tallinn. The Delta agent spent an hour or more on the phone with me to arrange frequent flyer miles plus a $300 fare for the Stockholm to Tallinn leg on Estonian Air. On the flight over, I chatted with the cabin crew during a midnight bathroom break, and they gave me a bottle of champagne to bring to the celebration.

Then Delta stopped flying to Stockholm and Vienna, the most convenient routes to Tallinn.

I love flying. I’m a pilot myself, pretty good at pilotage and have memorized the landmarks for the patterns into the cities I visit frequently. I usually request a window seat, and I love to watch takeoff and landing through the forward cameras and listen to the scant radio traffic during late nights over the Atlantic.

Loving flying is no longer permissible, however, in our fundamentalist fervor to beat the terrorists at their own game. When I recently renewed my passport, I hoped to get as good a photo as I’ve had for the last ten years: smiling boldly, the way I did when I strode through the Cincinnati Airport in the new winter boots I picked up at Gatwick. No, the young man at the photo shop told me. No smiles. Some of his other customers had had their passport photos returned for the crime of smiling; expressions are to be “neutral.” I had to go through some contortions to achieve that. When I had lunch with a friend that day, I noticed that his natural expression seems to be a smile, too.

I bring very little jewelry on my trips now, too. I have to carry it and keep wondering if too much metal will provoke searches and worse. So I wear a nice pair of earrings and bring some scarves. Come to think of it, I’d hate to have the scarves I’ve picked up in Pärnu or Almaty stolen, so I guess I need to carry them on. I won’t even mention just now what happened on the trip when I wore my wonderful Kazakh fox-fur hat.

I had just about gotten to the point of minimal packing so that I could carry on a small suitcase and one other bag, nothing checked for most trips within the US. Two trips that way, very pleased with myself, and something changed. So I had to check a bag with the unacceptables, unlocked, of course, because we can trust the baggage handlers even if they can’t trust us.

I was never so naïve as to check anything I didn’t want stolen, so that meant a carryon bag larger than my purse or small backpack to accommodate valuables, and one bag to be checked, for the unacceptables. It never happened to me, but I’ve heard about jewelry stolen and cameras damaged, bags damaged because they were locked, even with those supposedly TSA-acceptable locks.

For a while, if I closed my bags with wire ties, TSA was good enough to add their own after they searched my bags. The last trip, they didn’t even bother to close the zippers all the way.

And now the liquid ban. Living in a dry climate, I need my lip pomade or gloss to keep my lips from cracking. I keep tubes in my purse, my jacket pockets, and on the bathroom counter. The atmosphere on airplanes is dry too, but I have to tough that out now. I guess we must be thankful that we have eliminated the evils of painted lips for the fundy patrol. A lip-gloss tube of nitroglycerin would probably have the power of a large firecracker, but what if seventeen evil ladies and several men got it all together and used an iPod to set it off?

On the airline side of things, we now get to pay for airline food, mostly packs of the sorts of snacks I never buy at home. I am reminded why when, in desperation, I buy one in flight. My connections through enormous airports like Houston or Minneapolis never seem to allow time to pick up food, even when I see some I might like. Plus the difficulty of balancing a salad box along with what I must now carry on and still handing my boarding pass to the agent. I now look upon a flying day as a fast day, hopefully increasing my religious value.

They do still serve liquids on the flights, although ending that would also decrease the need for bathrooms. They could then close off the bathrooms so that no evildoers could use them as impromptu chemistry laboratories. Perhaps the cabin crew could add empty bottles (wide-mouth, I hope) to their items for sale, and we could all be required to stay in our seats for the entire flight.

We’re getting into the cough and cold season, when there always seems to be one of those sitting behind me. Close behind me. On a recent flight, I had a man, about 5’10” and 220 pounds (was that you, J.?) sitting in the middle seat next to me. He was extraordinarily decent, keeping to his own space, not sprawling his arms and legs all over. I wondered how uncomfortable he had to be for those three hours.

And now handling all that checked baggage is causing the airlines problems. If we can’t carry liquids, including a mostly empty tube of shaving cream or toothpaste, into the cabin, then every passenger must check a bag. That’s part of what is making flights late, because the timing was designed for stowing less checked baggage.

I’ve got another trip coming up, thankfully not during the holidays. Northwest has been reasonably kind to me lately, and they don’t seem to cram their seats together as tightly as some of the others. So I’m hoping for the best, although my travel agent just told me that they’ve eliminated the flight I usually take.

It’s quite lovely to look out the window and see fields and towns. My last trip, I think it must have been over Illinois, I could trace the old roads through the towns, then the later roads that skirted them and the towns grew into, and, for some, a third road, yet further out. Highway history. The approach into Milwaukee was different than usual, and I saw boggy lakes I hadn’t realized were there.

We are ruining the joy of flight and, financially, the airline industry. We are accustomed, for business and pleasure, to being able to move about the country and the world easily. It becomes harder with every terror scare. The terrorists will strike again, or an individual crazy will do damage. It may be on a crowded bus or in a shopping mall. We feel a particular anxiety toward air travel, and that was the mode of 9/11, so it has received most of the attention.

But making our lives pleasureless is part of the terrorists’ plan. In Afghanistan, they use rhinoceros-tail whips to make sure women are not flaunting themselves outside their burkhas. Here, we have grim-faced TSA agents to ensure we are not painting ourselves with lip gloss. Or, worse, TSA agents making jokes. What are we supposed to reply when we are not allowed to joke? Is it another screen, or just another idiot who can’t figure out what is appropriate?

We must contort ourselves into the coffin-like space. Perhaps the airline magazines could provide some of those memento mori illustrations to amuse us. Perhaps the PA system could provide funereal music continuously through the flight, or maybe the foretaste of hell in free use of cell phones will be enough.