Please Return to Your Seat

On the long haul flight

Photo by Suhyeon Choi on Unsplash

No one on this plane is here for the plane.

We have each spent a great deal of money specifically to be somewhere else. But to get there, we must first sit still for thirteen hours in a sealed tube with two hundred strangers.

On the way in, we passed a flight attendant with a tray of champagne, smiling, but making a private guess about which direction we would turn. I turn right. I always turn right. Half of Economy appears to have boarded directly from bed. A woman is wearing what looks like patterned pajamas. A man dressed like Adam Sandler is standing in the aisle trying to figure out which of his ten cords he needs to have with him in his seat.

By the time I reach 40C, my overhead bin space has been taken by someone three rows ahead who brought a bag the exact dimensions of a small refrigerator. There is nothing to be done about this. We are a miniature society now, and the injustices began before takeoff.

The first hour is administrative. We adjust our screens and scroll through the entertainment library with initial contentment, but we will change our minds at least twice before the drink cart arrives. There are three hundred options on this flight today, but I know that ultimately, what I will watch is whatever the person diagonally in front of me chooses.

Someone nearby has already pressed play, which is a bold decision given that their film is about to be interrupted by a safety video in which Kevin Hart screams at two people sitting in safari chairs in ‘Nairobi’ about how to fasten a seatbelt.

When the seatbelt sign goes off, the cabin reshuffles. This is when people reveal what kind of long-haul passenger they are.

There is the man in 38D who reclines his seat the moment it becomes legal to do so with such force that it almost hits the head of the woman sitting behind him. Her options for the flight are now limited. Her screen is twelve inches from her face. She can no longer reach into her seatback pocket or eat without holding a scalding aluminum dish. She will remember this for the duration of the flight and possibly longer.

The meal cart appears two hours in. You can hear it banging into passengers’ knees before you see it, and the sound causes the entire cabin to sit up slightly, like meerkats detecting motion on the savanna. A flight attendant leans in and asks the question that will define the next twenty minutes of your life.

“Chicken or pasta?”

This is not a real choice. The chicken is a portion of protein in a brownish sauce that could be curry, could be gravy, or could be both, seasoned with what feels like an entire day's worth of sodium. The pasta is the other option. Both come with a bread roll that requires enough force to open that you risk elbowing your seatmate. From behind the curtain up front, there is the faint clink of actual silverware.

After the meal, the cabin goes dark, and the window shades come down. This is supposed to be the sleeping portion of the flight, and the airline does everything it can to suggest that sleeping on a plane is a normal thing that normal people do. They dim the lights and lower the temperature to something that feels hostile. They hand out thin blankets that cover either your shoulders or your feet, but never both.

I watch people attempt sleep in ways that would concern a physician. One man is folded over his tray table like a student who has given up during an exam. A child three rows back is fully unconscious, limbs splayed, sleeping better than any of us have slept in years. This is the last time in his life he will find an economy seat comfortable, and he doesn’t know it.

There are four lavatories for roughly two hundred people, and a line forms after the meals. We stand in the galley area, swaying gently, avoiding eye contact, pretending we are not all here for the same reason. A man joins the line in socks. He has made a decision, and it is not one I would have made; it is not one any person should ever make. Each time the door opens, the person leaving holds it for the person waiting with a politeness that suggests they feel guilty about something, though what exactly is left for the next passenger to figure out.

Around hour nine, the cabin enters a strange limbo. The lights are still off, but no one is sleeping anymore. People are staring at their screens in the dark, or at the flight map, watching the small plane icon inch across a blue ocean at a speed that makes you wonder whether the plane is moving at all. Someone three rows ahead has turned on their overhead reading light, illuminating nine seats in every direction. They are reading a paperback. They do not care. Others are walking the length of the aisle with no destination, just movement for its own sake, pacing the cabin slowly, bumping every aisle seat on the way past.

Somewhere around hour eleven, the cabin lights come back on. The second meal arrives shortly after. It is smaller than the first and served in a cardboard box. A man eats his while standing in the aisle, stretching his calves. No one finds this unusual.

The plane begins its descent. One person along the windows does not move. They were asleep before the lights came on and they are asleep now, almost certainly on something pharmaceutical. A flight attendant taps their shoulder and waits while they figure out which continent they are on before asking them to lift their shade.

The wheels touch, and a phone rings somewhere behind me at a volume that suggests the caller has been trying for thirteen hours straight and finally got through. The passenger answers. “Yeah, we just landed,” they say, and then begin to describe the flight before pausing and saying “Chicken.”

We file off the plane and into a terminal that looks exactly like the one we left. For a moment, it is not clear that we have gone anywhere at all. Then the signs are in another language, and we remember why we did this. 💺

Did you notice something else on the flight? Share it in the comments.

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