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“linoleum.” When the flight attendants ask, “Do you want roast beef or lasagna?” they don’t mean, “Do you want roast beef, or do you want lasagna?” They mean: “Do you want this di
And speaking of airline food, another important aviation development has been: The barf bag. Early barf bags were large canvas sacks; a severely airsick passenger would be placed inside, and the bag would then be sealed up and, in an act of aviation mercy, shoved out the cargo door at 12,000 feet. Today’s passenger doesn’t get that kind of personalized service, and must place a small bag over his nose and mouth in hopes of cutting off his oxygen supply.
Despite these strides forward, there have been a few problems caused by the belt-tightening in the airline industry that has resulted from “deregulation,” a new government policy under which the only requirement to purchase an airline is that you have to produce two forms of identification. Even Donald Trump was allowed to purchase an airline, which he immediately named after himself (“Air Jerk”). This led to some dramatic aviation moments when Trump got into financial difficulty and had to sell some of his aircraft while they were still in the air. (“This is your captain speaking. We’ve just been advised that instead of Boston, we will be landing in Iran. We regret any incon ...”)
Of course, this kind of adventure only adds to the fun of flying. My family has had many fun flights, including an extremely exciting one in which we went from Miami to Honolulu via the following itinerary, which I am not making up:
1. We flew from Miami to Denver on a plane that seemed to be working fine, so naturally they made us get off of it and get on another plane that was supposed to fly the rest of the way to Honolulu. This happened to be on Halloween. “Never Fly on Halloween,” that is our new aviation motto.
2. They put a bunch of fuel on our new plane, and we got on it. One of the flight attendants was wearing devil ears, which struck us as hilarious at the time but which we later on realized was an omen. “Never Get on a Flight Where a Crew Member Is Wearing Devil Ears” is another one of our aviation mottoes.
3. When we got out to the end of the runway, the pilot a
4. We got back on the plane and the pilot a
5. We landed in San Francisco. There they told us (why not?) that we had to change planes, so we all got off, only to be met by a gate attendant wearing an entire devil costume, which was seeming less and less amusing. Also the pilot was not inspiring a great deal of confidence in us. You know how pilots are generally trim, military-looking individuals who remain up in the cockpit looking aloof but competent? Well, our pilot was a chunky, slightly disheveled man who looked like a minor character in Police Academy XIII. He was walking around the lounge area, chatting with us passengers as though he had nothing else to do, and holding a computer printout the thickness of War and Peace, which he a
6. So we took off from San Francisco, and for a while everything was fine except for the aroma coming from the seat behind us, which was occupied by a wretched woman who was attempting to get to Australia with two very small children, whom she evidently intended to enter in the World Pooping Championships. But this ceased to be our main concern when, after about an hour over the Pacific, which is famous for not having anyplace on it where you can land, the pilot a
7. So we turned around and headed back toward, you guessed it, San Francisco, which we were begi
8. We landed safely and scuttled off the plane to be greeted, once again, by the devil, who was now being assisted by a witch. Of course by this point, Hell seemed like a major improvement over commercial air travel.
9. Several hours later our pilot led us onto yet another plane. By this point
a lot of people had dropped out of the flight, but we were determined to see what would ultimately happen, with a lot of smart money betting that this would become the first commercial airliner ever to be sucked into a black hole. During the Preflight Safety Lecture—I swear this is true—the flight attendant said, “If you gotta go, go with a smile.”
10. We took off from San Francisco again and flew back out over the Pacific, where, to judge from the amount of “turbulence,” we flew smack into a whole herd of airborne water buffalo. The in-flight movie was The Dead Poets Society.
11. We landed in Honolulu, 21 hours after we left Miami. To apologize for our inconvenience, the flight attendants gave us coupons that were good for discounts on future flights, although they new full well that we were all pla
I do not mean to suggest here that all flights take this long to reach their destinations. Some of them never reach their destinations. And I understand that there are even some, the ones that I personally am not on, that arrive right on schedule. YOu just never know, which is why air travel is the ongoing adventure that it is.
Airport Security
The important thing to remember about airport security procedures is that they have been created for your protection. Sure, it can be a
The heart of the airport security system is the metal detector, a device that shoots invisible rays into your body. These rays are perfectly harmless, according to security perso
The purpose of the metal detector is to make sure that you’re not carrying a bomb or a deadly weapon or a set of car keys. If the detector detects one of these items, it will beep; security perso