Lex Anteinternet: The Weary Business Travalers Comments on Air Travel

For some reason this old 2015 entry was in the top hits for May 16, 2021.  Given as its on air travel, albeit pre Pandemic air travel, I thought I'd link it in here.  It might actually be from back at the time as well.

Lex Anteinternet: The Weary Business Travalers Comments on Air Travel: .

The Weary Business Travelers Comments on Air Travel

Zone 2 boards a plane.

I suppose that this will come across as crabby, but I do a lot of flying, and hence, I see a lot of airports and the inside of airplanes.

We are told there was once an era when air travel was glamorous and romantic.  For some it still is, now doubt. But for the business traveler, those days are long gone. What air travel is, is convenient.

It's safe, relatively fast, and all that. But fun it isn't.  At least not after you have quite a bit of it down. And, quite frankly, while I like airplanes, I don't like riding in airplanes, so that impacts my view a fair amount, I'll admit.

But I'm sure I'm not alone. So, hence a few observations.

1.  Business travelers probably aren't having fun on the plane, aren't on vacation, and may be cutting their schedule pretty tight.

One of the things I generally note about people travelling in airplanes is they're very polite as a rule.  And there's good reason to be very patient, and people nearly always are.  Some people have a hard time getting on and off of planes, and that's perfectly understandable and most people, indeed maybe all people, understand that.

But conversely, it's not uncommon for a business traveler to have very little time leeway.  He needs to catch another flight, or a taxi downtown, or something, to make his schedule. 

I note that, as there's some casual travelers who are really oblivious to this. The other day, for example, I was on a plane in which a nicely dressed young woman and her very well behaved young children encountered another nicely dressed young woman and her very well behaved young children, and they recognized each other. With about a third of the plane still needing to disembark, they stopped and had a protracted reunion conversation.  Nobody yelled or screamed, but when she finally resumed her progress towards the door, I could hear the businessman seated across the isle saying, under his breath "don't stop, don't stop."  As this plane was late, and my connection not too distant, I shared that view.

2.  Zone 2 is the Thundering Herd.

Aircraft board by zone.  Generally, the first zone is made up of people who need help boarding and then a premium, or multiple premium, zones. Then zone 1.

Then zone 2.

For some reason, things generally go well until zone 2 boards.  I'm nearly always in zone 2.  Zone 1 forms an orderly line and progresses in that fashion. By the time they get to zone 2, every single person in the zone is convinced they're never going to get to board, and they star t pushing, cow herd style, towards the gate.

Everyone is getting in the same plane, and this makes no sense, but it's really common.  People cut in line, muscle their way in, etc.

Ironically, it's not uncommon for one of the herd to slow everything up, once he's on the plane. That's the guy who decided to bring his walrus for the overhead bin storage.  He can't get it in, and has to try and try while the rest of the herd is stuck behind him.

United Airlines, I'll note, does a really good job of preventing this by having extra places for zone 2 to line up early.  Once they're in a narrow line, they behave, again much like cattle.  It's having no line to form up in as zone 1 moves ahead that seems to create this problem.

3.  The window bogarters

I like to get a window seat, even if I don't like flying.  That's because I do like scenery. 

For some reason, however, there are people who take window seats, and them immediately close the shade.  Hey man, if you didn't want to look out the window, why take a window seat?

4. The stenchy messy food girl.

Recently I've been noticing a trend for messy eating young girls on planes. This is a new one.

When I came back from Toronto recently a young woman, nicely dressed, sat next to me. But she was an amazingly sloppy eater and had brought a sandwich on with her.  She made a mess of that, and to make it worse, left her drink bottle on the airplane floor when she deplaned.

Not cool.

On the way back from Atlanta the other day, a high school aged girl sat next to me. She was industrious, and was writing a report on All Quiet On The Western Front on the plane, but she also came on with an Italian food special she'd gotten in the terminal.  It was apparently the Spicy Noodle In Limburger Cheese Sauce special, and it was rank and stanky.  Uff.  Not good for an enclosed environment.

5.  The drink people.

Every airplane flight in North America offers a beverage service. I am sure that if there was a commercial flight from Casper to Douglas, it would offer a beverage.

I get that in part.  Flights are long, and people might need something to drink. And at least by common belief, some drinks settle the stomach, or so we're told.  I've always been told that ginger ale does that, and I see a lot of ginger ale being drunk in airplanes.

But there are a lot of people who take drinks, because they are free.  I"m always amazed when people take drinks routinely between Casper and Denver, for example. The flight is only 45 minutes long, having  a drink is hardly worth bothering with.

This is particularly the case because the last few minutes into Denver is often rough, and the area right around Casper often is, both due to the atmospheric conditions associated with mountains.  But, people trust their trays and place the drinks down even when the plane is bouncing around.  Maybe they should trust them too, as I've never seen a drink bounce off a tray, but I've worried about it.

6.  The talkative traveler.

I travel in aircraft a lot, and I always bring a book or work on the plane.  I don't like traveling on planes, and so this serves to distract me, I suppose, although looking out the window, which I also like to do, probably works against that.

Every now and then, however, you get seated next to somebody very nervous or very talkative, or both.  They want to talk, and they're going to.  I've had an oil field consultant quiz me on towns to live in, in depth, all over the Rocky Mountain west, as if I am well suited to tell somebody where they ought to live.  Some people want to tell you their life's story, or others, if you are reading a book, want to discuss it, rather than let you read it.

In other situations, I might find that interesting, but in an airplane, not so much.  Something to do with the plane, I'm sure.

7. The dimwitted joke people.

One thing I've noticed is that every time there's an air disaster, or even a natural disaster, somebody in line wants to make a joke based on it.  This is not amusing at all.

Recently for example I was in line when a passenger on a Delta flight tried to engage the Captain of the plane in some banter based on the recent suicidal crash caused by the Germanair co-pilot.  This isn't funny, and won't ever be funny.  I'd have tossed her off the plane, but he only gave her a nasty glare.  Clearly he's more of a gentleman than I.

May 15, 1921. Opening day of the Curtiss Flying Field Garden City, New York. on May 15, 1921.

Both from the 2015 Model T. forum.

 

Lex Anteinternet: May 11, 1941. Things airborne

Lex Anteinternet: May 11, 1941. Things airborne: 

May 11, 1941. Things airborne

On this day in 1941 France brokered a deal with Germany for the release of POWs who were World War One veterans, save for professional soldiers, in exchange for German use of Syrian airfields in the German effort to aid Iraq.

Martin 167F bomber at Aleppo after being captured by the British.

Many of those French soldiers would only have been in their late 30s and 40s, well within military age, but not young men either.

German aircraft flew in Iraq for the first time on this day as well, although the Iraqis were already losing ground.

Hitler received the news that his second in the Nazi Party, Rudolph Hess had flown to the United Kingdom.  It came in the form of a letter from Hess.  Hitler was shocked.

The Blitz, as we noted yesterday, was over.

Lex Anteinternet: May 10, 1941. Hess jumps, the Luftwaffe quits, Be...

Lex Anteinternet: May 10, 1941. Hess jumps, the Luftwaffe quits, Be...: 

May 10, 1941. Hess jumps, the Luftwaffe quits, Belgian workers walk.

Hess's wrecked Bf110.

On this day in 1941 Rudolph Hess, operating on his own initiative, took a German aircraft and flew himself to the UK with the expressed intent to broker a peace between Germany and the British Empire.

It's easy to sum up Hess as delusional, which he was.  He was peculiar in other ways, however, which is saying something as the Nazi leadership was overall peculiar.  He'd spent his youth in Egypt, where he was born of German parents, where he acquired an intense racism against non Europeans, rather than being broadened in his views as a person would suspect.  He also, from that experience, came to admire the British.  He'd served in World War One and emerged into an economy in which his family's business interests, of which it had been intended he'd be part of, had been badly damaged by the war, and in particular by the British seizing German interest in Egypt.  He was a very early member of the Nazi Party.  He became the Deputy Fuhrer of the party, an extremely high position in the German Nazi regime.  Following the start of the war his antisemitism grew.

On this day in 1941 he flew a Bf110 to Scotland in the belief that he could establish contacts with friendly British interest and negotiate a peace with the UK. Based on the statement he intended to deliver at the Nuremburg Trial and again attempted to issue in written form in 1986, he actually believed that he'd be able to negotiate a peace and bring the UK into the war against the Soviet Union, something that was then on the near horizon in German planning.

Hess used a Bf110 for his mission, which was a substantial aircraft.  He ran out of fuel near his target, a British estate that he mistakenly believed would house a sympathetic family, and bailed out, breaking his ankle and resulting in his capture by a Scottish farmer.  He was placed in the Tower of London where he spent the rest of the war.  The mission was hugely embarrassing to the Germans as Hess was a significant figure in the Nazi Party, and it was somewhat embarrassing to the British at it was both a reminder of there having been some significant members of British aristocracy who had sympathized with the Nazis before the war and because such a substantially sized aircraft had penetrated over Scotland without detection.

Following the war he was a defendant at the Nuremburg trials.  Being convicted, he spent the rest of his life a prisoner at Spandau Prison in Berlin where he remained an unrepentant Nazi, and he remained a prisoner far longer than any other figure sentenced to prison.  As he had very little in the way of a role after the war started, and served so many more years than any other German prisoner, there were fairly serious efforts to secure his release in later years, which tended to discount that his views had not changed at all.  Neither had the Soviets, however, who vetoed any release as they firmly believed that he was aware of plans to invade the Soviet Union and, therefore, could have warned the British who would have warned them.  At least according to one story, on a single occasion when the Soviets failed to veto his release, the British did.  The prison was torn down following his death in order to avoid having it turned into a Nazi shrine. His grave did become one, however, so in 2011 the Lutheran church on whose grounds it was located had the remains removed and the tombstone destroyed.

On the same day that Hess flew to Scotland, the Luftwaffe bombed London again.  You can read of both events here:

Today in World War II History—May 10, 1941

Huge raid on London

The London raid was the Luftwaffe's last largescale aircraft bombing raid on the city of the war.  The Blitz was winding down and in fact the nighttime raid, which also covered the following morning, ended the campaign.  German air raids over the UK would continue to the end of the war in a lesser capacity, but the largescale nighttime raids that had commenced after the German failure to win an aerial victory ended.  The Germans lost the Battle of Britain and they'd lost the Blitz.  They were not going to knock the UK out of the war through the air, and they gave up trying.  Of course, they also had limited air assets and began to rededicate them to the planned campaign against the Soviets Union.  Indeed, the termination of the campaign supported the British suspicion that the Soviet Union was next, something the British would attempt to warn the Soviets of.

While Hess went on his delusional mission, Belgian workers went out on strike.  The strike was remarkable not only for the fact it occurred in occupied country, but that even the Belgian Communist Party supported it. At the time, the Communists everywhere were generally somewhat pro Nazi or at least not anti Nazi due to the non aggression pact that had been entered into between the Soviet Union and Germany still being in effect.

The strike lasted eight days and ended when the Germans agreed to a wage raise.

Lex Anteinternet: A question for writers of fiction.

Lex Anteinternet: A question for writers of fiction.: If you are a fiction writer, by which I mean novels, how many significant, or central, characters do you feel is the limit for a novel, assu...

April 4, 1921. National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics.

 

Lex Anteinternet: Subscribe by email "gadget" going away.

Lex Anteinternet: Subscribe by email "gadget" going away.: Google seems pretty intent on destroying the Blogger format, which means that for people like me, who have blogged on blogger, we have a cho...

Blog Mirror: US Post Office Airmail Radio System: 1921

 

US Post Office Airmail Radio System: 1921

United Airlines puts out the "Help Wanted" sign.

 United Airlines, looking at rebounding air travel, has put out the news that it's hiring hundreds of pilots.

That's good news for everyone.

April 1, 1921. Adrienne Bolland flies over the Andes.

Adrienne Bolland, a pilot employed by René Caudron to demonstrate his airplanes in South America, flew a Caudron G.3 from Mendoza, Argentina to Santiago, Chile, across the Andes Mountain Range.

From this Day In Aviation

March 31, 1921. The Royal Australian Air Force founded.

Australian military aviation goes back to the Great War, but it was largely disbanded with the peace. After the war, it was recreated as part of the Australian Army, and then on this day, it was made a separate service as the Australian Air Force. King George V would approve the "Royal" title later that year.

Royal Australian Air Force standard.