#60: American Air Travel is an Elaborate Torture Experiment, Actually

SATIRE

You cannot convince me American air travel is not an elaborate torture experiment designed to see what we are willing to take before we revolt. In case you don’t believe me or it’s been a while since you’ve flown, here’s what a typical day of air travel looks like these days:

If your driver (disgruntled family member rethinking their love for you or overworked rideshare employee who scrubbed vomit out of a floor mat this morning) manages to evade a fender bender snaking through the Departures drop-off and airport security doesn’t wave you endlessly on to an elusive and probably non-existent stopping zone, you’ll find yourself inside at the ticket counter.

Here, you’ll rub elbows with grumpy passengers fighting boarding pass kiosks and grumpier passengers fighting actual human employees. At this point, you should consider whether or not you really need to check that bag you’re lugging around. Listen, everyone knows you weighed it on your bathroom scale at home. You did the thing where you weigh yourself and then stepped off, hoisted up the bag, and stepped back on the scale. It was a cool 49 pounds in the comfort of your own home, you swear. It will be, no matter how light you think you packed, no matter how accurate that leftover Weight Watchers scale may be, four pounds overweight. And you will have to open your suitcase on the floor of the airport like a street urchin while the line waiting to check their own overweight bags fumes and seethes behind you. They’ll think they’re better than you. They’ll think their bathroom scale math is better than yours. When they’re proven wrong minutes later, you’ll be wasting away in the security line, and they won’t remember you. There’s no empathy in the airport. There’s hardly humanity. There is only fruitlessly shoving your CPAP machine into your backpack and cramming several loose undergarments into your overstuffed carry-on.

Next stop, the security line! Estimated wait time on that little screen: 34 minutes. Actual time you’ll spend with your ID in your hand waiting to get judged for that wretched DMV picture: 127 hours. Honestly, it’d be better just to saw your own arm off. If you do go that route, DON’T forget to put your severed arm in a bin. Shoes off. Oh look! You wore your socks with the big toe peephole. Wonderful! Now everyone thinks you’re a gross freak. And the TSA pat-down guy is into that and he’s patting down your feet a little too much. Empty your water bottle, get screamed at a little, expose your body to radiation. You get it, the works.

Once you’ve stomped back into your shoes after surviving the seventh circle of TSA, you should direct your attention to the flight info display board. If you’re lucky, it will say your flight has been delayed 2 hours and 37 minutes. If you’re neither lucky or unlucky, just plain normal (plane normal — ba dum tis!), your flight will be delayed until tomorrow. Find a place to curl up on the floor! If you’re unlucky, the airline will have gone under and you will be cursed to wander the terminal destination-less forevermore.

Let’s assume you’re lucky and now you have a few hours to kill at your gate before boarding. You’ll settle into a seat with one of the few outlets (it won’t work, don’t even bother trying) and a single, continuous, shriek of a note will blast through the loudspeakers. It will last between 8 and 88 minutes. Then there will be a light reprieve before it resumes for 238 more minutes. The shriek note pierces through noise-canceling headphones and earplugs, even when worn together. Trust me, I’ve tried. Children will cover their ears and cry. Grown men will cover their ears and cry. You will cover your ears and cry.

Weird sleep gator art in LAX Terminal 2.

When it’s finally time to board, you will line up with your zone number. Several people from a much later zone will cut in front of you and loudly discuss how they are not in that zone. You won’t push the issue because what’s the point? When they reach the flight entrance, they will not have downloaded their e-boarding pass correctly. They will attempt to have the desk attendant scan a grainy, blurry screenshot of a barcode that is not even for this purpose. It’s for vegan dog food or some shit. The desk attendant will have their annoyance at this idiocy written all over their face. The cutters will hide their shame with anger and projection. Everyone is wrong except for them! So what if the 197 other people on the plane have the Apple Wallet boarding pass, this shitty screenshot is actually the right one! It will take 17 minutes for this to be resolved.

Once you’ve scanned your correctly downloaded boarding pass (which you won’t receive a pat on the back for), you’ll continue like cattle down the chute of the jetbridge. Whatever the weather outside, even if it’s beautiful and balmy, it will seep in through that sliver separating the jet and the bridge and make the bridge unbearable. Hot and stuffy or frigid and shivery or wet and windy. The weather will weasel its way in and make waiting in that already animalistic line excruciating. I mean, it’ll make you want to throat punch. No one in particular. Just generally. While exiting the jetbridge, you will be terrified of dropping your phone through the open sliver. That anxiety will serve as your additional (and illegal!) second personal item for the duration of the flight. Enjoy!

Of course, because you booked a non-refundable economy ticket, you will be stuck in a middle seat. The seat will be uncomfortable from the moment you sit down. You know how normal chairs are concave to cradle our fleshy human bodies? Airplane seats are designed to be convex so they can efficiently deliver instant buttlock and back pain. Before you even leave the tarmac you’ll be cursing your fragile spine and begging for sweet release. It will be, undoubtedly, a long way off.

You’ll be stuck there, unable to escape, for hours, with these strange people and their strange smells, and your aisle seat neighbor’s egg-salad sandwich, which she bought in the airport Hudson News because the airport oppressors want you to suffer. The wifi, even if you pay for it, will suck. If you are able to get some shut-eye, you will fart in your sleep and make everyone hate you. If you’re lucky enough to be flying an airline that gives complimentary WATER, you know that substance we need TO LIVE that is not available for free in every metal box you can be trapped in 30,000 feet in the sky, you will sleep through your drink cart opportunity too. You’ll probably wake up when the flight attendants are precisely one row past you and no matter how much frantic eye contact you make or “excuse me’s” you utter at increasing volumes, you will not get a second shot. You missed your chance. Enjoy being parched. You can dehydrate to death for all Jet Blue cares. Allegiant wouldn’t give you free water in the first place. You want to survive in the sky? Don’t be poor. One nasty mini-bar-size Dasani will run you $11.99. Drink up or die! I’d say they’ll deliver you dead or alive but they might not deliver any of us at all. It’s a quirky little crap shoot. How cute!

If you’re brave enough to battle your neighbors to the aisle to get up and use the restroom, your fear of your intestines being sucked out by the plane toilet flush will probably come true. And no, your intestines are not covered by flight insurance. Sorry!

Expect the pilot to announce that you’ll be landing early. This is purely to get your hopes up after the horror show you’ve just endured. DO NOT fall for it. They just want you to applaud when you land. Does anyone applaud when you send an email or mop a floor or do any basic function of your job? Didn’t think so. The pilot can go without. And they should because that landing early business only means sitting on the tarmac for an extra 45 minutes waiting to dock. For some reason being stuck in a stale-aired metal cell with hundreds of mouth-breathers is even less bearable on the ground. Not worth landing early. Never is.

Eventually, you’ll deplane after making forceful eye contact with several grown men trying to cut you, even though it’s clearly your row’s turn to exit. There’s a 78% chance you’ll knock out a little old lady while retrieving your carry-on from the overhead compartment, but no bother. They have plenty of those complimentary wheelchairs to get the unconscious safely to Ground Transportation…probably.

Finally, you’ll walk 11 miles to the rideshare pickup zone where you’ll wait 53 minutes to pay $76 for a six-mile ride. What a joy it is to travel!

Get your soggy bottoms to this show in LA! Tickets are $20. Parking is free (in LA?!?!?!?!) and there’s no two-drink minimum like other clubs (woo!). Let me be funny for you in person! Please! I’m begging!

Can you tell I was in LAX this week? Do you have any air travel horror stories? Drop them in the comments below! I want to hear all your plane-related gripes. If you’re going somewhere soon, safe travels and godspeed!

ily bye,

Ariana