Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Airline Etiquette

I flew from Baltimore to Atlanta this weekend to visit family. It's bad enough that I'm a toddler-magnet on every flight, but each time I attempt airline travel I am bombarded with airport etiquette violations.

I like rules. Rules are what makes a society function well together. I am not in the minority here; if I was, we would not have standard systems of government in most of our modern societies. Condominium complexes would not have homeowners associations. Citys and localities would not have laws. Traffic cops would be unemployed.

Anyway, it's really not that hard to understand the unwritten societal rules of operating in a large, moving crowd. Getting along with others in an airport or on a plane is basically just a matter of common courtesy. Violating the norm for behavior with no regard to inconveniencing those around you is a breach etiquette. And yet, there's a willing participant on every corner.

Granted, there might be a variety of views on airline etiquette, but for the most part, I'm betting that my thoughts as I present them here aren't too far from generally accepted behaviors (as viewed by the majority of frequent flyers).

For starters, people who stop and stand in the middle of the concourse to chat ought to be taken out behind the barn and shot. The concourse is like a sidewalk - it's for walking to and from gates, not for family gatherings or cell phone conversations. According to Wikipedia, the word concourse derives from English, French, and Latin, "concursus" and "concurrere," meaning "to run together." Hear that? Running together - not stopping and chatting with friends and family and blocking the path of those running together. If you want to stop and do some standing around, kindly remove your rear end from the concourse and do your standing elsewhere, away from the moving crowd.

Note that the concourse rule also applies to moving sidewalks, which fall under the same category as the escalator rule. The escalator rule is another one that I see violated everywhere - malls, office buildings, and airports alike. Basic escalator etiquette amounts to this: Stand to the right; walk to the left. When you are on the escalator, pretend you are driving a car and passing to the left. If you want to stand on the escalator, that's fine. Just do it on the right and keep your luggage with you.

Then there are the people who hold up the security line by not having their boarding pass and ID out and ready for the TSA guard to verify. (These are the same people in front of you at Safeway who wait until their entire cartful of groceries has been scanned before swiping their card.) There are usually signs, monitors, and announcements telling you how to prepare for the security check long before you get there. Pay attention. This weekend I discovered (from reading a sign at the security checkpoint) that there's a new rule about shoes. To speed up the line, shoes now go directly on the conveyor belt, not in a bin. Despite this fact being posted everywhere (and a TSA agent shouting it to the crowd), people were still putting their shoes in a bin.

And put your liquids in the quart-size sealable bag prior to getting in the security line, please. If you need to stop and take care of these chores, step aside and let folks behind you (who are prepared) move ahead.

Children. That's a whole other ballgame. It's the parents' responsibility to keep their kids in line when they are at the airport and on the plane. I am notoriously subjected to having a 4-year-old sit behind me on the plane and kick my seat or play with the seatback pocket the entire way. Once I turned around and said to the mother/child, "Please stop kicking my seat." The mother's response was, "She's trying." This is a classic example of a parent letting its kid run wild with no regard to the rest of the population. Either you're going to let your kid kick the seat or you're not. There is no "trying" about it.

Oh, and if you're going to bring a portable DVD player or other electronic device to entertain your children on the plane, either bring headphones, or don't bring the device. I once suffered a cross-country trip where a child played videos at a normal listening volume in the row behind me--loud enough that I could hear the bleep-bleep and giggly voices through my ear plugs--the entire trip. His parents were sitting next to him and acted as if there were no annoying sounds coming from their presence on the plane. Once again, these parents had no regard for those around them. I will never understand that type of parent as long as I live.

It's not just kids that can be annoying on an airplane. In fact, nine times out of ten it's a loud-mouthed adult breaking the peace. On a recent flight this woman in the row in front of mine was talking at her fiance about the multitude of details about their upcoming wedding so loudly (and extensively) that another woman in my row would lean over and look at me as if to say, "Am I the only one hearing this?" Not a chance. Everyone was looking at each other as if to say, "Can someone shut her up?" (The poor husband-to-be never got a word in. He may as well take himself behind the barn and end it all now. . . .)

That brings me to one of my biggest pet peeves at the airport: Loud cellphone conversations and ringers in the waiting area. You're sitting peacefully in your chair outside the gate, reading quietly when the guy two seats down from you answers his cell phone and begins carrying on a lengthy conversation--whether personal or work-related--using what we adults call his "outside voice." This happens every single time I am waiting for my flight. And it's rarely just one person anymore - it's several. I carry ear plugs for this reason. People don't seem to realize that they are yelling on their cell phones and that their loud, musical ringers are annoying. These people, too, should be taken out behind the barn and shot.

The Atlanta airport has smoking rooms - maybe all airports should consider installing cell phone rooms too. Thanks to the advent and popularity of mobile phones, there is just no peace and quiet in this world anymore. I was watering my yard twice this summer when I saw the strangest thing--a 10-year-old boy coming down the street on his skateboard, a cell phone glued to his ear.

What is this world coming to that we can no longer go five minutes without yakking on the phone? Not me, man. I hate the phone. I avoid it as much as I can. (That will change with my new job, no doubt.)

So, besides the people who use a chair in the waiting room for their bags (leaving some poor soul standing), the ones who carry oversized bags on the plane that don't fit in the overhead compartment, those that hog the whole arm rest, the people who don't put their luggage in the overhead compartment wheels-first, those who don't step aside during boarding to let others get to their seats, and the ones who keep their feet out in the aisle for you to trip over on your way to the bathroom, that's my summary of common airport etiquette violations--the same ones I can usually count on happening every time I fly.

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