Grizzly Air

I’m not great with flying. The vast improbability that thousands of tonnes of metal and people won’t fall out of the sky always plays on my mind. But when the alternative is eleven hours sweating it out in a jalopy on the Hume, I can suspend my disbelief. Especially for the bargain price equivalent to two tanks of fuel.

What I find less easy to resolve myself to is why budget airline seats have a recline function. This isn’t long haul, deep vein thrombosis territory – this is a morning jaunt up the east coast in time for a breakfast meeting.

No one needs to sleep. No one needs to recline. There aren’t any gold-leaf clad virgins coming to feed anyone peeled grapes.

The fact is that on a standard domestic flight I have between ten and fifteen centimetres space between my knees and the seat in front. With the seat in front reclined the space disappears. I can’t wriggle forward. I smell the Rogain on the guy in front’s bald spot. I have to suck in my gut to get the tray table down. And I’m not even particularly large. It. Is. Ridiculous.

I just can’t understand how the market research geniuses paid six figure sums to lure passengers haven’t figured out that the small factor of comfort afforded the asshole that reclines the whole flight is infinitely negated by the frustration of passengers pinned to their pleather seats like unwitting UFC warm-up acts.

Or maybe the responsibility is less on the airline and more on the individual who places their own luxury above others’ comfort. People who might well hold the door open for an elderly shopper at the department store will crush a fellow flyer on the Melbourne to Brisbane without so much as a thought. For some reason the air is sanctified space. It’s like flying is still such a novelty, such an unlikely way to casually travel, that passengers have an entitlement complex reserved for the privileged few.

Whatever people. It is time to herald change. Enough of the Me First culture of the air. For the price we’re paying there isn’t much space. We all have to manage.

Suck it up and keep it upright.

Thankyou for flying.

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