Chattin' it up with strangers on airplanes

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Why do people get all giddy and obnoxious when they take weekend flights? (Cheap flights to Midway, I'm talking to you.)

― dave225 (Dave225), Friday, 12 November 2004 13:54 (twenty years ago)

classic if it's someone funny and nice

― ken c (ken c), Friday, 12 November 2004 14:00 (twenty years ago)

if it's a long flight you may as well make acquintance.. what better way to make the time past than free booze and good conversation?

― ken c (ken c), Friday, 12 November 2004 14:01 (twenty years ago)

yeah, but what if they turn out to be a tosser?!

― Vicky (Vicky), Friday, 12 November 2004 14:02 (twenty years ago)

that's when it becomes dud (and you put on the headphones and watch the films)

― ken c (ken c), Friday, 12 November 2004 14:03 (twenty years ago)

You must be lucky, if you find good coversation often. I seldom find that people will be themselves and engage in good conversation. Most of the time, they trying desperately to be funny or somehow impressive.

― dave225 (Dave225), Friday, 12 November 2004 14:04 (twenty years ago)

yeah it really depends who you end up sitting with.. i've been lucky definitely, most of the time it's older ladies who are really good to talk to (about their sons and daughters)! and one time there was a three way conversation! that was great.

in december i might have about 50 hours of plane journey waiting for me so we'll see how that goes!!!

― ken c (ken c), Friday, 12 November 2004 14:09 (twenty years ago)

i always thought how good it'd be for there to be a bar and disco on planes but i understand the problems therein.

― ken c (ken c), Friday, 12 November 2004 14:10 (twenty years ago)

Isn't there a new super-plane with a bar and disco upstairs? The new Airbus?

Or did I dream it?

― Johnney B (Johnney B), Friday, 12 November 2004 14:13 (twenty years ago)

maybe you're thinking of http://www.gobfm.supanet.com/BigBigBus.jpg

― dave225 (Dave225), Friday, 12 November 2004 14:17 (twenty years ago)

Virgin Atlantic flights have a separate bar for you to sit at in the Upper section of the plane.

― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Friday, 12 November 2004 14:30 (twenty years ago)

that bar isn't for economy seat losers like us!

― kyle (akmonday), Friday, 12 November 2004 14:36 (twenty years ago)

I met a lovely girl on a Frankfurt -> Melbourne flight once. It made the trip a lot more bareable to say the least.

― Andrew (enneff), Friday, 12 November 2004 14:38 (twenty years ago)

i see.. one day i'll upper deck a virgin

― ken c (ken c), Friday, 12 November 2004 14:38 (twenty years ago)

Free Drinks on a plane? Certainly not Air Canada.

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Friday, 12 November 2004 14:41 (twenty years ago)

What about at airports? One day, almost 10 years ago, I had a major layover in Atlanta. I already had a pretty big layover, then my flight was delayed for a couple of hours on top of that. Anyway, I was sitting alone, listening to my discman and this guy about my age comes up to me, wearing a trench coat and looking all nine inch nails-ish. He started chatting me up, showed me some comics he'd drawn, and talking about music. Then we went to the Burger King in the airport together to get fries and milkshakes. We wore little Burger King crowns the rest of our time together. Then he had to catch his flight, so we went our separate ways.

― Sarah McLusky (coco), Friday, 12 November 2004 14:43 (twenty years ago)

Once I guy made me hold his baby for about 45 mins. It was really awkward, there is no nice way to say 'take your baby back'

― Nellie (nellskies), Friday, 12 November 2004 14:56 (twenty years ago)

Isn't there a new super-plane with a bar and disco upstairs? The new Airbus

A380

http://www.aircraft-info.net/aircraft/jet_aircraft/airbus/A380/a380.jpg

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Friday, 12 November 2004 14:58 (twenty years ago)

I used to get stuck next to really talkative old ladies all the time. The worst is when you have a window seat and someone sits down next to you and falls asleep. So then, when you have to go to the bathroom, you have to tap them over and over and say, "Excuse me? Excuse me? Excuse me?"

― Sarah McLusky (coco), Friday, 12 November 2004 14:59 (twenty years ago)

I always feel bad about waking them up (well, if it's a transatlantic flight, where every hour of sleep you can get helps), so I end up climbing over, which can be pretty awkward...

― the krza (krza), Friday, 12 November 2004 15:01 (twenty years ago)

But when the person wakes up, they might wonder why you're in their lap..?

I also get stuck next to women holding multiple crying babies.

― Sarah McLusky (coco), Friday, 12 November 2004 15:02 (twenty years ago)

On the red-eye flights to London - chatting to anyone is dud.

On the flight back at night - classic.

― 3underscore (___), Friday, 12 November 2004 15:05 (twenty years ago)

Somehow, I can manage a giant leap/stride from my seat into the aisle. Haven't woken anyone up, but i'd like to think they'd see the pains I was going to to, um, not wake them up. Then they'd probably ask to move seats.

(xpost)

― the krza (krza), Friday, 12 November 2004 15:06 (twenty years ago)

There was one guying who wouldn't stop eyeing my laptop, and the he got out his laptop and starting playing with it and his fancy cellphone. So I pulled out my cellphone (which at the time was AWESOME), and then he kept staring at it. So I pulled out my ipod and starting listening to it and playing the helicopter game on it. So he pulled out a camera. So then I pulled out MY camera...

― adam... (nordicskilla), Friday, 12 November 2004 15:58 (twenty years ago)

...and then mrs adam saw what I was doing and told me to grow up!

― adam... (nordicskilla), Friday, 12 November 2004 15:58 (twenty years ago)

Just like she does when someone cuts us up on the road and I try to accelerate past them and she says "WHY ARE YOU SUDDENLY DRIVING SO FAST????".

― adam... (nordicskilla), Friday, 12 November 2004 15:59 (twenty years ago)

I had a really great flight from LA to Atlanta once - I had seen a cute guy in the airport and thought 'ooh, I hope we sit together,' knowing full well that with the murphy's law of airlines that seems to apply only to me that I'd instead get stuck next to the family with three toddlers or someone who would fall asleep on my shoulder, but lo and behold, I got the cute guy. His name was Kevin, and we stayed up all night (it was the red-eye) talking and by the time we got to Atlanta, he'd asked me to come visit him and made me promise to write him and gave me one of the sweetest kisses I've ever had before we left to catch our respective planes.

― luna (luna.c), Friday, 12 November 2004 16:04 (twenty years ago)

that's beautiful!

― ken c (ken c), Friday, 12 November 2004 16:07 (twenty years ago)

A lovely story. :-)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 12 November 2004 16:14 (twenty years ago)

I once flew back to Little Rock from Houson on one of those scary twenty-rowed propellered puddle-jumper planes. The older man sitting next to me kept his eyes clenched shut and his fists balled for the entire flight as we bounced around from one pocket of turbulence to another.

Once we landed and started to make the ten-minute taxi to the terminal, dude opened up his eyes wide, looked at me, and started the whole "HEY, HOW ARE YOU? YOU FROM LITTLE ROCK? YOU ARE? WHERE DO YOU WORK? I WAS IN HOUSTON VISITING MY COUSIN...."

Thank goodness he was a coward.

― Pleasant Plains (Pleasant Plains), Friday, 12 November 2004 16:14 (twenty years ago)

.. starring Meg Ryan as luna and .. Andrew McCarthy as Kevin.

― dave225 (Dave225), Friday, 12 November 2004 16:15 (twenty years ago)

I want to go to Little Rock.

― adam... (nordicskilla), Friday, 12 November 2004 16:17 (twenty years ago)

Oh my god, my life is a Meg Ryan movie.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK.

― luna (luna.c), Friday, 12 November 2004 16:19 (twenty years ago)

So long as it isn't Innerspace.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 12 November 2004 16:22 (twenty years ago)

there was a hotty sitting beside me on the plane back from Boston. I was hoping the plane would crash or something so we could strike up a brief romance.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Friday, 12 November 2004 16:43 (twenty years ago)

Or DOA.

― luna (luna.c), Friday, 12 November 2004 17:05 (twenty years ago)

A minute-long wide-eyed fumble followed by fiery metal death sounds better than some of the relationships I've had.

― Markelby (Mark C), Friday, 12 November 2004 17:08 (twenty years ago)

mmm a date with megadeth

― ken c (ken c), Friday, 12 November 2004 17:09 (twenty years ago)

'Cheap flights to Midway' = redundant; MDW is almost all discount carriers, and the big carriers who do fly into there have to match the discounters' prices.

The much-beloved-by-Continental Embraer 135/145 regional jets have a single seat on one side of the aisle if you're feeling antisocial.

― Jeff Wright (JeffW1858), Friday, 12 November 2004 17:47 (twenty years ago)

I usually throw on headphones or feign sleep at the first sign of a perky chatter next to me, but one time it was a teenage boy and we started talking about music. Then the conversation progressed deeply to our family relationships, etc. I swear if he'd been closer to my age we would have started a relationship. After the flight, we would have long conversations on the phone about once a month for a few months. I guess I've dropped out of touch with him now, but we kept an e-mail correspondence going for a few years.

― Maria D. (Maria D.), Friday, 12 November 2004 18:05 (twenty years ago)

Really I have a bigger problem listening to other people getting all chatty than engaging in it myself.. But that's what headphones are for.

― dave225 (Dave225), Friday, 12 November 2004 18:11 (twenty years ago)

Sitting in the aisle seat on a flight from Tokyo to San Francisco, my neighbor, a middle-aged American man, struck up a conversation with me in a persistent, almost needy way. His was mostly a bovine stupidity shot through occasionally with insights gained by having married the Japanese women who sat reading to his left. Northwest served our first meal in the kind of clear plastic folding containers ubiquitous in salad bars and soon after the captain came on to announce upcoming turbulence. My interlocutor began babbling as fear induced sweat pearled on his temples and on his upper lip. I pried open my dinner box, and began nibbling away, suddenly aware that mere polite indifference was unlikely to prevent this clearly insane man from talking to me for the rest of a ten hour flight. When the turbulence hit, I closed my box as did the man's wife but he, as if in a superhuman effort to overcome both his fear and the meteorological challenges buffetting the plane, obstinately continued eating. As the plane was jumping all over the place, this put him in a position in which he not only threatened to feed a forkful of food to, consecutively, his eyeball, his nose, and his chin, but also to allow the contents of his dinner box to spray about most probably on his wife and me. His wife who had hitherto worn an expression of the utmost impassivity, cracked, no doubt under the strain of having just spent several weeks explaining her knuckleheaded husband to her incredulous family and compatriots, and hissed sibilantly in his ear while forcefully closing the top of his dinner box. His babbling stopped. He had obviously encountered a fear which trumped his fear of flying. Neither said a single word even after the turbulence abated and we could resume our dinner. Soon after I took advantage of the beginning of the inflight movie to move back to an empty row certain that I had just seen a major crack in the foundation of a marriage which would certainly founder and wondering how she would eventually dispose of his body.

― Michael White (Hereward), Friday, 12 November 2004 18:42 (twenty years ago)

only somewhat related, I find stranger-chatter to be only slightly more annoying than pilot chatter. Dear pilots: no one gives a flying fuck what altitude we're at, what time it is at our destination or what weather conditions are along the way. If the plane starts to shake, please come on the PA and say "It's cool - it's all under control" and then shut the hell up again.

― dave225 (Dave225), Friday, 12 November 2004 18:56 (twenty years ago)

those Embraer jets - what are they, anyway? the 145 is the big one? bigger or smaller than 737?

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Friday, 12 November 2004 18:58 (twenty years ago)

Dear pilots: no one gives a flying fuck what altitude we're at

And if you're going to insist on flying past something cool that only the people on the left side of the plane can see, you had better turn the fuck around so that all of us on the right side can see it too.

And what's - the - deal - with airplane food? Seriously! Where do they get this stuff?

[insert Gear's chubby comedian here.]

― Pleasant Plains (Pleasant Plains), Friday, 12 November 2004 19:15 (twenty years ago)

I certainly give a fuck what altitude we're at and where we are.

Airplane food - incentives. Are you going to pick a plane based on what food they serve? You're a captive audience. All they have to do is prevent you from starving. You want good food, you bring your own.

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Friday, 12 November 2004 19:26 (twenty years ago)

These days mostly I'm somehow sandwiched with my wife and son, but if on my own I try to avoid contact, cause I rarely sit next to anyone who appears even slightly interesting. When I was a little kid, though, I ended up talking to some really interesting (to me) folks on planes--I guess cause people try to be friendly to kids. The ones that aren't bawling, that is. I once sat next to an NFL referee, which seemed more interesting to me then, as it does now, than sitting next to a player--shades of my feature-writing future perhaps. And on a flight to Hawaii I sat next to this big Hawaiian guy who had his own lion. I know he was telling the truth because he showed me the picture of him and his lion that he carried in his wallet.

― Formerly Lee G (Formerly Lee G), Friday, 12 November 2004 19:32 (twenty years ago)

Also, I'm not totally committed to being anti-social, but thanks to fatherhood, airplane flights by myself are one of the few times I ever get to read for hours at a stretch more or less uninterupted.

― Formerly Lee G (Formerly Lee G), Friday, 12 November 2004 19:37 (twenty years ago)

Gabbneb, yeah, the RJ145 is the 'big one' -- it's got 50 seats, the 135 has about 40 I think. Much smaller than a 737. There's a new Embraer 100-seater out there, but I haven't seen it yet.

A lot of people complain about the RJs, but in mid-size markets like CLE it's a choice between having 4-5 RJ runs a day to a lot of destinations or 1-2 widebody flights. I'll take the former. And while there's no first class section/no upgrades, the single seats
aren't bad.

― Jeff Wright (JeffW1858), Friday, 12 November 2004 20:44 (twenty years ago)

― RJG (RJG), Saturday, 13 November 2004 04:21 (twenty years ago)

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Chattin' it up with strangers on airplanes - C/D?