Air Travel

11 January 2016

Plane flights are uncomfortable. However, they are supremely useful; they enable me to go to a completely different culture in hours. The main costs are money, invasions of privacy, and being forced to LARP as a sardine for a day.

Since I can only afford to travel economy cramped class. I crowd sourced advice on how to make long flights more bearable.

Assumptions

I’m intrigued by the lack of comments about hidden factors, such as:

• Avoid airlines that are not well maintained.
• Avoid airlines where the pilots are chronically fatigued.
• Stay far away from airlines that outsource their maintenance to unqualified (cheap) contractors.
• Don’t connect through airports where staff have been laid off fired or outsourced, because it will end badly.
• Stay away from airlines with lots of complaints.
• Don’t give money to airlines that conspire to keep prices artificially high.

It’s part of human nature to ignore what is working, and air travel is very safe. I find it bemusing when important factors (safety, reliability, pilot resilience) are mentioned less than “Bring Ambien! Books! Nachos!”

Advice, Distilled

1. Bring things to pass the time. Books, movies and games are popular choices
2. Sleep on the flight. Bring things to help with that (pills, pillows, earplugs)
3. Make yourself more comfortable physically (snacks and slightly larger seats)

Happy Flying!