Weird plane: how the airport broke my spirit

Monday December 9, 2024 2:02 p.m.

I’m not a nervous traveler in the usual sense. Being in a tin can at an altitude of 35,000 feet (that’s half the height of Gary Barlow’s son, for reference) doesn’t really bother me. The rational side of me kicks in. You’re more likely to get hit by a car, die from a coconut falling on your head, or catch a horrible flesh-eating tropical disease. Yeah, it’s better. But walking through an airport gives me a terminal feeling of dread, a turbulent anxiety, a deep-rooted dread.

I can never get the security scanner pose right, like a bad Hole in The Wall contestant. Last week I found myself slumped in a check-out chair outside WHSmith’s where some guys had set up a whole shelf of singing and dancing Christmas tree stuffed animals.

It wasn’t always like this. When I was younger, I really loved flying. I was excited about model airplane food, bought a glossy magazine and watched a trashy movie on a small screen. As I got older, I was very happy to browse Duty Free, douse myself with enough perfume samples to last the entire trip, grab a cheap pint at the bar, and get on the plane.

And it’s fair to say that airports and planes still retain an air of mystery. Both are strange places, caught between two worlds; time and space are distorted. That’s why you get that strange feeling when you walk through an airport, caught in a giant limbo. I read a lot of Mark Fisher, who talks about liminality, at the pub and recently went down a rabbit hole reading his history of gas stations. That is to say, I am in this kind of thing.

But now there’s an air of miseryalso, from your way through departures to being spat out the other side at arrivals. No wonder the airline is experiencing a revival on X; The last few years have been marked by endless delays, lost luggage, major screw-ups and e-Gate-Gate. I almost missed a flight last year when an airline employee with a tape measure in hand said my bag was an inch too big.

“Air travel affects people’s behavior,” writes Robert Bor in his catchily titled book Psychological Factors in the Behavior of Airline Passengers and Crew: A Clinical Overview (not exactly an airport novel). “Some people regress to an infantile stage of development (or) confide the most personal and intimate details of their lives to a complete stranger.” Travel stress, excess alcohol, claustrophobia, low air pressure, conflicting personalities and anxiety are synonymous with cabin fever.

This has really taken off recently. In the last few months alone there have been scandals involving vodka-related violence (from Manchester to Ibiza); excessively loud rap (from Liverpool to Amsterdam); pissing in the cabin (Derby in Tenerife), fighting over a MAGA cap (Heathrow in Texas) and a handjob under a coat (Tenerife in Bristol). I swerved just as badly, but a deer behind me practices his best “BOSH!” » almost knocked me over the edge earlier this year.

Everyone hates those people who stream TikTok videos on the bus, but it’s the same thing on planes; people watching entire movies on board without headphones is now a reality. Maybe taking a rough flight is for the best.

I’m not misty-eyed about the “golden age” of travel, when flights were like luxury hotels and the Concorde gave us supersonic runway glamour. I’m not a luxury lizard or a business lounge lizard either; the economy works very well for me. I don’t ask for much. But, you know, maybe free water and not having to sit in a tuck position would be a bit nice?

Perhaps we can, however, apply some blue-sky thinking and view the herculean effort of taking a flight as something positive. Maybe one of those long-haul flights could be a greener train to the countryside. Because Euston is fun, right?

• Kyle is a culture and fashion writer, and a man who’s tired of airports