Every flight is different

Empty flights, packed flights, crazy flights...

Flying is so full of familiar routines - such as getting through security, going to the gate, the security briefing by the flight attendants - that it can seem that most flights are pretty much the same experience. Yet they can vary so much.

A near-empty flight

There’s those flights that are surprisingly empty, for example. I used to fly to Zurich regularly and sometimes took a British Airways flight from London City Airport, and was struck how often the flight had just 15 or 20 passengers on board, on an aircraft seating 96.

Considering the amount of fuel used, the maintenance costs, landing fees, crew’s salaries, cost of leasing the plane and all the rest - not least the unecological aspect of a near-empty plane - the airline would no doubt have made much more profit if it operated a taxi firm. Surely their chief financial officer must wake up each morning on days when planes were only a fifth full thinking ‘What’s the point?’

Plying you with alcohol

Some airlines are very stingy when dishing out alcohol and the flight attendant will glare at you if you dare ask for a second small glass (well, plastic cup) of wine, even on a long haul flight.

But then there are the airlines that are the complete opposite. I once flew a British airline from London to Los Angeles and a flight attendant was offering cup after cup of wine at the start of the flight. Clearly they wanted to get as many passengers comatose as soon as possible so that they could retreat and relax without passengers bothering them with tedious requests.

Aeroflot chaos

I took an Aeroflot flight from Yerevan in Armenia to Moscow a few years ago and it was quite chaotic at times. When I entered the cabin someone had nabbed my aisle seat and refused to move. Then a flight attendant got into an argument with a passenger refusing to move her suitcase, which was lying against the emergency exit - she gave up asking her to move it in the end. Luggage bins were left open throughout the flight, and continual pleas from the crew for passengers to sit down when the seatbelt sign came on went unheeded. A number of people prayed whenever there was turbulence and everyone clapped when the plane landed.

This flight would be fine if it wasn’t for the passengers

Then there’s the dumb, annoying passengers you sometimes encounter. On one flight I was sitting in the middle seat, with a passenger either side of me. After take off they started talking to each other occasionally, across me, in a foreign language. It dawned on me that they were a couple (rather than people who’d struck up a conversation in the airport), and so obedient that they were staying in the seats allocated when it would be much more sensible in the circumstances to ask whether I could move so they could be together, which would at least avoid them talking across me throughout the flight, if nothing else.

I was about to ask them whether one would like to move, not sure whether they spoke English though, but realised we’d soon land as it was a short flight. When the plane landed and the seatbelt sign was switched off he, in the aisle seat, immediately stood up and clogged up the aisle, along with nearly every other person in aisle seats. Why does everyone do this every time? They all just stand there for at least ten minutes.

So there he was standing in the completely packed aisle, with passengers all around him who were also not moving and clearly wouldn’t be moving for some minutes. I was still sitting in the middle seat and his partner was by the window. Despite the situation, he said his first words to me: “The lady needs to get out.”

I pointed out that I hadn’t moved because there was nowhere to go, there was no space anywhere. Then she piped up: “So are you going to be one of those dreadful people who waits until everyone’s gone before you move?”

Visiting the flight deck

With the huge security protocols around flying these days it seems quite surprising today that it used to be quite common for passengers to be able to visit the flight deck during a flight, especially children.

This stopped very soon after the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks, when new security measures mandated that cockpit doors be locked and hardened to prevent unauthorised access.

So it was a nice surprise to be on an easyJet flight last August when, after learning that there was a 40-minute delay before we could take off, the captain invited the passengers onto the flight deck. Within seconds the aisle was filled with a queue of excited passengers. It was sweet to see children returning to their seats, each one wide-eyed from having this unexpected experience.

Is there a doctor on board?

Some years ago I took a flight from America to London and half way through the passenger next to me collapsed in his seat. I alerted a flight attendant and she announced “Is there a doctor on board?” - and about 150 hands went up, as the flight was full of medics from a medical convention. Although an unwell passenger is of course always unnerving, I wish I had filmed the scene, it could almost have been a clip out of ‘Airplane’.

Bad inflight movie choice

On my first trip to Africa even more years ago the choice of inflight movie (this was when everyone watched the same film on a monitor above their heads, rather than having a huge array of individual entertainment choices like on today’s long haul flights) centred around an aeroplane crash.

My most bizarre flight

On a packed Air Zimbabwe flight the public address system suddenly blasted out the 1968 hit ‘I Can’t Let Maggie Go’ by Honeybird, known to most people as the Nimble bread advert song, with the famous line “She flies like a bird in the sky…”.

The pilot violently dipped the plane from side to side along with the music (his timing was impeccable) and needless to say the inflight food and beverage provision (a stale biscuit and an oversweet orange juice) went flying.

For some reason, that incarnation of Air Zimbabwe ceased trading soon after.

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