Now Boarding All Clubs: Humor Preferred

I love air travel. It gets me from place to place much faster than I could drive; unless, of course, I am delayed, re-routed, over-booked or have long layovers. It also provides me with generally more amusement than I could otherwise find in the mundane life of an obsessive compulsive person who is governed by habit rather than by the seat of my pants as my non-type A friends are.
My beautiful bride and I just returned Monday from a trip to Branson, Missouri. We flew, thinking it would save us much time. In retrospect, it only saved us about 2 hours each way but it provided us at least a week of priceless amusement.

I am continually stupefied by the airline’s myriad of preferred customer programs. We chose Northwest Airlines with a connection in Memphis. As we waited in Memphis to board our final leg to Missouri, they began to seat passengers. I do not exaggerate; they had at least 5 distinct classes of preferred customers. Gold, silver, and bronze club, gold silver bronze platinum preferred club, frequent business traveler silver fuchsia gold preferred club, most air miles ever flown by a human platinum preferred business complimentary unlimited adult beverage club…I waited expectantly to hear the following: “Northwest Airlines will now board the passenger holding Willy Wonka’s golden ticket preferred club.” I am sure that orientation for ticket takers is overwhelming…having to memorize all the permutations of preferred passengers in order to recite them at every boarding call would be a daunting task to mere mortals indeed.

Finally, at long last, they called our club: rear of the plane reduced leg-room adjacent lavatory we’re all out of chicken and only have tuna fish left preferred passenger coach club and we boarded with eager anticipation (actually, we’d waited so long that I eagerly had to go to the bathroom…surprisingly, no club for that). Upon our arrival at our final destination, I experienced yet another bit of humor…no matter how many air miles logged, passengers still feel the need to stand up the instant the aircraft comes to a stop. I guess their afraid they will get trapped on this aircraft, and be forced to fly between Branson and Memphis for the rest of their natural lives. The fact that everyone stands up makes for some humorous poses…half of the passengers who believed themselves fortunate to have the coveted window seat now find they cannot stand fully upright because of the low hanging overhead bin…however, it is apparently still vital that they stand…so stand they do, in some odd-looking, hunched over position reminiscent of Sasquatch (which, as I learned on this trip does exist). There they wait for five minutes or more while the gate is attached. Once they are free to deplane, most engage in a 12 round cage match to retrieve a carry-on bag that was too big to fit in the overhead bin in the first place. After much grunting, groaning, and a well placed kick or two, they retrieve their bag, disable the overhead bin and the ape-like hunched over impatient horde behind them is allowed to deplane as well. I’m sure most passengers leave the plane and head straight to the chiropractor to get treatment of back/neck pain brought on by prolonged exposure to low hanging overhead bins.

I leave the plane chuckling all the way about the idiocy of air travel…chuckling at least until I get to the lost luggage reclamation counter. Happy trails!!