The plane truth: Flying is a royal pain in the you-know-what | Mark Hinson

I took my first passenger plane trip one summer when I was kindergarten age in 1966. My mother dressed me in a blazer and tie as she tried to slick down my unruly hair. We were flying from Tallahassee to Tampa to visit our extended family. I stared out the plane window at the world passing by so peacefully beneath us.

All my fellow passengers were spiffily dressed, too. The manicured stewardesses doted and gave me all the free Sprite I could handle. Daddy Bob, my surrogate grandfather, met us at the airport gate and drove us to lunch in Ybor City at the Columbia restaurant, where he spoke Spanish to the waiters and drew ink cartoons on the cloth napkins.

Air travel seemed magical in those days.

Flash forward to the summer of 2022. My wife and I flew back stateside on Air France, which required us to shove a swab up our nostrils at 6 a.m. to make sure we did not have COVID and, mon dieux, were wide awake. I recall standing in the long security line at Dallas airport, which is, as far as I can tell, the size of Leon County.

I first had to walk slowly by a bomb-sniffing dog as the animal stuck its pointy nose my private parts. When we finally got to the security guard, she had no discernable human characteristics. She unwrapped the two wine bottles that were so carefully bundled in France and then left shoeless, beltless, coin-free me to put the mess back together in time to barely catch the next, packed plane.

Air travel is a trying ordeal these days and we’ve just reached the peak of the mean season.

The flying slumber party

Facebook thinks I like to watch videos of people getting arrested and thrown off planes. The passengers are usually belligerent, drunk or paranoid (or all three). Isn’t flying these days bad enough without adding to the problem?

Is it me or does every other person boarding a plane in 2024 wear pajama bottoms and look like they’ve been on a three-day bender? I don’t think travelers should rent a tux or buy a gown to fly, but come on, man, try a little harder in the outfit department.

To avoid paying baggage fees, many flyers arrive onboard with backpacks, laptops, collapsible strollers, diaper bags, suitcases and souvenir bric-a-brac to cram into the overhead bins. I expect some day to open an overheard bin to find a clucking chicken and a half-eaten birthday cake.

Speaking of food, everyone knows that the meals served on airliners are, uh, subpar at best. Rubber chicken, overcooked pasta, Fancy Feast cat food, that kind of thing. That’s if an airline bothers to serve dinner or lunch at all.

It has all paved the way for passengers to bring their own cuisine choices on board. The smellier, the better, seems to be the logic. Garlic knots, onion-heavy salads, sardines by the can, stinky cheese sandwiches, raw fish, corn dogs. The moveable feast makes the whole fuselage smell like a garbage disposal. Where do you think chemtrails come from anyway?

Screaming babies are always going to be in close proximity so there is nothing that can be done about it. Suffer and feel sorry for the parents, they are tortured, too. This summer, who can blame a kid for bawling aboard an airflight?

Now the clueless chump in the already cramped economy cabin who lets the seat recline, well there should be a special ejection button for such a knee-crunching, callous chowderhead.

Why do you think booze is so expensive in the air? The airline company knows it has a captive audience in need of a drink no matter what the cost.

Send in the clowns

Nearly everyone has an in-flight horror story, and here is mine.

In the early 2000s, Amy and I flew north to Chicago to see friends and attend a lavish bash. When we boarded our connecting flight in the maze of the Atlanta airport, we found out we were seated in the back row of the plane by the bathroom. The window seat was already taken. I took the aisle seat to catch all the bathroom traffic.

A few moments after takeoff, the stench overtook us. No, not the bathroom. The dude. The smelly guy by the window. He had B.O. The kind of funk only achieved after 10 weeks of not washing. Maybe six months. Deep funk that was flimsily masked by gallons of patchouli oil and, I don’t know, burnt hair.

Amy pulled out her mint-scented hand lotion and shared the ointment with me. We kept our minty fresh paws glued to our faces under our noses until we were about 30 minutes outside of Chicago. Then the sharp, grating noises started.

Have you ever heard plastic balloons being twisted and tied into the shapes of four-legged dogs or long-neck giraffes in a pressurized cabin? Every squeak and every screech are amplified. The sound of fingernails being dragged across a chalkboard sounds like a Mozart opera aria by comparison. I grabbed a flight attendant to find out what in the pluperfect hell was going on.

I quickly learned that several rows of passengers were on their way to a clown convention in Chicago. No kiddin’. Clowns have conventions. The flight attendants adored all the balloon animals.

“What’s your major malfunction, Captain Killjoy?” the flight attendant may as well have said. “And what’s that horrible odor?”

If we had not been in the air, I got the feeling the airport security would have escorted me off the plane. I can see the viral video on Facebook now with the tag line: “This man hates clowns and has wretched B.O.”

Mark Hinson is a former senior writer at The Tallahassee Democrat. He can be reached at [email protected]

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: The plane truth: Flying is a royal pain