In the last thing that I got around to posting here (yes, its been a while) I mentioned the kids that I was ‘lucky’ enough to sit next to on the plane. It was something of a mystery to me as to how the hell they worked out the seating, but I’ll come to that.
When I first started doing a lot of flying, when I was working off-shore out of Singapore, I decided that my favourite seat was the aisle. I was much happier standing up to let someone out to go to the toilet than I was being the one that had to ask someone else to get out of the way all the time.
Recently, I’ve decided that I like the window seat for domestic travel. The trips aren’t long enough for me to need the toilet and you get that little bit of extra room from the curvature of the fuselage. Not to mention not having people reading from behind you when you’re working on the laptop.
I’ve not had much luck in recent times though as I always seem to get stuck in the middle of the row of seats and that’s the place that really gives me the shits.
I was happy on the flight to Brisbane last time to find that I’d managed to get an aisle seat for a change. Of course, there’s always the pot-luck of who you end up next to, but at least with the aisle seat, you can lean out somewhat (as long as you’re not getting bashed by the trolley).
On the day in question, I was sitting waiting and a family made their way onto the plane. Mum, Dad and two kids about 10 and 13. Glancing around, I knew that I was safe as there were only two seats next to me … so why were they slowing down as they approached? And why the hell were they stopping?!
I’m not quite sure how the seating of passengers on aeroplanes works, I’ve always assumed its something of a first in first serve basis, but apparently there’s also a little contribution from bastards incorporated.
Because Mum and Dad (or Mum and partner as I suspect was the case, given I never heard a child say Dad) climbed across the guy on the other side of the aisle and took the window and middle seat on the other side of the plane, whilst the two kids took the two seats between me and the window.
At least I had the window to lean into. Of course, we weren’t even off the ground before it started … “Mum, can I have … Mum, can we …” and of course every time that they wanted/needed something, they had to lean across in front of me.
I gritted my teeth, hoping that they’d settle down once we were in the air. I jammed the headphones of my ipod in my ears and turned up the volume to drown them out. Then I pulled out the laptop once we were up in the air and started tapping away, keeping myself entertained (because this was lucky enough to be a Jetstar flight where there is no free entertainment to keep pesky kids from shitting one.)
That kind of worked … except for the feeling that the kid next to me was reading everything I was writing (which at the time was my entry titled, Blood Sucking Vermin).
Of course, then the boy needed to go to the loo. I stood up and let him out. He came back and I was ok for 10 minutes until his sister had to go. Then of course 15 minutes after she came back he had to go again. When he was gone this time she sat with her parents as the guy on the other side of the aisle had had the foresight to move to the only other vacant aisle seat on the plane (and despite my desire to move, I didn’t want to move to a middle seat!) so when the boy came back he could at least move across and sit in the window seat away from me.
She didn’t stay there though and towards the end of the flight we were back to our original seating positions. Eventually the reading of my writing started to piss me off and so I inserted a sentence that went something along the lines of, “Its very rude to read what someone else is writing when they haven’t invited you to …”
That ended that problem.
On the flight home, I was about 2 hours early in getting to the airport and thought that at least getting there that early would ensure that I would be adequately seated. But when I checked in, there was only a choice of 5 seats on the entire plane … everyone of them in the middle of a row.
Those bastards incorporated had shafted me again.
But this last trip I beat the odds. Online check in is my friend. Both trips I checked in first thing in the morning before I left for the airport. Not only did I score window seats, but I had the added and these days rare fortune to have an empty seat between me and the person in the aisle.
Happy days.
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