Infrequent Flyer

Last week I flew to Houston and back to see my sister. I tried to do this without spending inordinate amounts of money. For those of you who don't travel by air very often, I thought it would be good if I shared some crumbs of flying knowledge I picked up in my travels.

First of all, air travel is not what it used to be. I'm sure you've heard this, if you haven't experienced it first hand, but I'm going to talk about it anyway. The first time our mother and father flew anywhere it was so long ago that the airplane had propellers and flew in and out of Chicago without any problems. They came home with airline goodies. Presents from the airline. It might have been TWA. There were cocktail napkins and fancy stirrers, and I think there was a cardboard sign that said "occupied" or "do not disturb" or some such thing. The exact use of such a sign escaped me; the "occupied" sign was supposed to be left on your seat when you went to the loo, I guess; the "do not disturb" sign could be balanced on top of your hat if you wanted to pull it down and take a nap.

Years later I had a boyfriend who flew frequently. He used to bring me silver envelopes containing the most divinely seasoned almonds. But that was then, this is now. Remember airline food? Whether you thought it was good or not, at least they fed you. In the twenty-first century we get one little silver envelope of pretzels for lunch, washed down with a few ounces of ginger ale. Almonds, schmalmonds.

And the boarding process. Ah, the boarding process. Not that long ago, families with small children used to be invited to board before anyone else. No more. Big strong executives and executive-ettes swagger onto the plane first, while mothers of three-under-three wait patiently, screaming babies hanging in their hair. This is what business class is all about. If your ticket is paid for by an international corporation, you get to board the airplane ahead of the suffering peasants.

So what? you say. That's what I thought, too. I can be patient. You have no idea how patient I can be. But there are consequences for being last, as I was to discover.

After the golden few in business class take their seats, zone one gets to board, and then two and so forth. Silly me. I thought the zones were geographical. They are not geographical, folks. They are hierarchical. The higher your zone number, the more the airline gets to crap all over you. Zones have nothing to do with seat numbers, or with efficient boarding practices, or whether you'll be in people's way when they are trying to get settled.

My boarding pass said Zone 7. As I straggled down the boarding ramp behind all the other passengers, a flight attendant announced that the overhead bins were all full. I was forced to surrender my roll-on before I got on the plane. They smiled and gave me a tiny yellow ticket in exchange for it. So much for my plan to bypass the baggage pick-up process. It was one of those wrenching moments. I was supposed to change planes in Atlanta. I thought, "I'll never see that bag again."

"I'll never see that bag again," I said to the woman in the seat next to mine, in row 17, not so far back in the plane or so far in the front that I would have to be in zone 7. She reassured me that the airline seldom lost bags. "What zone are you?" I said. She said, "Zone one."

"How is this possible? My ticket says zone 7, and I'm sitting right next to you."

"We paid an extra ten dollars when we reserved the seats online."

Ah. Money.

So now I know something I didn't know before, and I pass it on to you, in case you're as unsophisticated as I am about flying. Sooner or later I'll figure out how to game the system, if I fly often enough. Maybe I'll even fork over the ten dollars.

You'll be happy to know that my roll-on made it safely to Philadelphia.