airplane

Airport Talk- Overhead Space

Hunted by all types, but only caught by the fittest and the swiftest: overhead space.

Overhead space has become something revered by all passengers. As airlines began fully booking flights, the struggle to find enough overhead space became REAL. There is nothing worse than boarding the plane with your roller bag, only to find it doesn’t fit in the seemingly always shrinking overhead compartments. As I said in my previous post, I usually board the plane first. This means I get to oversee people using, and more importantly misusing the overhead space. Here are a few rules that I think should be followed when regarding overhead space on airplanes:

  1. Get your essentials out of your bag before you board the plane. This will allow you to put your bag up, sit down, buckle up, and not have to hold up the boarding process because you forgot your KitKat and travel pillow overhead.
  2. On a similar note, act quickly. There is a whole line of people behind you who are holding their bags, overheating as they yell at their screaming children to quiet down, and they can’t move until you do. Don’t be that person that holds everyone up.
  3. You don’t have to put your luggage in your specific overhead space. So grab it while you can… it’s never easy to back track and push you’re way back up the aisle to use that overhead compartment you passed.
  4. If it fits under your seat, put it under your seat.
  5. If the compartment is deep enough put your bag in lengthwise to save room.
  6. Be aware of your surroundings. I have seen too many people whack their neighbor with their luggage as they put it into the overhead compartment. Ouch.
  7. Help your neighbors. If you see an old lady or gentlemen struggling to lift their luggage up, be a good citizen and HELP THEM.
  8. Lastly, if you’re cheap-o depot and bring an extra big carry on bag because you don’t want to pay the $25 to check it, (I don’t judge you), plane-side check your bag before you get on the plane. If it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t fit. I took physics in high school… so I’d know. And if you don’t want to plane-side check your bag… learn a new and more efficient way to pack! [Packing tutorial coming soon!]

Airport Talk- Boarding the Plane

Welcome to a new series of posts I have been working on: Airport Talk. I’ve traveled enough to have accumulated stories and insight into everything air-travel. Each post will have a different theme… to kick us off, let’s talk about boarding the plane.

Nine out of ten times I ignore my boarding group number on my boarding pass. I’m no fool– if I wait to board with my zone I’ll have to plane-side check my luggage. You all know the experience of plane-side checking…

You exit the plane only to have to stop and wait on the, either too hot or too cold, jetbridge. You see bag after bag being hurled up into the narrow jetbridge, but not yours. People continue to de-board the plane and pass you. This makes you angry because you hate waiting for things– especially when others don’t have to wait. Soon nearly everyone has left the jetbridge and finally your bag is thrown onto the floor in front of you. You grab it and exit the jetbridge in a significantly worse mood than you were in 5 minutes ago. ‘Wait that was only 5 minutes of waiting? Wow, those 5 minutes felt like forever.’ 

So anyways, back to boarding…not everyone can get away with boarding earlier than their group. I have seen people try and fail in an embarrassing fashion. Luckily no one ever questions me.

On my last trip I was assigned to Zone 4, which I didn’t understand because I had a window seat. The attendants were offering to check bags to our final destinations for no charge. I wasn’t in a rush so I volunteered to do so. As I was sitting at my gate the attendants started to call for boarding… this is how it went: “All Platinum Elite Ruby Members may now board. Gold Advanced Participants may now board. First class and all military personal in uniform may now board.” First class is the third group to board!? Hmm. These different ‘elite’ groups were too ridiculous to be real. I decided to wait and board with my zone for the first time ever. “All Silver Visa Reward Member Card Holders may now board. Anyone who paid for preferred access may now board.” By the time they got to Zone 1, there were five of us left. At least I wasn’t the scrub in Zone 5, right? As the attendant scanned my pass and I entered the jetbridge, I was thinking about how great it was to be the last person to board.

-I didn’t have to sit on the hot plane waiting for the entirety of the passengers to board.

-I didn’t have to wait anxiously for the rest of my row to show up, silently dying every time a smelly ungroomed person approached the row.

-And the best part: those fancy people who boarded before me with their Platinum Access Elite bullshit would have to move for ME… they would have to move for little ol’ Zone 4 me as I make my way into my window seat, (with a smirk on my face).

So all of this was going through my head as I turned onto the plane and scanned anxiously to see who was about to be really annoyed with my existence. I was hoping it would be some too-big-for-his-britches businessman who thinks he is better than the rest of us but is really just as scrubby as the poor Zone 5 guy. I reach row 15 and look at the occupants of the middle and aisle seats… two of the most brittle looking old ladies I have ever seen. As they look up at me, they realized they had to get up in order for me to pass. They didn’t say anything, but from the look in their eyes I could tell my existence didn’t annoy them… it broke their barely beating hearts. Well, I felt like an a**hole.

I’ll probably stick to my routine of sneaking on the plane early from now on.