The New Airplane Frontier

      An airplane is an interesting place to be these days.  My flight from Denver to Boston was 4 hours long, giving me more than enough time to reflect.  Just before I started writing this post, I finished not one, but two packages of cheesy crackers.  Practically unheard of now. The chief of the flight attendants, a grey-haired gentlemen in his fifties with a midlife paunch and a bushy white mustache looks to me more like an auto mechanic than a flight attendant, but I digress.  As he comes around with his box of Southwest Airlines goodies and a wry smirk, he says to my seatmate and I, “Take a couple, ‘cause that’s all you get these days...”

The days of “Pan Am” are a little outside of my experience, but I clearly remember taking trips with my parents and being given an actual meal on an airplane, even if the distance of the flight was somewhat short.  It might not have been the most delicious meal, but it was a meal nonetheless, and there was bound to be at least one tasty something on the tray.  Then came the days of the sandwich, and I’d purposefully book my seat in the middle of the aircraft, so that there would likely still be turkey left whether the crew started passing them out from the front or the back, and I wouldn’t be left with something truly disgusting, like boiled ham.  Those sandwiches weren’t much bigger than a silver dollar pancake, but again, it was food.  Real food.

Those days are gone, and the memory is a nostalgic blur.  When I was a kid, flying on an airplane was part of the vacation, not simply a way to get to the vacation.  People used to get dressed up to take a flight.  Not that the attire was too formal, but there were no passengers wearing the glorified pajamas that are currently adorning my person.  No, they’re not really pajamas, but they’re close.  My fleece top and velour sweatpants are probably more comfortable than my jammies, anyway.  I wear this “uniform” on nearly every flight these days.  I’ve eskewed fashion for comfort, and I’m not ashamed.

That’s okay.  The attire of the flight crew has changed, too, so I’m in good company.  The perfectly coiffed and model thin female flight attendants (read: stewardesses) wearing polished patent pumps and perfect pantyhose have gone the way of the dinosaur, and I say: “Good riddance!”  For what reason I can’t seem to understand, I can’t get through a flight of more than 90 minutes without getting off the plane looking like I slept on a park bench and was rolled by a wino for spare change.  It makes no sense, but that’s the way it is.  I’m an ugly flier.  So, why would I want to spend the whole flight looking at the epitome of femaleness?  I much prefer the paunchy auto-mechanic/flight attendant, thank you very much.