Air travel today really is all the range

Have you ever woken up and just known it was going to be a very bad day? I found myself in such an unfortunate position recently when I was flying from San Francisco to Japan on my way back to Indonesia.

My journey got off to an inauspicious start at the airport when I was told that my check-in luggage was 10 kilograms overweight and I would have to repack it or pay a US$500 fine. So there, in front of the counter and the assembled passengers, I opened my suitcase and removed various books and items of clothing and shoved them into my carry-on bags.

My suitcase was now of proper weight, though I could not help but wonder as to the purpose of the whole exercise. The suitcase was now 10 kilograms lighter, but my carry-on bags were 10 kilograms heavier.

Not to worry though, because my flight was delayed by an hour so I had plenty of time to catch my breath, which I did at an airport bar. Thankfully I was carrying plenty of cash so I could afford a couple of Irish coffees to take the edge off my headache.

Where else does food and drink cost as much as in an airport? One assumes that the thinking on the part of the food outlets in airports is that since they have a captive audience which has no other options, they can charge $7 for a sad looking sandwich filled with a wilted leaf of lettuce and a slice of processed meat.

Eventually we were allowed to board the plane, and I shuffled back to my aisle seat in economy class with all the other sad souls who couldn't pluck down a couple of thousand dollars for a business or first-class seat. There are few places where the division between the haves and have-nots is so pronounced as on an airplane. I stuffed myself into my seat, cursing the holiday pounds I had put on that were now making the fit even tighter.

I closed my eyes and hovered in that space between sleep and wakefulness as the plane achieved the skies and was starting to feel better about things when the captain unfortunately turned off the seatbelt sign and the thoughtless fat jerk in the seat in front of me rushed to recline his seat to within inches of my nose.

There can be no doubt that veal has more personal space to stretch out and move about than people in the economy-class cabins of airlines. Undoubtedly the next step for airlines as they figure out just how to jam more people into their planes and turn a bigger profit will be the elimination of all seats, and have the passengers stand like on a subway, hanging onto an overhead strap so they don't tumble about during takeoff and landing.

To take my mind off these dark thoughts I turned to the provided entertainment: bad movies and really bad music. One assumes that airlines hire someone to be in charge of programming the radio stations they offer, and one again assumes these people are hired based solely on their absolutely horrible taste in music. So without entertainment I was left to sit there and try and sleep through this whole dreadful experience.

After several hours of staring blank-eyed at the headrest in front of me I couldn't help but notice that a middle-aged Japanese man in the row in front of me was obnoxiously drunk. Which was understandable since he had been consuming the personal-sized bottles of wine provided free of charge by the airline at the rate of about one every 20 minutes.

Now he was acting the part of the proper drunk -- shouted conversation with his seatmate, who appeared to be a friend and who unsuccessfully tried to quiet him, embarrassing attempts to pick up the stewardesses, who continued to fetch him wine despite his obvious intoxication.

On the way back from one of his many bathroom trips, the drunk, as I affectionately like to refer to him, decided to tarry in the aisle and shout to his friend from there. As these things often happen with drunks, he soon stepped on my feet, turned to glower at me and said, "Hey, you shep a ma fee." Which I translated as "Hey, you stepped on my feet."

So not only was he a loud and obnoxious drunk, he was also a belligerent one. Excellent combination.

Now he was standing over me, and he leaned down and said something that was probably most unkind, but he was slurring so badly I couldn't make out a word of it. Though it was becoming clear he thought it might be a good idea for him and me to engage in a punch-up as our plane soared over the Pacific Ocean. Visions of Japanese police waiting to meet me at the end of the ramp to throw me in Japanese jail danced in my head.

Luckily the situation was defused when a stewardess arrived, told the drunk to sit down and then said they would give me a new seat.

Now visions of finishing the flight up in the paradise of business class were dancing in my head, only to be dashed when I was reseated in a middle seat in economy class. Of course, the fat dolt in front of me had his seat reclined to within inches of my nose. The stewardess was very apologetic, saying the man was very drunk, which she would know since she brought him all those bottles of wine he had gotten drunk on.

As I sat in my little seat, engaged in a silent struggle with my two neighbors for those precious inches of armrest space, I considered the recent controversy over air rage, with airlines seeking new laws to put a stop to this dangerous trend.

But one has to think that with planes crammed full of angry, dispirited and drunk people it is a wonder that there aren't more cases of air rage. Or, for that matter, incidents of mini- revolutions aboard planes, where everyone just decides they have had enough and stand up and announce, "We're mad as hell and we aren't going to take it anymore."

But until we sprout wings of our own we will take it, because we don't have any other choice.

-- Jimmy Dykes