Airborne

As a person who travels frequently, both for work and pleasure, I find myself often in a position to consider both the nature of the airline industry and the types of people who make use of it.

Travelers come in all shapes and sizes, all ages, both genders, and a variety of self-limiting economic strata.

The most impatient are the business folk - the people who have a pressing, important, or otherwise needful reason to travel. They have a mission to accomplish that is more specific than "visit my mother" or "go home." They travel with laptops and cell phones and bluetooth headsets plugged in from the moment the airplane lands to the three minutes between when the plane door closes and when the flight attendant tells them to shut it off. They are efficient in security lines and intolerant of small children or inexperienced travelers.

These are followed by people like me - frequent travelers, though ones who travel fewer than ten times a year, on average. We know the drill in security, we know where to find restrooms, coffee, and what passes in an airport for lunch. We know about flying standby to get home a few hours earlier. We also tend to hate it - we are not yet dulled to the atmosphere of the airport, which rankles us, gets under our skin and itches until we can get out of it and into the confines of an airplane, which is preferable simply because it means we are moving. But we are accustomed to the rhythm - the start and stop and stand and stretch and so on - of travel. To the requirements of the security checkpoints that make us put off our morning coffee for an extra aggravating twenty minutes, the method of packing both the carry-on and the personal item for maximum capacity and entertainment value, the appearance of nauseating versus passable food. We dislike people who slow us down, are irritated by the people who fumble their way through the process, who impede the airplane aisles, who don't know what to expect. It isn't fair of us, but the irritation is there, nevertheless.

The next species of traveler is the pleasure-traveler. The vacationer. The elderly couple or successful family. The people who have done this often enough that they are prepared but not so often that it has become a chore. These are the pleasant people to sit by, to be behind in line, to follow through security. They are efficient enough not to irritate those of use in the frequent- and business-style of travelers. Sometimes, the college student who has gone to school and gone home enough to be happy to go in whichever direction they're headed, especially if it's spring break.

Finally, the group that stalls the rest of us. The first-time travelers, the families with small children who don't know how to keep them under control or entertained (I've traveled with many a pleasant family and/or small child), the people who have never been on a plane (or act like it). In terms of annoyance, I have to admit that the experienced-but-overly-entitled travelers are often worse than the rookies, but the rookies are more frazzled, more nervous, more excitable, and more prone to being in the way no matter how much they try not to be. They are well-intentioned, but nevertheless manage to be in the wrong place, to stuff their luggage in the wrong way, or to block the aisle because their stuff doesn't fit in the overhead bin.

In a system as simultaneously efficient and inefficient as the airline industry, this mix makes traveling... interesting. Because one or two are enough to clog the gears, to slow the system, and to create a fascinating domino effect that causes the whole thing to come screeching to a staggering halt.

So what is the point of this little diatribe? Simply that any system that deals with humanity is bound to have cogs, whether out of good or malicious intents, that slip and stick and get in the way.

So some of us need to be more tolerant, more patient. And others need to pay more attention and attempt to make things smoother for everyone else - either by learning how the system works through a little research or themselves being more willing to let well enough alone.