By Randy Capps
Spending a few days with my family in Curacao celebrating my 50th birthday was a blast, but it provided a reminder of something that’s always puzzled me.
Why do people lose their minds around airports?
Maybe it’s the crowds, the bombardment of sights and sounds or just the general chaos of it all, but for some reason, the average human doesn’t seem to respond to it very well.
The biggest place this shows up is anytime a line is required. Flights board by group number most of the time, and that little number is in the top corner of the boarding pass. Instead of sitting somewhere and waiting for that group number, people clump up near the line of folks waiting to get on the plane, turning a simple concept into something of a free-for-all.
This happens post-flight, too. The logical way to exit an airplane is by row. The first row stands up, grabs their stuff from under the seat or the overhead bin and steps off the plane.
What happens instead is some jabroni from row 13 stands up the second the plane stops and starts pushing toward the front, stepping over bags, passengers and anything else that might be in the aisle.
It got me thinking, though. How can we make this better?
A couple of ideas include seats that don’t recline. You don’t really need that three inches of incline, do you? Next time you’re on a plane, take note of what a leaned back seat does to the person behind you. It’s just not necessary.
More radical concepts include a reduction (or elimination) or carry-on bags, to speed up boarding and disembarking, and loading the plane from back to front — which only works if you curtail the carry-ons.
Maybe the traveling world isn’t ready for that yet, but standing in line?
Surely we can do better.
