Every PAX has a story, and every PAX is a story

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  • Anonymous
    Guest

    PhilipHart
    Participant

    I’m not sure why I stopped reading medium.com – probably an insufficient number of hours in the day – but a google search for some nerdy stuff brought me back to this amazingly diverse site.

    Why am I telling you this?

    Well, I discovered two thought-provoking articles that I felt I needed to share with fellow readers of Business Traveller.

    There’s Nothing More Beautiful Than an Airplane

    Seat 21A – A window seat reminder of humanity

    I offer them without personal comment, but hope you will find them as inspirational as I did.


    stevescoots
    Participant

    Interesting articles, the first I agree and is thought provoking. The second, well I would have just politely hoofed her out of my seat with a line such as “sorry but i booked that seat as I am afraid of flying, if i don’t have the window to look out of I might freak out and we really don’t want that do we. (I have used that before) That’s is if I had if I had booked that seat for a specific reason and certainly if I had paid extra for it! I would not have sat there in pent up rage hitting social media to moan about it. I wouldn’t have gone all sandal and cardigan wearing about what a thought provoking experience it was either
    But then that’s just me ? 🙂


    Bullfrog
    Participant

    The story of ‘Seat 21A’ just does not ‘wash with me’.

    Opening communication with ‘I see you prefer the window seat’ is a poor start to the conversation. Far better with ‘I am afraid you’re in the seat that I have booked’ & yes, I would have turfed her out.


    seasonedtraveller
    Participant

    Surely the story about seat 21A is a hoax?
    It sounds like some Christian Gospel……

    When this has happened to me in the past, I normally ask the person “Do you also have seat number xxx? – there must be some mistake because I have that seat as well”

    9 times out of 10, it is a simple mistake on behalf of the person already seated


    TiredOldHack
    Participant

    seasonedtraveller – but not always.

    I’ve copied and pasted the screed below, which happned to me a while back, from Another Place:-

    STARTS
    I get grumpy when I feel sick. Onto the last plane of this week’s marathon and there was a *very* fat female Yank in my seat and a bouncing kid in the middle one.

    Me (politely): “Sorry, but you’re in my seat.”

    Her: “Oh, he so wants to see all the airplanes.”

    Me: “But *you* are in my seat, not him?”

    Her: “That’s so’s I can hold him up. Aw, do you mind changing?”

    Me, in honeyed tones: “It’s my seat and I always book a window because I like to look at aircraft as well. Now, I have been travelling for 30 hours and I am ill. If you’d asked politely before wedging your fat arse into my seat, I might have been kind. But you just grabbed it and if you don’t crowbar it out right now, I’ll get the cabin staff to do it.”

    There was a slow handclap from the row of seats behind us.

    “There’s no need to be impolite!”

    “You started it.”

    And she shut up and moved, though the atmosphere in that row of seats chilled to Polar.
    ENDS


    PeterCoultas
    Participant

    tok – good for U


    LuganoPirate
    Participant

    Whenever I see a plane flying overhead I always feel like going up in the air. When I’m up in the air I often wish I was back on the ground at home looking up!


    TiredOldHack
    Participant

    I fly hot air balloons with a friend. And whenever the weather looks doubtful, and we cancel flying, and then realise that maybe we could have flown after all, we chant the mantra:

    “I’d rather be down here, wishing I was up there, than up there wishing I was down here.”


    LuganoPirate
    Participant

    I’ve always wanted to fly in a hot air balloon ToH, must be amazing.

    Reminds me when I flew back last week, leaving ZRH for Lugano in a Saab 2000, one minute into the take off we hit a bit of strong turbulence. Suddenly, a la Air Crash Investigation, the plane did a sort of side slip dive to the left. Many gasps could be heard. probably just the auto pilot being knocked off, but the plane was quickly under control as we continued our climb.

    On a side note, amongst the gasps a Swiss German shouted out “9 9 9”. How strange to call for the English emergency services over Switzerland I thought! 😉


    TiredOldHack
    Participant

    Balloons are fun. There used to be a BA-sponsored Concorde balloon, oh, 20+ years ago, in BA silver and blue. The pilot was one of Concorde’s flight engineers, I recall.


    Andrew66
    Participant

    LP , very funny 9 9 9 , !!! You should have shouted back ” Red Balloons “


    LuganoPirate
    Participant

    I’d almost forgotten the incident Andrew. But why “red balloons”?


    AviationGeek
    Participant

    There’s still a BA hot air balloon, often seen flying in the Oxfordshire countryside.
    It’s also at some air shows and recently flew over the city of London with 50 other balloons… 7th of June I think it was.

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