Selfishness sky high on long-haul flights: Dave Mollard

The long-haul battle is fought over armrests, reclined seats, the last chicken meal and, of course, the toilet. Photo / 123rf

OPINION

Congratulations dear reader, by reading this opinion piece you have indicated a desire to learn, to contemplate and to understand.

Secondly, an apology - your desire to be enlightened is limited by my lack of knowledge.

You will not get the answer to life, the universe and everything from me. In fact, you could fill the world’s libraries with a section on the ground floor called “stuff Dave does not know”.

Logistically speaking, it might be better to have an A4 one-sided pamphlet titled: “Stuff Dave knows for certain”.

It will mainly contain specifications for Suzuki motorcycles and the names of the 1987 All Blacks who won the first World Cup.

Thirdly, almost this entire opinion piece so far reinforces the theory that we all think the universe revolves around ourselves. We make decisions based on our needs, and by extension, the needs of those we love.

Nowhere is this selfishness more apparent than flying long haul. It starts in the carpark where we try to get as close as possible to the terminal so we don’t have to walk so far.

By taking a closer park, we sentence our fellow travellers to a longer walk, but that is their problem.

We then drag our overweight bags to the check-in queue only to get frustrated with the 214 people in front of us. We judge the people ahead of us wondering why they are slowing us down.

Finally, we hear the two most beautiful words of the day “next please”.

Time slows down even more as passports are scanned, important information is checked and rechecked and finally, the golden tickets slide out of that unassuming slot.

The next challenge is beating everyone else to the departure lounge to get the best seat. Security, passport control and the perfume marketeers in duty-free are all obstacles to overcome.

A quick stop to buy an overpriced sandwich before walking what seems like 3km to the fabled departure lounge. Then the disappointment of seeing the hard plastic seats are already covered with other people, including that 27-year-old backpacker asleep across four seats.

At the boarding call, the herd jumps up and forms another queue, the backpacker rolls over and changes his song selection on his playlist. More passport checks, before the real war for self begins.

Battle lines are drawn at the overhead luggage space as we compete to squash our wheelie bag into a cupboard already over-subscribed with the detritus of the enemy, which in this case is every other passenger on the aircraft.

The battle will rage for the next 13 hours as all 323 of us in economy fight over armrests, reclined seats, the last chicken meal and, of course, the toilet.

The brief truce as we sleep ends with landing when we fight to be first off, first through immigration and first to get our bags.

The whole process took 16 hours, wrecked my body and made me despise the human race.

But a deeper lesson can be learned if we step back from our self-centred needs and open our eyes at the arrivals gate.

A grandmother holds her grandson for the first time, two lovers kiss desperately, the backpacker hugs his dad, and a group of pilgrims are connected with their guides. These passengers who were our enemies are now seen as who they really are, people.

Instead of looking at our fellow citizens as competition, maybe we should see them as part of the same journey as ourselves. He waka eke noa.

Dave Mollard is a Palmerston North community worker and social commentator.