“Everything’s amazing and nobody’s happy”

As my current profile suggests, I am new to the world of blogging. And I don’t even mean just maintaining my own – I barely read any blogs either, whether it be professional or amateur. One I do check often is Doug Smith’s Toronto Raptors blog (find it here). You see, I’m a huge basketball fan and living in the UK means there is very little opportunity to ever catch any live action on TV. As such, this is one of my main ways of staying in touch with the game I love.

However, this entry has nothing at all to do with basketball, but instead deals with one of the topics (read: rant) discussed by Doug in one of his recent entries. In a nutshell, it’s all about flight delays and how frustrating they and the airline can be. Upon reading this , I was immediately reminded of Louis CK’s appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. If you haven’t seen it, please check it out here. I recommend it. Highly. Now let’s build on this.

There is no doubt that flight delays can be very frustrating. You select your destination, you make your plans, you pay your money and you expect everything on their end to work out smoothly. But sometimes, and it seems like ‘every time’, there are delays. They’re re-fueling. They’re loading luggage. There’s a passenger missing. They’re doing maintenance. The runways are icy. There are no working engines. Whatever. There is ‘always’ something, and it’s always happening to ‘me’.

Let’s get some perspective. Let us consider what we are actually doing when we’re on a plane. We are flying. IN THE AIR. I cannot ever remember a time when I have heard a man flying otherwise. I suppose you could say gliders and air balloons, but how far have you gotten with that? Have you crossed the Atlantic? The Pacific? Or how about the English Channel? Flying is a miracle and the fact that it can pretty much take us anywhere around the world has been spoiled on our society. I mean I suppose you could walk everywhere… oh wait, that would take you forever. But seriously, even with a combination of driving/busing/train/boat, it would take you ages to get to anywhere meaningful. So, basically, we’re ‘stuck’ with the airplane as our quickest mode of transport so let’s begin to deal with it already!!! That’s realization number 1.

How many of us really know what it takes to get a flight off at its scheduled time? It takes just one thing for a flight to be delayed: a single late passenger (either at the desk or the gate), loading luggage, re-fueling, maintenance tests, cleaning the plane, a late crew member, weather conditions… and you get the picture. There is a lot and I’m sure I haven’t even begun to touch on the situation. Just because we’re ready to go, doesn’t mean the flight is. This will serve as realization number 2.

It was an accident that could’ve been prevented if there were more precautions taken. How many times have we heard something of this manner? Truth is, something happens to most of us when we get into an airport and we suddenly lose all common sense and patience. Any speak of delays due to ‘maintenance’ and we’re suddenly up in arms. There could not be a single thing in this world that could offend us more than those words. But when we sit at home and hear this on the news, we feel sick to our stomachs. Or at least I do. Why didn’t they just take an extra 5, 10 or 20 minutes and just make sure everything was okay, you might think. And then our instant thoughts are, “Air [insert country here] is really horrible and needs to be more careful when allowing its planes in the air”. How does the airline win? So, yes, you could leave now, but then again, you might just make the news – and not in the way that you always wanted. And that, my friends, is realization number 3.

Lastly, watch someone get frustrated. How attractive is that look? How embarrassed do you feel for them? Remember yourself what it feels like to be frustrated and impatient. How clear is your thinking? How is your overall state of being? At the end of the day, does it actually get you anywhere? I’m thinking no, and it won’t make the flight leave any earlier. We all know that ‘life is too short’, so let us not let things out of our control bother us. We’ll be better off for it. That is the final realization and it is also number 4.

So, a delayed flight… Yes, it sucks. But let’s all gain a bit of perspective and deal with it before it even happens.