BRIGHTON, England — One would be smart to follow the word of the wise — sleep on the plane. Simple enough, right? Wrong. If you have ever tried to sleep on a plane, you know it’s not as easy as it looks. I don’t know about you, but I can’t sleep sitting up with my knees jammed into the seat in front of me. It’s just not going to happen — and while I’ve traveled by air many times, the flight to London Gatwick was by far the most uncomfortable flight I have been on.
A Boeing 787 Dreamliner should be a fairly comfortable plane due to its size, but the moment the person in front of you decides to lean their seat back, comfort is out the window. At this point, the only options are to either man-spread for the entirety of the flight or accept the fact that you will need a knee replacement in the near future. It wouldn’t have been as bad if the person sitting in front of me wasn’t my professor, Andy Coughlan — who, by the way, slept on and off the whole way there.
To make matters worse, the lady sitting next to me got separated from her adult daughter and wanted everyone to play musical chairs so they could sit next to each other. I understand wanting to switch seats if your child is young, but not when they’re an adult and 10 other people would have to rearrange their seats. I had half a mind to tell her to sit down and be quiet, because I wasn’t going to move either way, but it was still early in the flight so my patience wasn’t as thin.
Naturally, as soon as I had mastered the man-spread, the lady needed to go to the bathroom. Sigh. I gathered my things and put my tray table up so I could shuffle out into the aisle to let her out — still unsure which angle would be the easiest to re-enter my seat due to the reclining comfort of my professor. A few minutes later, there was a tap on my shoulder, followed by a request to gather the lady’s things and hand them to her because she had spotted an empty seat closer to her daughter. Perfect, now she was someone else’s problem.
No sooner had I got back settled in than the seatbelt light came on, along with a message from the pilot saying, “We may be in for a bumpy ride, as there are some boppy-looking clouds ahead of us.” I turned to my friend, Morgan, who was seated beside me and said, “Boppy?” with a confused look on my face. She shrugged her shoulders and said, “I’m not sure what that means.” Moments later, it felt like I was riding a camel through the sky. It all made sense now, “boppy” was the nice way of saying that we were about to experience turbulence.
For those who don’t know, I get sick when someone turns a corner too fast in the car — and this was no exception. We were rocking and rolling through the sky at a staggering 650 mph, and my air vent was blowing half-ass. So, here I am, sweating and trying not to throw up, all the while trying to maintain the man-spread (which, by the way, kills one’s hips after about an hour).
We were only a couple hours into the nine-hour flight at this point, and all I wanted to do was sleep. Fast forward a few hours and I’m still wide-awake, practicing deep breathing techniques to hold back the vomit that I could feel creeping up the back of my throat every time the plane dipped and rattled through another “boppy” patch of air. Of course, as soon as I started drifting into the darkness of a much-needed nap, the pilot rings in with “Good morning everyone, we will now begin our decent into Gatwick. I hope you have enjoyed the flight.” Needless to say, I did not enjoy the flight, nor did I get the needed rest to conquer the 12-hour day that was still ahead of me.
Luckily, things did get better. Stay tuned.