Tips for boarding an airlplane (Reflections of a frequent flyer)

1.    Respect the line. If you have a ticket they will let you get on. Don't go to the front of the line and "merge" in front of 150 people who actually are in line. We see you even if you pretend to be invisible.

2.    Have your boarding card, ID, etc. out before you get to the front of the line. If you can't find your boarding card, step to the side and let others go past while you look in your one carry-on, one large handbag, computer bag, odd little extra bag, hanger bag, a paper tube with the advertising campaign you are going to pitch to your client and the two plastic bags of stuff you bought in the airport shops.

 

3.    When the airline says one carry-on and one small handbag they don't mean one carry-on, one large handbag, computer bag, odd little extra bag, hanger bag, a paper tube with the advertising campaign you are going to pitch to your client and the two plastic bags of stuff you bought in the airport shops.

4.    If instead of one carry-on and one small handbag you actually bring one carry-on, one big handbag, a computer bag, an odd little extra bag, a hanger bag, a paper tube containing the advertising campaign you are going to pitch to your client and the two plastic bags of stuff you bought in the airport shops and if you cut into the front of the line to make sure you can get room in the overhead bin for your one carry-on, one big handbag, a computer bag, an odd little extra bag, a hanger bag, a paper tube with the advertising campaign you are going to pitch to your client and the two plastic bags of stuff you bought in the airport shops, don't be surprised and all righteous and indignant  if someone removes one or two of your "carry-on" items and places them in the aisle, especially if you aren't sitting anywhere close to the vicinity of the overhead bins where your plethora of personal belongs are stored. (Breath)

5.    Take off your coat before you actually enter the plane so you don’t have to put all your worldly possessions in the aisle so you can take off your coat while 150 of us behind you wait because you cut in line ahead of us.

6.    If despite everything I have written here you insist on entering the plane with all your junk and pile it all in the aisle while you take off your coat please don’t wear your delicate “in-threat-of-extinction-skin-of-something-you-shot-on-safari-in-Africa” coat that can’t possibly be wadded up and stuffed into whatever crevice there is amongst all your stuff in the overhead bins (like the rest of us cattle do with our outer garments) while 150 of us other passengers are waiting behind you because you cut in front of us in line.  And if you do all of this at least and don’t start a big pontification about bad service and “don’t you know who I am” with the cabin personnel because they don’t have a humidified room to hand your rare dead coat in.