Tips on Flying the Friendly Skies

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Reflections and possibly useful tips on air travel after returning from another trip to Germany — my third in four years. This year also brought trips to Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Boston. I think that’s all the air travel for this year. I don’t particularly enjoy flying. It is more a matter of endurance, especially when traveling overseas.

My earliest memory is of playing with a toy truck in the aisle of a plane headed from Boston to Dallas so we could visit our paternal grandparents, who lived in Longview. I was 3 and remember looking up at the grownups watching me and smiling. I suppose I was cute. It would be another five years before my parents realized I was terribly myopic. So that plane trip was a blur.

My travel tips include:

• Always get an aisle seat unless you are seated with your family in the same row. You get slightly more legroom and don’t have to crawl over strangers to get to the restroom. On a 10-hour nonstop flight, it also makes it easier to stand up, stretch your legs, and move around a bit. I often head toward the galley — which is usually not far away since I generally end up booked in steerage — and do some air squats to wake up those dormant muscles.
• Use one of the remote parking lots, such as the Parking Spot, and take their bus to the terminal. Not only is it less expensive than parking at the airport, but it also eliminates the risk of losing your vehicle. This might not be an issue for most folks, but I have learned the hard way. I once spent nearly two hours trying to find my car in an airport parking garage.

True story. I once parked at the Houston airport and carefully noted where I had parked, writing it down. I told my then-spouse to hang out in the baggage claim area while I fetched the car. I took the airport van to the parking lot. According to my now sweat-stained note, our vehicle wasn’t where I had left it. (It was July in Houston.) I finally gave up and walked to the guard house where one paid.

“My car was parked over there, and now it’s gone,” I said. The attendant apologized.

“We had the parking lot surface redone and had to move a bunch of vehicles,” she said.

My car was about 50 yards away. My then-wife didn’t believe my story when I finally got back to baggage claim. The marriage did not last much longer after that.

• Eat light before boarding a flight. I always arrive at least four hours early for an international flight. My go-to pre-flight meal is a small salad and a cold beer. Just one. I always stick a few packages of peanut butter and crackers in my carry-on backpack to avoid the airline food.

On my flight to Germany a month or so ago, the flight attendant came by about halfway through the flight with the second meal. There were two choices, both hot wraps, one with mystery meat, one vegetarian. My seatmate asked her, “Which do you prefer?”

The flight attendant immediately replied. “I don’t eat airline food.”

Smart woman. I happily accepted the complimentary cup of red wine to wash down my crackers and passed on the wrap.

• Bring plenty of reading material. My Beautiful Mystery Companion and daughter Abbie gifted me a Kindle Paperwhite for my birthday last year. It is a godsend for long trips. I loaded five lengthy books — most of which I own in physical form — so my backpack didn’t weigh 30 pounds. The crew usually dims the lights for much of the flight, in hopes we will sleep. I can read the Kindle without turning on the reading light above my seat, which might disturb others.

I can’t sleep for long on a plane, but my eyelids often get heavy while reading in the dark; sometimes that lets me set the Kindle down and doze a bit. But never for more than a few minutes. I am resigned to arriving at my destination jet-lagged.

• Finally, I know seasoned travelers do their best not to check their bags. Not me. I carry too much stuff, usually coming in just under the 50-pound weight limit. I always hold my breath at the baggage carousel, waiting for my hard-shell Jeep suitcase to come tumbling down the conveyor belt. It usually does, though an airline earlier this year had to ship my suitcase home after inexplicably losing it on a nonstop flight from Philly to Dallas. Happily, it arrived a few days later, undamaged.

I did not see a single child playing on an airplane’s aisle floor on any of my trips. Guess that isn’t allowed anymore.

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