Ask the pilot

Seat ploppers, tray slammers, lousy airport terminal design and other pet peeves. Plus: Will U.S. airlines hit Cuban tarmac thanks to Obama?

By Patrick Smith

Read more: Technology & Business, Flying, Cuba, Airlines, Business, P. Smith, Ask the Pilot, Barack Obama

July 25, 2008 | Air travel pet peeve No. 2,652: Passengers who, after returning from the lavatory, plop violently into their seats with no regard for the cup of coffee or soft drink balanced precariously on your tray.

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Air travel pet peeve No. 2,653: If it's not the seat ploppers, it's the tray slammers. I'll never forget nor forgive the sullen teenage girl sitting directly behind me one evening en route from Paris to Delhi, whose method of retracting her table was to slam it as violently as possible into my seat back, when all it needed was a gentle push. SLAM SLAM SLAM, over and over again for eight hours.

These are two more reasons why armrest-mounted tray tables are better than the seat-back-mounted kind. Not only are they closer to your body, reducing hunch-over as you try to work or eat, but you are protected from the bad habits of fellow travelers.

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Just how low can an airline stoop in order to generate revenue? Well, Spirit Airlines, the low-cost carrier based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., has begun charging a $10 "Web convenience fee" for passengers buying tickets online. That's right. Maybe I'm missing something, but I thought the whole point of online booking was to avoid such fees. For several years now, airlines have been shuttering ticket offices and closing call centers, urging fliers to migrate to the Web. Those who insist on booking the old-fashioned way are hit with a surcharge.

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Product plug: Writing in this column some time ago, I suggested the idea of a field guide to commercial aircraft -- a take-along booklet with illustrated tips on differentiating one plane from another. The idea could be popular with kids, aero-enthusiasts and frequent fliers easily infuriated by their inability to tell an Airbus from a Boeing. Delayed on the tarmac, disgruntled fliers could kill time by quizzing themselves.

Such a product is now available. It's called Plane Spotter, a laminated, six-panel foldout that slides neatly into your briefcase or backpack. In an amusing nod to bird guides, the illustrations use small arrows to point out the telltale characteristics of each model. For example, one way of telling an A320 from a 737 is through the curvature of the latter's upper aft fuselage, just under the tail. It's not as comprehensive as it ought to be, but Plane Spotter makes a fun gift. Unfortunately, the ideal venues for selling Plane Spotter, airport bookshops and newsstands, have been mostly off-limits, so your best bet is to order online.

Take it from me, the airport retail world is a maddening racket for authors and publishers alike. The majority of terminal bookshops are controlled by two companies -- Hudson Booksellers and an Atlanta-based outfit called Paradies Shops Inc. (Paradies runs hundreds of small outlets under a variety of gimmicky names.) Getting on these companies' shortlist of merchandise is all but impossible unless you're a bestselling author or sudoku publisher. That your book happens to be for and about the airport does not matter. I wrote "Ask the Pilot" specifically for airline passengers, yet very few of them ever saw it. The lack of airport visibility probably cost me tens of thousands of sales. I reckon the folks at V1 Enterprises, publisher of Plane Spotter, are no less frustrated than I was. Gregory Dicum's "Window Seat" was another ideal airport book hidden from its audience.

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Product unplug: Some months ago I sang the praises of TV-B-Gone, a universal remote control small enough to clip onto a key chain. The device promised to be an effective weapon against one of air travel's most infernal scourges -- those damn gate-side TV monitors that blare CNN Airport Network around the clock. Well, the broadcaster has caught on, and its monitors are now shielded.

In fact, short of a power outage or throwing a chair through one, there is virtually no way to turn off those blasted things. The sets run 24/7, and not even airport employees have access to the controls. One night at Kennedy airport recently, a gate agent and I spent several minutes trying in vain to silence one. (Although it was nearly midnight and the terminal was empty, CNN Airport Network was still playing at each and every gate, making it impossible to find a quiet spot to read.) The power cable is concealed in tamperproof casing, and the power and volume controls are disabled. What a senseless waste of energy.

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Is it just me, or do airport designers go out of their way to make it difficult to actually see airplanes? There are plenty of new terminals going up around the world, but views of the tarmac and runways are increasingly rare. JFK is maybe the worst. At Terminal 3 there are partitions everywhere, blocking almost all of the windows. In some areas, the glass has been etched to make it opaque. Why? I tend to be overly romantic about these things, but to purposely block the public's view of planes is not only aesthetically rude but counterintuitive to what airports are all about.

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