I’m not normally claustrophobic, but international flights push my tolerance to the absolute limits. Paradoxically, window seats are best for me, but the aisle would have worked. Being 4’11″, I can contort my body and legs against the wall. What unsettles me is constant physical contact with my seatmate. A seasoned traveler, I’ve flown overseas several times without difficulty – by knowing my limits and carefully reserving an appropriate seat.
Days after the London subway bombing, I flew from Heathrow to JFK. Only after I reached my gate did I see that I had been switched to the middle. I showed the gate attendant my travel reservations and she said American didn’t guarantee a particular seat. She directed me to the seating agent. Unsure how I’d handle seven hours in the middle of a five-seat row, I told the seating agent I became very claustrophobic in middle seats and feared I might have a panic attack. The woman didn’t bat an eyelid and completely blew me off.
Maybe she didn’t believe me. Maybe it was the stress of the new security threats and precautions. Maybe she’d pegged me as a drama queen and decided she’d fulfilled her royalty quota for the day. Only my civility and fear of arrest kept me from completely exploding either in the gate or in-flight. The sight of cops with machine guns and an enormous Sikh security guard hand-inspecting carry-ons made it easy to decide not to pick Heathrow to “fight the power”. She made a halfhearted attempt to recruit someone to volunteer a seat and I heard nothing more.
Does airline staff really need bureaucratic protocol to tell them that forcing a claustrophobic passenger into a middle seat is a bad idea? I know customer service is a hard job, but what good are armed security and hand inspections at the gate if attendants don’t use their own judgment and instincts? They do, after all, take bomb jokes seriously…
Yesterday’s United Airlines incident may possibly be fallout from the limited elbow room in airline economy class seats, particularly difficult for overweight passengers or the people sitting next to them. With the wide gap in price point between economy airfares and higher-end seating, middle-class travelers are forced between suffering discomfort or foregoing air travel.
I went out of my way to show consideration to those around me and to avoid creating a security incident. Yet I was constantly crawling over fellow passengers to walk around, tying up the toilet (which offered more breathing space than my seat). But for all the airline knew, I could have done what the United passenger did the other day.
I would have gladly exchanged the barrage of in-flight movies and satellite radio to avoid that incident. International air flight is too expensive an investment to feel at the mercy of the airlines. They constantly throw icing at passengers when what we really need is cake.
