Warming Up

Sunday 4th May 2003

The people I hate on planes are the ones who insist on getting up at the end of the flight before the seat-belt light has been turned off.
You know, youÂ’re taxiing up to the arrival gate and the captain has been very insistent that you stay seated until he gives the signal, but they think that if they can pre-empt the official standing up point that they will be ready to get off the plane first.
This is stupid and selfish for so many reasons. Obviously itÂ’s partly a safety thing. If there is an accident as the plane is still moving, those idiots are going to get hurt (and probably hurt other people). But my main problem with it is just how much time are these people going to save?
OK, they might get a bit closer to the front when the doors finally open, but all that will happen is that they will get to the baggage carousel a bit earlier and have to wait there a bit longer instead. .
Even if it saved them a couple of minutes, once again (as with the people on the tube I mentioned the other month), what have they got that is so important in their lives that an extra minute or two is going to make any difference. These people have been on a 21 hour flight from Australia and now they are worried that they might waste a hundred seconds by not being ready to get off a plane.
Perhaps these people are all just claustrophobic and have been really holding their fears in for all that time, but now, so close to the end, they can stand it no more and have to be let off.
Or perhaps they are idiots who havenÂ’t got over that school-days routine of wanting to be the first off the bus or the first in the canteen queue.