Flying Lessons
Having just returned from vacation in the Mojave desert I thought I would share a couple things about flying that I learned the hard way. As I live in Chesapeake, Virginia I have to fly out of Norfolk International Airport. Unfortunately Norfolk International Airport is not an International airport. I have seen much bigger airports in cities much smaller than the Hampton Roads area, of which Chesapeake is a part. This means that the biggest planes that fly into and out of Norfolk International airport are 737′s and MD-80′s. The first lesson I learned is to avoid flying on an MD-80, or any other plane with fuselage mounted engines. If you cannot avoid flying a fuselage engine mounted aircraft be certain to book a seat as far forward as possible. I had the misfortune of flying from Dallas-Fort Worth Airport to Norfolk sitting two feet from one of the engines. I don’t know what all the fuss was about Abu Ghraib and water-boarding, if you want to really torture someone force them to fly for three hours in the back of an MD-80. I still think I am suffering from short term hearing loss from the experience. Even if I had had a pair of Bose noise canceling headphones with me I don’t think it would have helped much. American Airlines should have paid me to sit there, not the other way around.
The other think I learned is that even though it is statistically safer to fly in the back of an airliner, pick a seat near the front anyway. With a 25 % average of late flights and the average time for a connecting flight being less than 2 hours, the extra minutes you save by being one of the first ones off the plane instead of one of the last ones off can be crucial to making your connecting flight. And last but not least, while window seats are nice, I prefer aisle seats so that I can stretch my legs some and not have to disturb other people when I want to go to the bathroom or get up to stretch on a long flight. After 40 years of flying you would have thought I had already learned these lessons.
The last thing I want to mention is that even though the TSA gets a lot of flak and complaints from people I have never had any problems with them and think they are doing a good job given the task they are faced with. Happy Flying !
