The Modern Status Showdown Is 40,000 Feet in the Air

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No consumer experience has diminished more in my lifetime than commercial air travel. Airlines have completely given up on offering a whiff of glamor or a fleeting moment of luxury, at least in coach (or, uhhh, Economy Plus). Most U.S. airlines from Delta on down have abandoned the illusion that moving through the air at 37,000 feet is remarkable and that each passenger deserves a special experience.

But I haven’t. I’m still impressed and a little astonished that I can take off in LAX, pop open my MacBook, pay an unreasonable sum for Gogo in-flight wi-fi, work for about five hours, and land on the sunny shores of Queens. Air travel is still amazing when you stop complaining and just accept it for the marvel that it is: shuttling you and your laptop from one end of this vast country to the other, all in the time it takes to watch the latest Scorcese movie.

Flying, where everything is hierarchical, really puts us in our place: There are now six different levels of service on most airlines, and mine is invariably the one that includes a non-reclining seat that also shares a thin plastic wall with the bathroom. There are also hierarchies of security clearance — Clear, TSA Precheck, Global Entry, etc. — and a dozen methods of transportation to get to JFK, from Blade’s helicopter to Blacklane’s limo service, from Uber and Lyft to Curb or a black cab, to my personal favorite: the Howard Beach bound A train to the AirTrain.

At the airport itself, the opportunities to flex are endless. A bright purple neck pillow for your three-hour flight? Maybe an Us Weekly? And hey, why not treat yourself to a $15 bag of Chex Mix? Unless you actually are Tom Brady and not merely a digital marketing director from Braintree who chose to wear another man’s work uniform on today’s flight to Atlanta, enjoy some of the plant-based TB12 protein powder you’ve no doubt brought along for the journey.

There are so many ways to advertise your consumer values during air travel, nowhere more than the flight itself. It’s an hours-long chance to show the world just who you are! Such is the level of my self-awareness that I always bring a book that has a little more cred and cache than the one I’m actually reading — something old and undeniable that kids don’t get taught anymore or a dense and challenging non-fiction book about something impressively boring or a current work of literary fiction too weird for Oprah. Crack open the Saul Bellow while the dishy Emma Cline book waits in the carry-on. You can’t risk being seen reading the same book as another passenger. The Guest is better for the poolside, anyway. I also bring no fewer than three copies of The New Yorker, a laptop, and a brand of French chocolate, like Guittard, which you can’t buy in an airport that isn’t Charles de Gaulle. 

I make a point of not watching any of the in-flight movies and sneer disdainfully at the young men watching Marvel movies and even more so at the grown men watching Marvel movies. I’m the Christopher Nolan in 33C, scrutinizing your movie selection process and quietly grumbling while you prove to be every bit as basic and incurious as he knew you’d be.

And when my book — the one about the history of parking lots, or salt, or 19th-century horticulture — gets too boring, my eye finds a local screening of The Notebook. (Someone’s always watching The Notebook.) I watch casually, checking in between paragraphs of the book, just long enough to confirm my decision never to watch it, because I can pretty much sort out the plotline without hearing a minute of dialog. Although to be honest, it might be more surprising than I thought it was the last time I non-watched it on a flight.

Oh, and there’s mealtime. Anyone who doesn’t love a mini Salisbury steak with scorching hot mashed potatoes or a pasta chicken dish with bubbling cheese — because after a brick oven in say, Naples or Sorrento, the best cheese is the cheese melted in a United microwave 30,000 feet over Nebraska — has clearly lost touch with earthly pleasures. (And by the way, who are the poseurs who brought toro scallion rolls and wakame salad?  What? And miss out on the Biscoff for dessert?) Enjoying the meal is part of the triumph and magic of flight and more importantly, it’s a belief in the common good — the humble submission to the group experience as we soar together through space. Because when it comes to flying, aren’t we really all it in together?