I can recall just two occasions when I successfully bridged the chasm between “sardine” and “first” class. The first upgrade, on a business trip to New York City, arrived courtesy of my employer. My second (and thus far last) taste of the high life occurred en route to Belize, when my husband surprised me with the upgrade on the occasion of our honeymoon. The stewardess served us champagne and filet mignon, but she could have stopped her pampering right after the “snack” course, excited as I was about receiving my very own bowl of complimentary hot nuts.
In coach, not even room temperature nuts are free anymore. So you can understand why plebeian passengers like me yearn for coach’s only luxury. In our eyes, the perks of the empty row are seemingly endless: the ability to stretch across three cushions (and the kidney-poking hardware of their corresponding restraints), the plethora of carry-on stashing space afforded by the undersides of three chairs and ample maneuverability for thrusting a knee into the back of each of their reclined occupants. Best of all is the rare, dual-access to the contentious window shade and the aisle, coveted gateway to bladder relief.
Not to brag, but I recently harpooned this white whale of the airline industry during a six-hour, cross-country flight from Philadelphia to San Francisco. The Airbus A321 will pack in a total of 185 passengers, but this particular flight contained just 120. So even though fortune had assigned me 31F, a window seat in a row lacking a middle seat occupant, I could not ignore the sweet siren song of desolate row 33.
Wait. Before you call me greedy, know this: The sadistic deities of plane seating roulette owed me this small comfort; When flying from San Francisco to Charlotte two weeks before, those jokesters had positioned me in 15F — right beside The Worst Seat-Mate Ever.
“I just want to warn you: I have sleep apnea and I snore something bad,” said the occupant of 15E by way of introduction.
I didn’t know how to respond to this, and so I simply laughed, nervously. He was a large man in his mid to late 40s, and I could see no reason to doubt his admission.
Over the roar of the twin engines, 15E proceeded to walk me through his childhood, adolescence and career as a custodian for military laptops. He spoke loudly but his voice was deep and served to muddle an already incoherent mumbling, the kind that suggested his tongue occupied too much of his mouth. Aside from some sage advice that I seek employment in Iraq, I had trouble understanding much of what 15E said. I had just managed to perfect my best glazed look of interest when he casually remarked that his wife occupied the middle seat just across the aisle.
“What, you guys just prefer the middle seats?” I asked, dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe such passengers actually existed. Sick.
No, they purchased their tickets last-minute and were unable to secure seats beside each other, 15E said.
How fortunate then, I observed, that a mother and her teenage son were also separated, she assigned to the aisle seat of our row and he to the aisle seat of 15E’s wife’s row.
“That’s my wife,” 15E said to the mother. “Would you mind if we swapped seats, and she sat over here beside me?”
Bu that particular arrangement was certainly not what I had in mind. I panicked.
“You’re gonna make yo’ woman move?!” I interjected, expertly masking my true intentions with some good-natured slang.
“Oh, she doesn’t mind,” 15E assured me.
15E’s wife collected her belongings and settled into the aisle seat of our row. I longingly watched as the thin, quiet-looking mother and son did the same across the aisle. Well, at least 15E could now bore his wife instead of me.
But instead of chatting with his “woman,” 15E began feasting on an enormous, multi-storied bacon cheeseburger, his elbow pumping enthusiastically into my ribcage with each oversized bite. As half of his girth already happened to spill over and under our shared armrest, I viewed this newest development as a calculated attempt to claim even more of my allocated real estate; he was surely expanding and would smother me before we crossed the California border.
I huddled against the window, closed my eyes and did my best to drown out 15E’s
masticating with my go-to, sleep-in-a-public-place iPod album selection, “Classic Guitar Masters: Six-String Serenades.” I was nearing sleep and the closing strains of “Meditation on Prelude No. 1 of Bach, for Violin or Cello and Piano,” when a ferocious, phlegm-filled snort erupted beside me. I opened my eyes. Sure enough, 15E had succumbed to a food-induced coma. With his head tilted back and his mouth as open as the desert we now flew over, he was treating the entire cabin to a symphony of snot-laced sniffles and honks punctuated by ragged gasps for air.
15E’s swan song of the flight involved a disappearing act; He suddenly leapt from his seat, vaulted over his wife and hustled into the adjacent lavatory. Minutes went by.
The line outside the bathroom grew. Several distressed beverage cart patrons took to pounding on the door. But 15E failed to emerge for an entire half hour. I made a mental note to seek out the facilities – should I require them — in the rear of the plane.
So if the roulette-wielding deities of plane seating reward passengers based on past seat karma, that blessedly empty row 33 was their long-overdue gift to me, I reasoned as my San Francisco-bound flight left the Philadelphia tarmac.
The stewardess stationed in the rear cabin must have detected the lusty glint in my eyes.
“You can switch seats, but you have to wait until we’re in the air,” she said.
It was the same instruction she had given a blond 20-something, a girl who claimed her assigned seat was occupied in a calculated attempt to snag my intended row.
Dejected, Blondie had retreated to her original seat. Our eyes met across the cabin, and I knew she had not given up. But she was positioned several rows ahead of me; She’d never match my speed.
Like the retort of a starting pistol, the plane’s P.A. system bonged and the “Fasten Seatbelt” icon above my head winked out.
“I’m going to grab that empty row behind us,” I informed 31D in a breathless, conspiratorial hush. He nodded in understanding and stepped out into the aisle but directly into my path.
“The other way!” I hissed, waving him up the aisle. Now he was blocking Blondie’s path.
As Blondie attempted to dance around 31D, I hopped back two rows, unabashedly claiming 33D, 33E and 33F as my own for the length of that cough-filled, fee-riddled, tornado of indigestion-inducing turbulence.
First I strapped myself into the middle seat and feigned sleep until I sensed Blondie’s steely gaze dissipate. Then I leaned over the window seat to adjust the shade and lowered the tray designated for the occupant of the aisle seat. When the beverage cart made its rounds, I set my drink on the tray and feasted on the chicken salad sandwich my mom had packed for me. Then I flopped across all three cushions and began snoring.
