Yep, air travel still sucks. But I’m back in the Milwaukee area for a week, and the beer’s good.
I have to say, though: airline language is shit.
First off, I have difficulty trusting anyone who says “illuminated” when they could just as well say “lit”. What, am I supposed to believe that the fasten-seatbelt sign is a disciple of Adam Weishaput? You don’t need to use big words to impress me — the fact that you’re flying a plane (sorry, “aircraft”) will do.
You see this all the time when people get interviewed by TV news crews. Usually, it’s some poor cop who tries desperately to fit as many syllables into “her boyfriend freaked out and blew her head off; we caught him” as possible. No, it doesn’t make you sound smart — it makes you sound pretentious. Stop it.
Second: passive voice. What the fuck is going on here? Is passive-aggressive language more contagious than Ebola?
Try, for a minute, to imagine a gate agent saying “Please board the plane if you’re seated in rows twenty-three to thirty.” It doesn’t happen. (Not the least because airline people never say “plane” — too prosaic.) See, asking people to get on the damn plane is too direct. Someone might be offended!
Instead, you might hear a gate agent observe “We are requesting that passengers seated in rows twenty-three to thirty to board the aircraft.” Well, you might, if gate agents had the balls to make direct observations about the state of the world. No, that’s too concrete, too confrontational. Gate agents can make mistakes that way — what if they’re actually asking passengers seated in rows twenty-two to thirty to board the aircraft? Then someone would be wrong, and that’s just too horrifying to risk.
So you don’t get asked to board the plane if you’re seated in rows twenty-three to thirty. You don’t even get told that the gate agent (or airline) is requesting that passengers seated in rows twenty-three to thirty board the aircraft. Instead, the poor gate agent tells you: “We would like to request that passengers seated in rows twenty-three to thirty please board the aircraft.” Nobody’s actually made that request, yet, but they’d sure like to. If that’s all right with everyone, of course.
Smile, it gets worse. Once you get on the plane (rather, once you board the aircraft), the lead flight attendant tells you how to survive a crash — I mean, gives you the safety briefing. This decisive, highly-trained professional tells you that “it is Air Canada policy that all passengers keep their seatbelts fastened at all times while seated.”
So what?
Picture this: Rebel that I am, I unbuckle my seatbelt and remain seated. A flight attendant walks over, notices the unbuckled seatbelt, and scolds me: “Excuse me, sir, but you’re in contravention of Air Canada seatbelt policy.”
Unfazed, I retort: “I guess I am. What are you going to do about it?”
Summoning up all his courage, the guy who’s supposed to get me out of a plane on fire says: “Well, sir, if you do not immediately buckle your seatbelt I will be forced to remind you that you are in contravention of Air Canada policy.”
How do you argue with something like that?
