AIRBORNE DISEASE: What Really Goes Viral at 35,000 Feet
We faced the dreaded Covid some years back. It’s time to put that behind us( literally and figuratively!). The real contagion in air travel is human behavior. And it’s been spreading, untreated, since Orville Wright landed that blasted thing in Kitty Hawk.
A Preamble
They say flying is the safest form of travel. But, that said, no Caveat Emptor came with it. They never said anything about the safest form of human interaction. The moment an airport boarding gate appears on the horizon, something deeply primordial awakens in otherwise civilised people. A perfectly reasonable auditor from Pune transforms into a Gladiator that Russel Crowe would find hard to mimic. A mild-mannered housewife from Hyderabad becomes a geopolitical strategist with aisle ambitions. And a startup founder from Bengaluru — who hasn’t actually built anything — begins treating every overhead bin like an IPO.
The Boarding Gate
You know the drill. The boarding gate is not a lounge; it’s a gladiator pit for the fashionably late narcissist. This guy walks in 10 minutes before closing, holding an overpriced Starbucks cup like a souvenir from Rashtrapati Bhavan, acting as if the aircraft is waiting for his astrological alignment. Meanwhile, the aisle occupancy squad has already formed: uncles who believe standing 2 cm from the boarding scanner makes them pilots.
Boarding passes clutched like lottery tickets. Eyes scanning for weakness. Predators in athleisure( airport look anyone?).
The Boarding Gate Theatre begins before the flight is even announced. Zone 3 is called. Zones 1 and 2 remain seated. Zones 4 through 9, plus twelve people who don’t understand boarding groups( or any language that the announcement takes place in), rush the gate like it’s a Black Friday sale at Croma. In America, this is called “gate lice.” In India, this is called every day, every time.
“The plane will not leave without you. Even if it wants to. It has your name on the manifest. It does not have a choice “. Sad but true!
Then arrives The Fashionably Late Passenger. Boarding has closed. The gate agent is already emotionally exhausted. And then — THEN — a man appears, rolling his luggage with the unhurried authority of someone who genuinely believes the world is on his schedule. He is usually in a Nehru jacket(And there is nothing Gandhian about him). He always has a wife six steps behind him. He is always slightly smug. In Dubai, this person arrives in linen. In London, tweed. In Lagos, he arrives on a phone call. The accent changes. The attitude never does.
On board, the Aisle Seat Occupier plants himself and immediately spreads out like a territorial nation-state. Both armrests( Arms and The Man?). One knee in the aisle. A Bluetooth speaker, technically on mute, radiating menace. The Middle Seat Human — always the most emotionally defeated creature on the aircraft — folds himself inward until he is physically 40% smaller than his original dimensions. And since these seats don’t have memory foam, it is unlikely that he will regain his original size(or composure) once he lands.
Somewhere in Row 14, The Recliner strikes. The seat back slams into your tray table with the violence of a small verdict. And you thought the jury was out! Your coffee is now on your laptop. It is now branded the Coffetaria. Doing a decaff lap. Your dal makhani is now a tie-dye experiment that curriculum designers at NIFT would be proud of. He does not look back. He has reclined. His journey is complete.
The real action starts at 35,000 feet. We don’t fly planes. We unleash personalities at 35,000 feet. That is really…the height!
The Class Divide
Meanwhile, in First Class, a man is handed warm nuts and a hot towel simultaneously. In Business, another man is having feelings about his lie-flat bed not being perfectly flat. The airline lied? He almost throws in the towel. In Premium Economy, someone is doing complex mathematics on whether 4 extra inches of legroom justifies the psychological anguish of knowing Economy is right behind them. In Economy — or as it has been lovingly rebranded: Cattle Class(by those who forget they too once mooed) — a family of five is rearranging the food chain. And everyone nose!
I don’t know if this has crossed your mind: Ever wonder why Economy flyers treat cabin baggage like it’s the last roti at a North Indian wedding?
The Air Hostess Pulveriser
There is a special circle in hell for the flyer who rings the call bell three times to ask, “Do you have tomato juice? No? Then what is your problem?” This is the same creature who will argue with the air hostess about the definition of ‘vegetarian’ using the Bhagavad Gita and a credit card swipe.
The Perennial Sleeper (Certified Corpse Class)
This guy boards with a neck pillow that looks like a medieval torture device. The meal cart rams his elbow. The baby screams. The plane lands. He refuses to acknowledge existence. You want to eat your 5-course meal (read: a paneer wrap and a mithai). But no. The Recliner Seat Terrorist in front of you has just executed a rapid recline ( Remember: The Future Happens Slowly, And Then All Of A Sudden). Your food tray is now hugging the seat behind you. Your crotch is now the dining table. Crotch crotch hotha hain!
And of course, there is The Know-It-All Traveller, who knows the cruising altitude, the exact model of aircraft (and its production year), why this route was changed last April( and why Govinda could dance on an Air Mauritius plane wing), and why the airline lost its competitive edge post-2019. He tells the air hostess. She smiles. This smile has a tensile strength that should be studied by materials scientists. She has heard everything. She has survived everything. She will continue smiling as she goes home and screams into a very understanding pillow. Kylie Minogue, are you listening?
And then…we land. Ah, the grand finale
The aircraft has barely kissed the runway and suddenly everyone is cured of inertia. Seatbelts? Purely decorative. The entire cabin springs up like toast. Overhead bins open with the urgency of a heist movie( yes you have seen that Korean movie I know!). Bags rain down. Elbows become conversational tools.
Phones emerge. Not casually. Religiously.
Because clearly, the global economy was paused mid-air, waiting for you to reconnect. Without your WhatsApp “Landed” message, civilisation teeters on the brink of collapse. And, needless to mention, both Android and Apple would shut shop. Apple’s new incoming CEO has his work cut out.
Airplane mode, by the way, wasn’t invented for aviation safety. It was invented to give humanity a few hours of forced silence. A digital detox disguised as regulation. The only time people reluctantly meet themselves… and hate the encounter. From Gate to Gait…watch humans devolve in real time.
And then comes the Gold Rush.
Not for exits. For toilets. A mass pilgrimage triggered by nothing but herd instinct and bladder paranoia.
The real Airborne Disease is this: we board as strangers united by destination, but we behave as if the cabin is a zero-sum game where your overhead bin space is my defeat, your on-time departure is a personal inconvenience, and your aisle is my sovereign territory. Every flight is a referendum on our collective EQ. We keep losing.
But we keep flying. And somehow, gloriously, inexplicably — we keep arriving. Bon Voyage!