My seat mate is cool, I’ll give you that. A mother traveling on a fun trip with her young daughter. They’re both giggly, and despite EVERYTHING, I’ve enjoyed talking with momma bear.
THE EVERYTHING
It’s spring break, the plane is packed, and I have zero elite status on zero airlines because I haven’t flown in a couple of years, which seems very wierd. And so, I’m in the worst mother fucking seat on this mother fucking plane. The only thing lacking is some mother fucking snakes. “Hey mother fucking snakes, what’s in your mother fucking wallet?” Sorry, sometimes I don’t know where this shits gonna go. On the other hand, you try writing a rant about a bad airplane seat without dropping a Samuel L Jackson reference.
It’s an MD90, which is a pimped out DC9. Can you imagine if Douglas Aircraft was still around? They really designed planes that last. This airframe design is what, 50 years old? It’s a better passenger experience than a 737 or A320, but the fleet is aging and they’re not building any more. Boeing acquired McDonnell Douglas and so owns the design. It marketed it as the 717, which was clever, and although I flew on a couple they never sold many; I believe it was a range problem. Airlines all wanted either the puddle jumper jets or the 737’s. The 717 was in no man’s land. At any rate, give it another 10 or 15 years and the airframe will be extinct in mainline service.
Despite all that, this seat sucks. The engines, mounted to the rear of the fuselage, obstruct where a window could be. So there is no window. Actually there could be more galley space or some storage behind the seat. Fuck you bean counters. Back in the day this would have been a Northwest flight. Likely, they’d have done the same damned thing. Another nice thing Delta did is use CRJs for its regional carriers. United regionals use Embraers. CRJs, also known as “Cram Jets”, suck. This is why I hardly ever fly Delta anymore. That and Laguardia. Don’t argue with me, I have close to 800,000 flight miles. I hope someone says that at my funeral. “He was so close to the 1,000,000 club.”
Oh, sweet, some idiot is holding his baby’s ass against my shoulder. I wanna punch him. (The father, not the baby of course. I mean who goes around punching babies.) Still, there’d be a life lesson for that baby.
Did I mention there’s no window? Oh yeah we covered that. But I’m pretty sure we didn’t get into the fact that in this row the seats don’t recline.
The seats don’t recline.
Which maybe is good because with all the ass I’m getting up against my shoulder, if I reclined, it would likely be in my face. Now while I’m not one for ass in the face, I do concede, that if you are into that sort of thing you might find this seat more amenable than I do.
So, while on the surface, being on the aisle, with no window and no recline would seem to be better than being in the center with no window and no recline, it is more than offset by the lavatory thats directly across from me. Hence all the ass, crotch, toddler shoes, elbows, stomachs and bellowing foghorns in my face.
I suppose it could be worse. There could be snakes.
© Glenn R Keller 2023, All Rights Reserved
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