Confessions of a frequent flier 🛫

Disclaimer: The mention of “travel” in this blog refers to all kinds of air travel except travel for business. Let’s be honest, people traveling for work are either tired of taking too many flights or don’t even register flying when they are constantly on calls and checking emails ><

There’s an airport experience when you’ve reached the airport four hours in advance and it’s a particularly slow day. So much so that you’re done with baggage check, security, and immigration check in literally 30 minutes. There’s still 2.5 hours before boarding begins and another 30 minutes before the economy class passengers are finally let into the plane. Three hours to kill by yourself. You can do some duty free shopping, have some coffee, browse a bookstore, people watch, or just walk around and imagine yourself as the main character in your self published novel. 

Then there’s the airport experience when you’ve reached 30 minutes later than you were supposed to, there had been a flight that got cancelled the day before and the number of passengers traveling via your airline are double the usual, the baggage check is painfully slow and your bag is 2 kilos overweight. It takes forever to repack on the floor and 90 minutes to finally move to the security line. And because you’re lucky, you get taken to a different floor for security check with 100 other people because this counter is getting too crowded. Your flight has started boarding and you’re still laying out all your electronics neatly in a tray. You’re almost certain that today would be the day you miss your flight for the first time ever. You rush to the gate and are among the last few people to be let into the plane. Phew.

Then there’s the airport experience during layovers when you’re traveling halfway across the globe. Some are 90 minutes long and some are 5 hours long. Neither of these are as anxiety inducing as catching the flight for the first leg since it’s the airline’s duty to make sure you catch your connecting flight. The 90 minute one might as well be a race to see who can spot, hop on, and disembark an air train the fastest. The 5 hour one could easily be an opportunity for a travel enthusiast to explore a new country’s duty free stores and coffee shops - unless you like to play safe and look for a Starbucks at every airport. Or sometimes even take a short trip and see the places nearest to the airport if getting a transit visa is not too much of a hassle. 

I’ve always wanted to write my pov on “airports.” I’ve read so many tumblr blogs and Instagram captions on this very topic, from 100s of different povs over the years. Every time I came across a reel of goodbyes at departures or the spots-runs-hugs videos taken at arrivals or even people documenting their 13 hour flight experience full with plane food review and skin care routines, I felt compelled to have some of these experiences so that I could understand the myriad of emotions each piece of writing or video surrounding them portrayed. And maybe even figure out if I’ll feel the same things or my experiences will be completely different.

I’m doing exactly that today. This was due like a year ago when I had the most intense airport goodbyes and torturous 19 hour flight experiences but I never got around to converting my notes to a blog. But today, I’m changing that. Partly because I don’t want to go through the downloaded playlist on LLMs and I’m sick of inflight entertainment on this 35 hour long journey, and partly because in the last two weeks, I’ve been through each of the “airport experiences” I described at the beginning and it’ll be a crime to not milk those for a blog post :))

I’ve taken 5 trips between Mumbai and New York in the last 18 months and have developed a love hate relationship with airports. I love taking a cab to one when I know I’m catching a flight that’ll take me home. I hate driving to one when I know I’m catching a flight that’ll take me away from home (although if there’s any place I’ll define being “close to home” would be New York but you get the point). I love leaving one when I don’t have to say any goodbyes and I cry a river each time I’m waving at my family from the departure gate. I love arriving at one when I know my brother is definitely standing outside to receive me and I hate arriving at one when I know I’ll have to figure out a way to take the air train and subway alone to reach my apartment or a hostel in today’s case. I’m grateful that my mom, dad, and brother track my flight constantly and know where I am even when I’m unaware since I’m probably sleeping in a very uncomfortable position but I also hate that I have to give them updates on a rectangular screen and not in person. 

In either directions, what I absolutely have no complaints about is the time in the air. Those 15-35 hours are when the outside world doesn’t exist (not for me at least.) No internet connection, no doom scrolling, no emails, no messages, no nothing. It’s just meals after meals, orange juice after orange juice, watery tea after watery tea, a nap followed by a movie followed by a few episodes of FRIENDS or Modern Family, and a little bit of people watching. I know no one and I’ll probably never come across any one again. Almost everyone’s destination is the same but their stories differ. Some might be in scenario A aka going home or a place they adore and some might be in scenario B aka going away from home - vacation, business, or studies. But for those hours in the air, everyone from a CEO to a 3 year old kid are living the same life. Everyone is pretending to not constantly look for the cabin crew with trays of food and nonchalantly opening the tray in from my of them. Everyone is demanding to listen to the food options again as if they haven’t been paying close attention to them since the three rows behind them are being served. Honestly, I myself had never thought I could be so excited about having a small loaf of bread with a tiny pack of butter or cream cheese with every meal. Hell, I could just have that and be happy till the next meal. (I say this while sipping on a glass of orange juice and anticipating the last meal on this 35 hour journey that is going to be served any minute now) (Calories consumed mid-air don’t count shhh)

I now have also come to agree with the group of people on social media that find small, crying children to be annoying on long haul flights. Believe me, I’ve never heard Taylor swift sing so loudly in my ears just so that I could fall asleep listening to that instead of whiles and screams. I’ve also noticed that ALL the airlines I have travelled with so far have a very extensive collection of Taylor Swift songs , even if that’s all they have under “pop” music. I also second the option that “Crazy Rich Asians” might be THE airplane movie (loveeee) but also, there comes a point where I just want to zone out and stare at the live flight tracker thingy on the screen. After about two flights, I can safely move to the side of the population that prefers an aisle seat over a window seat. Reading a complete book on one trip might be one of the best experiences imo. I get why people impulsively buy a book before boarding a long haul flight because delusion hits different 10000 ft above sea level. I’m almost convinced that there’s a guy waiting to surprise me at the JFK arrivals in 4 hours from now when I haven’t even had a remotely romantic interaction in like forever. I do sincerely yearn to have that experience once though. 

That’s another thing, being detached from reality, practically in another dimension somehow enables me to dream bigger. I realize new things I wanna do in my life, the kind of person I want to be, places I want to travel to and how I want to work hard to earn enough to be able to catch a flight to each of my bucket list countries. And these things somehow also seem possible. Maybe not now but definitely one day. I feel like if I can fly over all the European countries on my way to New York, I can possibly one day just catch a flight to these countries and live my dream. If I can whip up multiple 3000 word long blogs on a singular flight then maybe someday I can write the book I’ve wanted to write since I was 19. If I can overcome my fear of takeoffs and landings and can travel without having someone’s hand to squeeze during turbulence, then maybe I can overcome the fear of the idea of traveling the world alone. Let’s face it, according to 17 year old Jahnavi, we can travel to and explore the US all by ourselves but to go to Europe and the UK, we NEED a significant other, you know, for the complete experience. Truth be told, 23 year old Jahnavi hopes and prays that 17 year old Jahnavi’s wishes come true but 23 year old Jahnavi is also okay with the fact that she might have to start the exploration alone while always hoping for someone to join midway. 

You see, at 10000 ft above sea level, I become somewhat of a tortured poet/writer, a completely different person than I am on the ground. Down there, I’m practical and annoying and lazy enough to not even write a good enough 200 word tumblr post. The ground Jahnavi judges the mid-air Jahnavi so much for being all pretentious but the mid-air Jahnavi doesn’t give a damn. She knows she lives a short life so she lives it to her fullest. The ground Jahnavi has to deal with assignments and bills and cab fares so she’s entitled to have lost a little hope and be a bit grumpy. In an ideal world, the best of both these personalities would come together to make the perfect Jahnavi. But again, where’s the fun in that? This entire post doesn’t make a lot of sense and is not the most coherent but this is what you’re getting for now because my last in flight snack has been served and I have 50 minutes of Lion King to watch before the captain prepares to land in New York ✨

~ Vee 🗽

Do pray for this delusional, mid-air Jahnavi’s dreams if you’ve read the blog till the end. I promise to bring you a fridge magnet as a return gift 🤓