Flying me crazy

Domestic flight. It sounds so cosy, doesn’t it, as though they might bring you a pair of slippers and a cup of cocoa? But I tell you I have yet to get off a plane after the two or three hours it takes to fly from Harbin to Shanghai (or back again) without feeling the need to do some serious harm to myself or others. The most patient of saints would find the experience ‘trying’, as Flora Poste (ooh, a literary reference!) would say.

I can only assume that Chinese airlines issue their passengers with a different set of ‘Do’s and Don’ts’ instructions from everyone else in the world. Here’s how it might read.

Arrival and Check-in

1. On first arriving at the airport, we recommend the person giving you a lift parks at a crazy angle at the set-down point. This will make it as difficult as possible for other passengers to get out of their cars and get into the terminal ahead of you.

2. On entering the airport, your luggage may be scanned at the door. This is of course pointless as we are going to give it a full x-ray later but we do like to keep our staff occupied, so please do co-operate with this.

3. Next identify your correct check-in desk from the screens. This will not be easy due to the fact that we will not display your actual flight time, merely the check-in time, and also that several flight numbers, belonging to several different airlines, will in reality all correspond to the same plane.

4. Having found your desk, the trick is to remember that there is really no such thing as a check-in queue. I mean, what is a queue anyway? Something dreamt up by the British, so we heard. Anyway, you can pretty much approach the desk as and when you feel like it. Some passengers do choose to wait in line and this is their prerogative, but should they happen to leave more than a centimetre of space between them and the person in front, the non-queuers have the right to intercept. Do please bear this in mind if you are foolish enough to opt for the waiting strategy.

5. When you are eventually served, please do not expect the check-in staff to listen to your requests with regard to seating arrangements. This is NOT their job, unless of course you are interrupting the customer currently being served. If you are travelling with four generations of your extended family (as you obviously will be), it is best to get seats as far apart as possible. This will allow you maximum shouting potential during the course of the flight, as well as an excuse for wandering up and down whenever the fasten seatbelt signs are illuminated, both of which are crucial to your enjoyment of the flight.

6. Please note the minimum checked baggage requirement is one box of vegetables tied up with string, per person. Other foodstuffs such as bags of sausages may be carried as hand luggage. Please do NOT check in oversize suitcases. These should be retained as hand luggage and stored in the overhead lockers for the maximum inconvenience of others.

Security, passport control and boarding

1. Here in China we pride ourselves on having the fastest and most efficient airport security staff in the world. Please remember though that we are duty-bound to appear scary. Such behaviour as smiling at passport control staff, or saying ‘Ni hao’ or other such potentially subversive remarks, is therefore strictly prohibited, and will be viewed as evidence that you are Up To Something.

2. When passing through the security gates, please try to ensure you have NO metal anywhere on your person. We are quite unable to adjust our metal detectors to distinguish between a zip or a bra fastening and a howitzer. Seriously, those bra fastenings can be lethal in the wrong hands. Of course the fact that everyone therefore sets off the alarm gives us a good excuse to grope you. We guarantee that you will always be groped by someone of the opposite sex to avoid embarrassment boredom. If you wish us to feel your boobs a little more, or stick our hands a little further down your trousers, please ask. We aim to please our customers.

3. On arrival at the boarding gate, please remember the rule is at least two seats per person. You may sleep here if you wish. In fact we recommend it; you will have a long wait, as your flight will not board until a minimum of half an hour later than the time announced. As this is now standard practice, no explanation or apology will be offered. We may however call your flight two or three times before the real boarding time. We find this helps to keep our passengers alert and to weed out the weaker ones who didn’t really want to fly that much anyway.

4. About ten minutes before the plane is due to board, you may start to queue. Please see ‘Arrival and Check-in’ point 4, above, for rules governing queueing. Since you will now be less hampered by luggage, you are free to use your elbows to secure your place. If you choose to wait until the flight is actually boarding, you will of course be last onto the plane and have nowhere to store your hand luggage. Some customers enjoy this, however, at it provides greater potential for arguments with their fellow travellers, which is all part of the package.

5. At the gate, your boarding pass will be checked and scanned. Three seconds later it will be checked again by a teenage trainee who watched it being scanned, but needs to check again in case you defaced it or accidentally ran to a different gate in the interim. He or she will then point in the direction of the plane. We find this is necessary as some of our customers have not seen an aircraft before and become easily confused.

On the plane

1. Boarding an aircraft poses a challenge for the Chinese traveller, as it entails a certain amount of waiting for the person in front of you to finish stowing their luggage and sit down, with minimum pushing-past space available. Please accept our apologies while we do what we can to rectify this situation, but in the meantime we suggest you look for opportunities to shove people into the backs of seats, kick them, and of course shout at them wherever you can.

2. We assume that at least three members of your party will never have flown previously, so there will be time before we take off for them to take photographs of the cabin staff, the overhead lockers, the exits, etc. We positively encourage excited shouting at all times.

3. Please explain to your relatives that the safety instructions are there to be disregarded. In particular, the rules pertaining to the wearing of seatbelts are simply quite irrelevant to all Chinese passengers. Small children should be prompted to sit on the floor between seats during take-off, or in the aisle during the at-seat trolley service. Keeping as much luggage on your lap as possible will help to make things dangerous for everyone, so we recommend this.

4. Food will be served during your flight, in the form of the standard ‘Box of Strangeness’. This will consist of: a hot meal (either chicken or beef with either rice or noodles), some pickled stuff, some ‘mixed fruit’ (which, being a packet of peanuts, is neither fruit nor mixed), a sweet roll of some description, cough drops, and another random odd fruit or vegetable-based product. Hot towels (or ‘turbans’ as we prefer to call them) will be provided. However, please feel free to consume your own snacks, especially if they a) smell overpoweringly of fish or b) are swimming in soy sauce which may leak all over your tray table and run off into the lap of your neighbour. If this happens, it is essential that you avoid all verbal or eye contact with the neighbour in question, even when he or she summons the flight attendant to mop up your mess for you.

5. Very important. You have the right to recline your seat at any time except during take-off and landing. However, the person sitting in front of you does not. Should they disregard this rule please adopt the following procedure: first shout at them; then, if they do not immediately straighten up, grasp their headrest firmly with both hands and shake their seat vigorously. Repeat, with shouting, until they either relent or pretend to fall asleep.

Landing and disembarkation

1. The announcement that the plane is about to land is your cue to get up to use the lavatory. Correct practice is to wait until the person who has been waiting the longest is about to go in, and then push in front of them.

2. Upon touchdown, please leap immediately from your seat and start retrieving your luggage from the overhead compartments. Any suggestion that you should ‘remain in your seat until the aircraft has come to a complete standstill’ is clearly preposterous and is just said to test you. In fact, it’s a little game we like to play in order to train our cabin staff in the vital skill of shouting. On noticing half the passengers on their feet while the plane is still moving very fast along the runway, they will charge down the aisle yelling at you to sit down and close the lockers. Your job is to sit down while they are looking at you, and then immediately get up again the instant their back is turned. Several repetitions of this sequence will help to pass those boring minutes while you are waiting to reach the terminal building.

3. The retrieval of luggage from lockers and getting off the plane presents some of the same problems as boarding. Here, however, you have the advantage of being able to drop large items onto your fellow passengers’ heads or toes. If disembarking in a cold climate, this is also the moment to try to don your winter wardrobe while everyone else is doing the same in a very tight, warm and enclosed space.

4. On finding yourself at the Baggage Reclaim point inside the terminal, it is best to position yourself a maximum of six inches from the opening through which the cases will emerge. This will enable you to grab the first item you see which resembles yours without allowing anyone else to get a look at it. If you are unlucky enough not to be one of the dozen people occupying this same spot at any one time, you can stake your territory by using your trolley as an offensive weapon and simply push others, and their trolleys, aside. Please don’t forget to shout loudly to the other members of your party while doing this; it really does relieve tension.

5. Another member of staff will be positioned at the exit from the Baggage Reclaim hall to scan the bar code on your suitcase and that on your boarding pass, to check that they match and that you have therefore got the right luggage. We are however considering abandoning this last policy as it is just too damn sensible and we are unable to see any potential problems which might arise from it.

For a slightly preferable form of air travel, please see here.