Posts tagged flying

October 1
Manila -> Puerto Princesa

$41.52 USD
or 1712 PHP

Flying on Cebu Pacific

Cool people that you want to talk to don’t sit in “premium” seats like the exit row. The middle seat is the least desirable seat, but gives you access to two people instead of one.

I used to travel for business. I did over 150,000 miles by airplane in two years. One of the perks of flying so much is that you acquire “status” on airlines and often get access to “premium” seating. This doesn’t mean you get first class or business class seating, but usually means access to aisle, window and exit row seating. About 90% of the time I got the best seat on the plane that wasn’t first class (an aisle or window seat in the exit row).

Recently, I went from Austin, TX to Long Beach, CA on Southwest airlines. Southwest doesn’t have any assigned seating - it’s first-come-first-served. During the time that I was flying for business, I was rarely on a path that Southwest took (I flew mostly in the north and the east coast of the US), so I didn’t fly with them. This was a personal trip though and I ended up in a middle seat. I had the most interesting in-flight conversations of my life on that trip… talked to a girl who was in Austin because of some health problems her father had and she ended up giving me some interesting insight into relationships after we started talking about polyamory. The guy on my other side told me about how he was a high voltage electrician, had many children and was going to visit some of them. At some point he brought up “The first time I went to prison…” hahaha. Something about bringing guns back across the border from Mexico. Both had a good amount of alcohol to drink on the way there and we all had a great conversation together the whole way.

Other people who do the same boring shit you do sit in the same “premium” seats as you. You’ll talk to business travelers only and most of the time they don’t want to talk. I look back to that 10% of the time I flew in non-premium seating and realize that those were the times I had interesting conversations. You won’t sit next to any cute, young girls sitting in premium seats either.

The only exception to this rule I can think of is a guy I met in the exit row who had flown over two million miles by air and had Lifetime AAdvantage Platinum status (American Airlines). I always think about him when I think of the movie Up in the Air.

The extension on this rule is simple: it applies to everything, everywhere. If you stay in hostels instead of hotels, you’ll meet other socially active young people instead of 30-something, closed-off, family-minded, suburban-dwelling business people. If you work in a tech startup instead of a government office, same deal. Sometimes you must avoid comfort even when it is handed to you.