14 Things That Are Almost Guaranteed To Happen On A Long Haul Flight!

This list may, or may not, be entirely based on experience from my recent flights to and from the US…I will neither confirm nor deny! 🙂

1. The plane hits turbulence just when you are on the loo and you temporarily convince yourself that you are going to need rescuing with your knickers around your ankles!

2. You fall asleep just after the drinks trolley passes and the air stewardess has gone to get you a cup of tea, meaning she has to awkwardly wake you to ask if you still want the tea that you asked for .

3. You spill water down your own cleavage, which results in the awkward “do I dry it up and risk flashing the entire row, or do I just shimmy a little until it dries?”

4. Or worse, you spill water over a sleeping stranger…..”please please let it dry before they wake up!”

5. There will be part of the plane lunch that you simply cannot identify….is it coleslaw? is it scrambled egg? is it something else? I will never know, I’m not touching it!

6. You need to loo just as the person in the aisle seat has fallen asleep and therefore have to perform cirque du soleil-esque gymnastics to clamber out without waking your drooling co-traveller!

7. On your journey from your seat to the loo and back you will witness at least 15 of the most uncomfortable looking sleeping positions ever imagined!

8. A small child will cry, constantly. No matter how much you love children, there must be a special place in hell for that sound!

9. You spend at least half the flight working out if you should be awake or asleep to avoid jet lag. When you finally do work it out, your body will refuse to sleep when you say it should. Instead, you will arrive exhausted and honestly not have a clue when you last slept, when you should sleep or have the faintest idea what time it is!

10. You will have a glass of wine with lunch – well, there’s nothing else to do, and it’s free. Only then will you realise that it is 6.45am where you are going and you have started drinking…..ah well, it’s happy hour somewhere!

11. You will get half-way through a movie and realise you don’t have the slightest clue what is going on. The people walking past, people getting out to pee, duty free carts passing, dinner being served etc has basically meant you have been distracted since the beginning and haven’t watched more than a minute without getting distracted!

12. You find out if you make friends with the air stewardess, she will bring you cups of tea when everyone else is asleep. This, in turn, makes you a nicer person (or at least makes me a nicer person!), ergo, a nicer passenger – it all makes sense!

13. You get served a meal that you quite literally have no idea what part of the day it is representing. I had breakfast, I’ve had lunch (with wine – oops!), now this should be dinner I guess, but it’s only 11am where we are going….well, I guess I’m just gonna make it a new rule that calories don’t count if they are consumed off the ground….Yeah, that works! (Pass the chocolate!)

14. The person in front takes so many selfies throughout the flight that you view it as a challenge to see how many you can slightly photo bomb….someone on this planet has a phone with about 100 plan selfies with various bits of me in…my right elbow, my forehead, my eyes (crossed!) and my left foot are just some of the contributions I made to their photo stream!

🙂

You can read about my trip to the states in a few posts on my blog.
Part 1 – New Haven, Connecticut
Part 2 – Stowe, Vermont
Part 3 – Boston, Massachusetts