<p>“I need to look for SamuraiLS and switch places esp. on red-eye flights where I thought I could catch some sleep even for a few minutes.”</p>
<p>Definitely!! Especially if she’s in first class and you’re in a center seat in the back, next to the shrieking lap baby. I’m sure she’d be glad to help, that angel.</p>
<p>Samurai, you need some grandchildren, and quick!</p>
<p>Recently flew Southwest and they had some brand new (1 mo old) 737 planes. Had a nice amount of room, good seats and overall a big improvement over older 737s.</p>
<p>Imagine this - excited that you no longer have to keep your phone in “airplane mode” you decide to call someone from the plane, but unfortunately this guy is in the seat next to you:</p>
<p>[Man</a> Joins Strangers’ Cell Phone Conversations in ‘Cell Phone Crashing at the Airport’](<a href=“Man Joins Strangers' Cell Phone Conversations in 'Cell Phone Crashing at the Airport'”>Man Joins Strangers' Cell Phone Conversations in 'Cell Phone Crashing at the Airport')</p>
<p>;)</p>
<p>BB, that’s excellent!</p>
<p>Ha ha, No grandchildren in foreseeable future. </p>
<p>Never flown first class. </p>
<p>My main annoyance flying isn’t the people. It is that if you have a carryon, it is sometimes impossible to find space to stash it overhead. Just getting it down the aisle without maiming someone seems a challenge. </p>
<p>The aisles seem more narrow than they used to be, which seems impossible. </p>
<p>Will probably offend, but back in the day when smoking was allowed, that was the worst for me. Could not breathe and it was an unpleasant experience in-flight. My eyes would water and I would cough, which probably annoyed everyone around me. </p>
<p>One other annoyance is the boarding of people in order of seat rows. It is illogical the way it is done. Loading frontwards to backwards is silly. You have all these people in line behind you, and it takes time to sit and then the person by the window shows up, and you have to get up. </p>
<p>Why not, load last rows first, in reverse order?</p>
<p>I agree on the boarding of people in seat rows front to back! At least board people in 1st class, then do rear to front for economy.</p>
<p>On cell phones, as long as I can have wi-fi, I’m happy.</p>
<p>On kids, I remember the days flying with a baby (I had a 24 hour series of flights once with a 10 month old) and I appreciate the things that can actually make me grateful for being older. And yes, they do make the flight go faster, if only thinking “that’s not me anymore!” But kids are also funny, and I never mind the ones that stand up in the seat in front of me and look back. They’re cute.</p>
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<p>I think that’s how AA does it, or at least they used to. 1st class and priority, then groups A through whatever, starting in the back.</p>
<p>Every flight I’ve been on recently uses a zone system, and if you are in a higher zone you can forget about having room in the overhead for your carry-on.</p>
<p>One of our kids was “very active”, and the flight to CO when we moved here was quite challenging. We did everything we could to keep him quiet. Yes, I even let him open and close the window shade repeatedly (with my fingers on the sill, it would not make slamming noise at the bottom). At one point a lady reclined ahead of us, and DH caught DS’s hand as it was about to pounce upon a grey beehive hairdo.</p>
<p>Fast forward 20 year. The kid that could never sit still turned into an amazing musician. Sometimes on a plane I smile and wonder if the loud kid is just a budding musician.</p>
<p>…and my S. who also was very difficult, way too busy…is a pretty good artist. The thing is that if the parents try to channel these energy forces into some activity that seem to calm them down, then it might develop into a great thing. Mine would be in toruble if he was not busy. I would just give him a pencil, peace of paper and put something in front and tell him to draw it. Then I would have few minutes break. We did the same with math. GrandS. seems to be the same. He is already amazing potter and loves to play couple instruments (he is only 12 y o). When he was a toddler and they visited us, he would break absolutely anything that was breakable in a house. Girls in our family seem to be on a much more quieter side.
None of the above will resolve an airplane issue, which might be a huge ear ache. If they happen to have ear infections, some of them can develop condition when they have an intolerable pain. My D. who is 24 y o still cannot fly without special ear plugs developed by NASA. They are very cheap and she has to buy them absolutely every time she is flying. She did not have a ear infection since she was 6 y o. the only time she was flying without discomfort was at 4 before she started having ear infections. The first time she was flying in pain (she was about 5 y o), she practically was screaming the whole 3 hours from Detroit to Mexico. I can imagine what people were thinking, but absolutely nothing was helping and I could not kick out my precious child out of the plane. Thank goodness nobody screamed at me for not doing anything, nobody could do anything at all and we knew that we will have to deal with the same situation going back home.</p>
<p>I have used those Ear Planes plugs for years, because of the pain I would have when the cabin pressure changed. </p>
<p>All parents should carry them in flight for their little ones - they work well.</p>
<p>Yes, it has been close to 20 years for my D. for Ear Planes plugs. She had tried to go without one time and it was horrific.<br>
Your advice, Samurai, could be a good solution for babies plane screams, except that they may just pull the plugs out, which 5 y o would not do for a fear of horrific pain.</p>
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<p>Boarding back to front does intuitively seem like it should be the most efficient way to load an airliner, but actual tests have shown that’s it’s actually one of the lousier ways.</p>
<p>I recall that about 6 -8 years ago Northwest Airlines (now part of Delta) abandoned its usual back-to-front practice in favor of letting everyone (within their own ticket grade) board at random. Their tests had showed that random boarding was actually significantly faster.</p>
<p>Now more formal research has been done comparing several boarding algorithms:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14717695[/url]”>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14717695</a></p>
<p>Excerpt:</p>
<p>"The pair tested five different scenarios: “block” boarding in groups of rows from back to front, one by one from back to front, the “Wilma method”, the Steffen method, and completely random boarding.</p>
<p>In all cases, parent-child pairs were permitted to board first - reflecting the fact that regardless of the efficiency of any boarding method, families will likely want to stay together.</p>
<p>The block approach fared worst, with the strict back-to-front approach not much better.</p>
<p>Interestingly, a completely random boarding - as practised by several low-cost airlines that have unallocated seating - fared much better, presumably because it randomly avoids space conflicts."</p>
<p>One of the problems airlines (and passengers) ran into when they boarded back of the plane first, is that people would put their carry-on suitcases in the overhead bins at the front of the plane to avoid lugging them down the whole plane and back again when leaving. Not everyone did it, but enough did it that the more frequent fliers up front had significantly less overhead bin space, while there were empty bins in the back. A steward’s nightmare.</p>
<p>^ On a flight I was on recently, the flight attendant was actually policing this, and when people tried to do it she made them take their bags down and carry them back to where their seat was.</p>
<p>Airlines are now selling the privilege of boarding earlier, so I think they care less about efficiency and more about making those fees.</p>