Front Porch: Flying the friendlier skies

Sometimes a cookie isn’t a cookie, it’s a quinoa crisp.

And the pretzels? Well, they’re “bioengineered,” at least if you fly United Airlines. Which we do. A lot.

Since our only grandchildren live across the country in Ohio, we’ve racked up our frequent flier miles these past three years. It’s no secret that air travel no longer resembles what it once was, but if you do some research before you go and familiarize yourself with the rules of the air, you can make the friendly skies friendlier. Here are some tips.

No. 1: If you fly more than once a year, TSA Precheck is your best friend. For $85 and some paperwork, you won’t have to remove your shoes, coat, or belt. Additionally, you don’t need to remove your liquids or snacks from your bags and the lines are much shorter at every airport we’ve been to (nine at last count). Plus, it’s good for five years!

That doesn’t mean you won’t be selected for additional screening. Just ask my husband, Random Check. Last month, he got picked for random screening at each stage of our trip, so I temporarily renamed him.

Unlike me, Random Check, aka Derek, is a plane-sleeper. He usually nods off just after takeoff and prefers the window seat, so he can rest his head against the window. On the off chance that I doze off, I prefer to rest my head on Derek. This means I get stuck in the middle seat.

This brings me to tip No. 2: The passenger in the middle seat owns both armrests. This is our only compensation for flying shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers. If you’re an aisle-seater, don’t even think about placing your elbow on mine.

It’s not lost on me that I’m the introverted half of a couple, yet the one compelled to make small talk with a seatmate. So, tip No. 3: If your Serbian seatmate, who now lives in Boise by way of Denmark, wants to lean across you and snap a photo of a really long empty Ohio runway, you let her. It’s one picture (or five) and your husband has the window seat.

Tip No. 4: Reclining your seat. Honestly, those 2 inches don’t make much difference to my 5-foot-8 frame, but for my 6-2 husband with osteoarthritis, that little bit of space can mean a lot. He rarely reclines, but when he does we check to make sure the person behind him is small enough to not be too inconvenienced.

If you haven’t flown in a while, you might be unaware of the continually narrowing times for connecting flights. Usually, we have between 20 and 45 minutes to make it to the next gate.

Tip No. 5: Jumping out of your seat into the aisle the minute your flight lands will not get you off the airplane any quicker. Remember in kindergarten when you learned to line up? That’s exactly what you do as you wait to deplane–one row at a time from the front row to the back row. It’s not complicated, unless you make it so – like the woman seated near the back when we landed in Spokane. She attempted to vault over 25 rows of folks patiently waiting their turn. She may have left the plane a minute or two earlier, but it looked like a couple of travelers bodychecked her with their carry-ons. Ouch!

Speaking of ouch, my last suggestion is simple but important.

Tip No. 6: Obey the rules. Listen to the flight attendants’ instructions and follow them. Last week my friend, Ryan Oelrich, was on a flight and the woman seated in front of him had difficulty comprehending carry-on placement.

He live-posted his experience on Facebook.

“I’m now attempting to calmly explain to the nervous woman seated in front of me that the area under her seat is mine and the area under the seat in front of her is where she needs to move her oversized bag,” he wrote. “She informs me as if I’m 5 years old that this doesn’t make sense and I’m wrong. After all, if this were true where would the people in the front rows put their bags?”

For the record, people seated in the front row place their bags in the overhead bins.

Ryan enlisted the help of a flight attendant who asked the passenger to place her bag under the seat in front of her.

The result?

“The woman speaks louder attempting to enlighten all passengers around her to what she sees as her superior baggage storage method,” Ryan wrote. “Other passengers eye her nervously but entirely ignore her. Her baggage rebellion fails.”

After much effort and some swearing, she wrested her bag from beneath her seat and placed it where it was supposed to be.

Ryan tried to place his bag in front of him, only to find the woman had tucked her feet under her seat, blocking it.

Sounds like she needed the reminder I frequently gave my toddlers, “The happy way is to obey!”

This is true of most things in life, including following the rules of air travel.

As for those quinoa crisps? I tried pawning them off on my grandsons as chocolate cookies. They weren’t fooled either.

Cindy Hval can be reached at dchval@juno.com. Hval is the author of “War Bonds: Love Stories from the Greatest Generation” (Casemate Publishers, 2015) available at Auntie’s Bookstore and bookstores nationwide.