Airline Reform Proposal

In the spirit of our newfound, albeit exaggerated political upheaval and reform, I want to suggest changes be made in area which has already seen much ado about various aspects: airline travel. Let it be known that I enjoy flying; I want nothing else than startling improvements made to enhance the traveling experience for any and all involved. It's for these reasons and for these reasons alone that I pine to, at some point in my life, see an option for "adults-only" flights, a luxurious, totally childless idealistic yet perfectly rational "first class." Who wouldn't want that? Obviously those with kids (although they might in theory want that), but I would presume everyone else included, from pilots to flight attendants to passengers, would enjoy the unburdening of mental anguish and alleviation that might result by purging the irritation children inherently tote along with them like carryon luggage.   

Especially in light of recent news with explosives on planes and attempted terrorist activity, we have to examine our protocol and try to retain control on what we can. We can't suppress terrorism on planes; it's never going to happen. Flying will never be foolproof and short of an Orwellian thought crime police task force apprehending every individual with an impure thought the possibility of someone sneaking explosive devices into a plane or a secure building remains strong. I can get down with that. It's the 21st century, folks; if you have trouble existing or holding fast to your sanity under the threat of imminent nuclear, chemically explosive, or fragmentary demise, well, good luck with the next 100 years. This happens and will continue to happen.  Let's take deep breath and move on. We can, on the other hand, control whether or not we have flights that contain a much different kind of terrorist, under five feet tall, not a shred of facial hair, squeaky voices, overalls, incoherent rambling - a child. If we already know we're going to have to deal with the terrifying potential reality that there might be someone on this plane whose only desire is to blow us and him into oblivion and then what they interpret as paradise, the very least we can do is make that flight as stress free as possible by providing an option for those who truly cannot stand raucous children belligerently antagonizing the entire flight crew and all the passengers. If I'm going to die by being blown to smithereens by some deluded death-cult goat-herding extremist who believes in an afterlife equally as farcical and unrealistic as every other once-marauding religion, I at least would enjoy doing so in the company of adults, peace and quiet, and as little insanity as possible. 

Kids and children need not be banned from flying; I won't go that far. But I would shamelessly love a flight that didn't feature the shrill scream or hollow wail of various slobbery-mouthed, teary-eyed, spaghetti-sauce-stained children jumping around on seats, throwing magazines and clothes, and in general making what is already for many people a tiresome, frightful journey in a inhumanely-cramped space that features body and brain camps and undue worrying all the more harrowing. 

Get them off the plane or sedate them, one or the other. I'm not opposed to loading them up with sedatives pre-flight either, but the likelihood of that occuring is far less than there actually being a simple and easy choice for adults to make wherein they can elect to fly comfortably, or as comfortably as possible in one of these fuselages, across the not-so-gentle skyways without the constant kick-in-the-back-of-the-head represented by baleful children. I recently read that  Ivana Trump was thrown off a plane for growing irate and causing a scene after becoming frustrated with children who were shrieking and pulling back on everyone's seats. In most cases I support any debasement of Ivana Trump; she should be thrown off as many things possible. Here, though, I empathize.

In a completely unrelated stream of conscious tangent, when I wrote the word "pre-flight" I instinctively thought of this:

Or for those of whom animation does the trick: