With the holiday season usually comes the flying out of the country season. Flying can be great (cough Xanax) but it can also be awful. Here is my advice for trying to get the most peaceful flight you can!

If you are forced to sit next to a stranger due to crowding/allocated seating etc and there is any possibility at all of moving to an empty space, TAKE IT IMMEDIATELY. ESPECIALLY if you are on the aisle seat, as the helpless person in the window/middle seat doesn’t want to have to struggle with figuring out how best to advise you to go the fuck away.

If you like your personal space and are flying with the option of choosing your seat before take-off, choose an aisle seat about 2-4 rows from the back of the plane. Unless the flight is completely full, you will have all three seats to yourself! The reason for this is that a flight usually gets auto-booked from the front of the plane to the back and many people travel in pairs, so the check-in staff are not going to put a couple in the middle and window seats right next to you unless they are the last two seats on the plane. Also, the online seating assignment always seems to recommend the front of the plane as being “better seats”, so nobody really wants a seat near the back anyway. There are too many people that are worried shitless about not getting off the plane immediately when it has finished landing.

Don’t talk to anyone unless they initiate conversation, and if you don’t want to talk, then politely and quickly nod whilst smiling gently, then put on an eye mask and go to sleep. Or pretend to. If you just don’t want interaction period, then wear headphones! It doesn’t matter if you don’t actually have any battery life on your device, just tuck the cord down your shirt or wherever and people will just assume that it leads to a device. Whatever you do, just don’t be that lady who jibber-jabbers on about all your stupid family members that you are going to visit because strangers’ great-nieces are the most boring things in the world to hear about. I do not give a flying fuck if she is about to graduate with a Bachelor of Commerce. She sounds even more boring than you, if that is even humanly possible.

In fact, save yourself all the hassle and fly by private jet. It’s just so much more convenient.

Love, Akika xoxoxoxooxoxox