Angela Mollard: When is it okay to be selfish on an aeroplane?

A recent flight home from Bali made Angela Mollard reflect on her Sunday school education when she was asked to swap seats by a fellow passenger.

No one could ever confuse me with Mother Teresa but I do like to think of myself as a nice person. I let other motorists slip in front of me when they find themselves in the wrong lane, I wave through shoppers with one or two items at the supermarket checkout and I’d rather tell someone what they mean to me once too often than once in a blue moon.

But when I was asked to switch seats on a plane recently I was put in a conundrum.

It was an overnight flight from Bali and I had to appear looking well rested on live television a couple of hours after landing. I’d purposely booked an aisle seat in the middle row of four because, as friends pointed out, this is the ideal solution if you need to sleep because other passengers can access the bathroom via the alternate aisle.

Actor Kristen Wiig in a scene from 2011 film 'Bridesmaids'.

Of course, I could have booked a window seat but there’s the small matter of my own bladder. When I need to go, I need to go.

Anyway, we’re talking etiquette not ablutions here so back to seat selection.

The middle-aged woman sitting with her two daughters alongside me explained that she’d failed to preselect seats and so her son was now sitting a few rows back. Would I switch with him, she asked, so that the four of them could be together?

Of course, I said. “Er, I’m presuming he has an aisle seat?”

“No,” she said. He didn’t. He had a middle seat in a row of three.

Angela Mollard likes to think she’s a generous person, but everyone has their limits. Picture: Tim Hunter

I hesitated because in that moment every damn life lesson dating back to Sunday school flooded my brain. Love thy neighbour, even if they’ve been too careless to book an aeroplane seat. Treat others how you’d treat yourself, even if treating yourself means holding on to the excellent seat you had the foresight to book. Give and thou shalt receive, even if “giving” means all you’ll receive is a long night of annoyance and sleeplessness.

I’m ashamed to say it – mostly because my mother who raised me to be kind to a fault would be appalled – but I said no. Of course, I said I was terribly sorry and explained that I had to work the next day, but it still sounded mean-spirited. I had separated a mother from her child – I felt like a lion on the savannah ripping into a newborn meerkat. Certainly, my mum would have agreed to swap; my daughters, too, because with breathtaking hypocrisy I’ve raised them to be generous whenever possible.

Anyway, it got worse. A young woman sitting in the aisle seat behind me, overhearing our conversation, had a solution. “How about you and I swap seats so you have the aisle,” she explained. Then, smiling at the mother beside me, she added: “Then I’ll switch seats with your son.”

I’ve rarely felt so bad. Here I am, a Gen X, raised on neighbourliness and collegiality, being shown up by a young woman belonging to the “snowflake” generation. She’s supposed to be inflexible and self-serving. How dare she be so nice?

Supermodel Kate Moss who once got escorted off an international flight after calling a pilot a ‘basic bitch.’ Picture: Supplied

As we changed seats I wondered if air travel turns us into different people. How else to explain the personality transplants that take place at altitude and lead otherwise decent humans to put their feet on a fellow passenger’s seat, floss their teeth, do a full workout in the aisle, watch porn on their laptops, spread over both armrests, leave bodily secretions – snot/ear wax/spit – on the tray table and have sex in the toilet cubicle. Remember when model Kate Moss called a pilot a “basic bitch” after police were called to escort her off a flight from Turkey to London? Or Oasis singer Liam Gallagher being banned from Cathay Pacific for the rest of his life after getting into a heated argument with a
flight attendant?

Maybe Qantas CEO, Alana Joyce was right when he said we aren’t match fit for travel. Picture: Jeremy Piper.

Clearly the pandemic has meant we’re not match fit – as Qantas CEO Alan Joyce has pointed out – and the pre takeoff experience complete with long queues, cancellations and understocked terminal cafes will test anyone. But that’s nothing compared to working at our national carrier where executives have been asked to temporarily vacate their day job to work as baggage handlers. Imagine the ignominy if you drove one
of those little luggage carts into a plane?

Fortunately, that wasn’t my predicament. My dilemma was being seat shamed by a plane-load of passengers, plenty of whom were looking on in consternation. I’d intended anaesthetising myself with a glass of wine. Instead, I reached for my eye mask.

And that’s when a lanky teen, clearly old enough to shave, came sauntering down the aisle and took the seat in front of me. This “child” was 18 or 19, not the primary schooler his mother had led me to believe. When the drinks trolley came round he ordered a beer. Needless to say I had an excellent sleep and anyone who asks me to swap again, it’s an unequivocal no.