The secret to surviving a long-haul flight in economy

Want to know the secret to not losing your mind on a long-haul flight squished into a tiny seat? Try this tip, Frances Whiting says.

It’s not the destination, it’s the journey, Ralph Waldo Emerson once said.

Similarly, T.S. Elliot opined, it’s the journey, not the destination that matters, and what we can learn from these learned men is that clearly neither of them ever took a long-haul flight.

Because as someone who just sat through a 10-hour one (I can’t speak for the people in first class, because I don’t know any and they hide them behind those little blue curtains), let me tell you down in economy, it’s all about the destination.

It is all and only about the destination and gritting your teeth through the journey bit, in between hating the person in front of you who has pushed their seat back, leaving you impaled by your own tray table.

Keep dreaming of the destination.

Or pushing your body against the back of your seat in ever increasing passive aggressive increments, to let the person behind you, who insists on poking and prodding at it, know that you mean business.

Or praying that the parent coming down the aisle towards you with a baby in their arms is not going to sit anywhere near you.

Unless, of course, that baby is Genevieve, an eight-month-old butterball of delight who I sat next to on my flight and who smiled, laughed, clapped and giggled her entire way through it.

“Your daughter is amazing,” I said to her mother at about the halfway mark, “I’ve never seen a baby behave so well on a plane.”

Genevieve’s mother thanked me, explained she was a first-time mother and asked if my own children had not travelled quite so well as babies.

I looked over at my now grown-up son and was transported back to his non-stop wail between Sydney and Vancouver, a sound a fellow passenger likened to an early air raid warning during World War II. I then looked to my teenage daughter, remembered the long flight we took while she was teething, and wondered if the people seated between rows 32C to 56D still spoke about her at dinner parties.

Push back your seat in economy? You’re going to get a passive aggressive response.

“Not really,” I answered Genevieve’s mother.

Genevieve continued her general merriment for the rest of the flight, and do you know what her parents did while she was chirruping away?

They READ BOOKS. They read books and do you know what I think? I think Genevieve’s parents should have their own book on parenting. And possibly a Netflix series. Because I don’t know what they did or didn’t do to produce such a happy baby, but I do know that for Genevieve, it really was all about the journey.

That child was delighted with everyone and everything; the people who smiled at her, the little bits of food her parents gave her, the lights on the plane, a bit of an old chip packet.

She spent the whole trip looking around in wide-eyed wonder, and she filled me with wonder too.

Not so much because a baby could be so well behaved on a plane, but because she reminded me of what life could be like when you’re not weighed down by it. When you’re not jaded. Tired. Fed up. Impatient. Ungrateful.

So, thank you, bright, tiny Genevieve.

May whatever is fuelling your joyous pilot light never go out, and may you hold on to your wonder for the rest of your life’s journey, whatever your destination.

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Instagram: @frankywhiting

Originally published as The secret to surviving a long-haul flight in economy