I usually can get some good sleep on red-eye flights back home from the west coast but I realized it can be easily spoiled and all hopes of sleep destroyed by two self centered idiots (for lack of a better word). OK – Sleeping on the flight back is all part of my planning when I fly red eye flights but here’s what happened this time around.
Great seat – 12A – happy and comfortable. Few minutes into it, two women (good friends apparently) board the flight. One of them is supposed to be in the seat behind me and the other was supposed to sit far far away. They just ignored the seating and decided to sit together after a 5 minute fight to fit their definitely not carry-on size bags. It’s just a miracle that those bags actually fit in the overhead bins. Never mind the long delay they create behind them while they figure out their space issues and with 20 people just waiting to get to their seats.
When the actual seat owner walks up they don’t even bother to request or explain but basically say they are friends and want to sit together. Obviously the guy did not want to have a discussion at 11PM in the night and couldn’t complain much about trading his aisle seat for a window. Little did I know that this guy’s decision was going to ruin my night.
I have never seen people into their 40’s so excited about having a TV on their seats and never did I see some one complain that the channels were not working until the flights take off and reach a certain height. They were so excited they started complaining already and hitting the buttons on the TV – which incidentally was just behind my head. And to add to all of this they talk as if they are sitting in their living room. I bet at least 4 rows to the front and 4 rows to the back couldn’t get any sleep that night.
I decided to pop my noise cancellation headsets hoping that this could help. Guess Sony never planned for these headsets to work at such noisy places. They can cancel the flight noise but definitely not 2 loud women on the flight. 10 minutes into the flight I got some sleep because the nice soothing music I set cancelled the noise out. 15 minutes or so pass by and I wake up with some banging behind my head. Now they are excited about all the movie choices and how the choices just disappeared. Wait – my soothing music stopped as well. Guess the Delta in-flight entertainment gave up and crashed. So, no music – just noise and more banging behind my head trying to figure out the channels.
Thanks to the nice air hostess who came by and explained the system was down but now start the drinking and talking…. this just wouldn’t stop for the next 2 hours!!! I wish there was a flight announcement along with the security announcement that people should not talk on the flight as per federal law….
And to add to my fate this flight did not have regular buttons to control the overhead lights on the seats. They were on the touch screen and they apparently crashed on a few seats and these two people decided they needed the lights turned off and since the entertainment system crashed they couldn’t turn them off. You try once, you try twice but you can’t just be hitting the screen 100 times. Once again thanks to the nice crew who decided to walk up with some masking tape and some small dark strip of paper to cover the lights.
I finally caught some sleep in the last 40 minutes of the flight but woke up 10 minutes before landing some one yelling yayyy… we are in Hotlanta. Seriously – these people needed to shut their mouth and get some sleep.
Not that this incident is going to make me stop flying red-eye again but I am definitely going to watch out for lousy neighbors.
NRI Vibes 