Planes are the last human transportation

I like travelling by plane, and I don’t mean this because of its speed, its reliability or for it being the culprit of commercial transportation engineering. No, the mean reason why I like to travel by plane is because it puts about two-hundred random people into a rather boring space where they can’t exit, have no control and cannot communicate with the outside for a few hours.

This is nice because it mostly takes away the possibility of thoughtless distraction. Instead one has to put a bit of effort on how to get effectively distracted, for example by planning ahead of time and downloading podcasts, bringing books or retreating to one’s thoughts. During flights its easy to identify which people are used to be bored (or at least know how to handle boredom) and the people who can’t stop unlocking and locking their phones, opening apps even though there’s no signal for them to update, or look around desperately for anything that will quench their thirst for dopamine. It feels as if the world slows down, and some people might either see their phone as a brick of plastic for the first time.

But perhaps the thing I like best about planes is the possibility to meet with people who you wouldn’t have met otherwise, people whose background and daily life is completely different to yours. A lot can be learnt from this kind of people and most of the times it turns to a very nice encounter or even friendship. Maybe it is the lack of easy distractions that make people more open to keep with a conversation or perhaps it is the fact of being unreachable by the outside world, but on aeroplanes conversations feel much more real.

I like having that type of connection, it is what we humans are set to do. Pay sincere attention to each other and not rush through conversations. Also I believe conversation flows better because you already have something in common with the other person: the destination. For me, this makes me perceive them not as strangers but as someone similar to me, hence making it more appealing for me to know about their reasons to be on the plane. When they share this with you, it feels as if someone is allowing to take a peek into their life, and if numbers are exchanged, this peek can materialize into a step into that alien life, which is always a sweet thing to do.¹

Maybe I’m just romanticising this type of encounters and people are only desperate to escape the boredom so they just engage in conversation and think nothing of it. But based in my experience (and because I get to decide in which I believe) I’ll still be convinced it is the former.

PS. I reckon that trains, buses, ferries, etc. where like this once in the past, but after the availability of wireless internet this has been lost. It is also a matter of time before it is the case also for planes.