Flying to Ireland from Kansas City
So I’m back in Kansas City a couple of days, enough to know again that the days have names. And all things being equal I much preferred flying to America than flying to Ireland.
It was only days after the British airliner plot was unveiled that I flew from Kansas City to Ireland via Chicago, and KCI was still on the news with the nonsense that was CNN’s Target: USA. What was KCI like? Utterly unremarkable. No delays, no nothing. In other words, newsworthy.
Once upon a time I was flying to Hong Kong from London, and people asked me who I was flying with. When I would say British Airways, I would be told, oh you’ll enjoy that, they’ll take good care of you.
You’re in a thin metal cylinder in the sky for thirteen hours, with hundreds of other people and their smells, where the only people with adequate leg-room are the ones bawling crying because their parents don’t love them. There really is a limit to what a nice uniform and a smile can do. At five hundred miles per hour even a second cup of tea only goes so far.
Living on the edge of dehydration and rehydration I hadn’t been to the toilet for thirteen years, so I was smug in the knowledge that I could stay happily cramped in my seat for the entire flight. Alas, I had an aisle seat and the person beside me needed to go more frequently than once every decade. I say beside me - that’s according to his ticket. In reality he spilled over the flimsy arm-rest into my lap. Please ensure your arm rests are down. Why? You’d need Hadrian’s Wall to stop the blob encroaching.
Anyway we all know that being cramped together in metal cannisters is unnatural so I’ve never understood why people enjoy Aer Lingus over any other flavour of flying cannister. The masochist in me enjoys being scolded by tall women with Irish accents dressed up like Easons bags, but that aside, flying is flying; the colours on the outside make little difference to my enjoyment inside.
But on this trip comparing like with like, Aer Lingus with Aer Lingus, the difference in the entertainment, based on which direction over the Atlantic you were going, was marked. Flying to Ireland: Schmaltz. Lots of sickly sweet promotional films of an Ireland as if still in the 1950s - except for the vomit-inducing promo for the Ryder Cup. And one movie.
And flying from Ireland back to Chicago, the blue stained wool no longer pulled over anybody’s eyes, we got straighforward television programmes from Canada, Britain, and the US. And two movies. Unfortunately we couldn’t waste our time in peace watching these shows, because the tall Aer Lingus woman was constantly trying to flog us phone cards and duty free.
Being a masochist it made flying to America my preferred direction. Easons bag or not though, it did make RyanAir seem classy. I once thought my chances of ever saying that were as high as winning on a lotto ticket on a RyanAir flight.
See Also:
• 10 Things I Never Heard Before Moving to America
• A Kansas City Phone Call to Ireland
• Cherish The Delays
• Lying Low in the Fields of Athenry
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