Seat Assignment

We’re on the plane and I’m watching ‘Spiderman 3′. How cool is that? Sometimes you can catch a flight that has the personal TV thing on the seat in front of you. Then everyone can watch whatever they want. Very cool. Sometimes, they really do use technology for the good of everyone. Plus, I won’t have to rent Spidey 3. Or ‘Next’. Saw that one on the way out. Cool twist on the action movie. It has Nicholas Cage and is very cool. I probably wouldn’t have rented it, but it was great. One of the better ones I’ve seen lately. And funny, because I usually don’t really care for movies I see on planes. It is like I can’t quite get into it or something. Or because the sound quality sucks so bad that I usually miss a lot and have to concentrate to get what I do.

Riddle me this: they can manage this technology feat of independent on-demand TV and music on Air Canada, yet they can’t seem to find themselves a program that books seats properly. How is that? It is strange if you think about it, isn’t it? I mean, you just need someone with some logic and programming skills, and voila!–less headaches for the flight attendants. (And the passengers.)

See, the reason I mention this, is this: we booked our flights online and there is a drop down menu for if you are traveling with a child. (Which of course, we checked off.)

Little note: children cannot sit in emergency seat rows.

And despite us giving them the info they needed, they assigned us seats in the emergency exit row. So, naturally, a lot of shuffling then occurred. Why ask if we are traveling with children if they aren’t going to make the necessary accommodations as a result?

And the strange thing is that this sort of thing seems to happen frequently. Once I was seated separately from my three-year-old and so they had to do some shuffling. Another time or two we were placed (and moved) in the emergency exit row. On this flight, the lady across from us paid EXTRA to ensure that she and her family were all seated together. Which they weren’t. They were refunded their money, but I mean, is it because they are trying to accommodate everyone on where they want to sit on the plane? Like what is happening to the info that they gather? Is it like the recycling program that they used to have in Yellowknife? (They collected the sorted recycling then took it to the dump because it was too expensive to transport out to a recycling facility.)

When I am not in the emergency row, I always seem to be at the back (like as in the last two or three rows) which is annoying. (Maybe sometimes they take in the child factor and try and stick us at the back because of it.) I don’t know why it bugs me being way at the back. Someone said it is the safest. Is it? Really if the plane crashes, is there a ‘safest’ spot?

Once I was so far back in the plane, I couldn’t even recline my seat because of the wall behind me. (It was the ‘Air Miles Seat’, I think. And the lady beside me was reading the same Grisham book as me, but she didn’t think that was as weird and cool as I did. Maybe she checked her sense of humour or they confiscated it at security.) And then there was the time last month that by the time they got to the back of the plane where we were seated, they had run out of food. That was just friggin’ great. And it was suppertime. And we were hungry.

And grandma got to sit in the emergency aisle. And so did grandpa. And we were at the back starving.

Later…

Still watching Spiderman 3…

Sometimes life is just hard. (Or at least if you are Peter Parker and have an alien amplifying your aggression.)

But like Aunt May (Spidey’s aunt) says, sometimes you have to start by forgiving yourself.