Planes Are Not the New Bus!

The dangers of encroaching airport informality

Like many other St Andrews students, I have been known to board a plane. During a typical airport visit, I rigidly stand next to my gate, petrified that the flight has somehow already landed and left without me. To distract myself, I then look around at my fellow jet-setters and am met with a familiar sight: people lying around in comfy clothes, headphones firmly attached to their heads, playing games on their phones. Yet, during my last airport visit, this sight truly made me wonder if we’ve all just gotten too used to air travel, as if one day the Boeing became boring for us all. If a plane no longer holds prestige and excitement, then it slowly falls into the category of bus — a form of transport that is highly utilised and taken for granted. I implore us to stop neglecting the distinguished jet and start seeing it in its true form: a humungous metal cylinder that cruises at a minimum of 850 kilometres per hour. 

It seems to me that no one, aside from children under the age of eight, gets excited for planes anymore. Even then, a child’s passion immediately dissipates the second they experience any semblance of ear pain or air sickness. Little do they know that this pain is caused by man’s conquest of the principles of flight. While the child weeps tears of discomfort, the Wright Brothers weep tears of joy. Everyone else on the plane is attempting to ignore these deafening wails while listening to music and flicking through the in-flight magazine (a delight on any flight, I must admit, even if no one in the history of mankind has ever bought something from those things). Where are the people staring out the window in awe of how fast we went from ground to troposphere? Why are we engaging in bus activity and doing these mundane scrolls-on-phones and flip-throughs-of-magazines instead of taking advantage of the full joys of flight? Look out the window! Hell, I give you permission to clap when the plane takes off and lands! Anything to make the plane respected once more. 

There is one regard in which the plane knows how special it truly is: the infamous ‘airplane mode.’ The fact that this button exists is a reminder that the plane flies above bus status, literally and figuratively. No one has ever stepped onto a bus and wondered if they need to enable bus mode. Only the plane can incite this pontification in people! However, I am sensing that many don’t even press this discreet but decisive button, choosing instead to think about the one time they forgot to do it and the plane still landed safely. Enjoy the moment and click that button, because there are not a whole lot of contexts in which it can be pressed! The plane undermines itself, though, by sometimes offering Wi-Fi on a flight. What is the point of being all the way above the rest of the population if you still have to interact with them? Texting your loved ones that special “boarding now, love you!” loses its climactic feel if an hour later, you are sending them Instagram Reels. Let’s all agree to commit to the isolation of the plane. Buzz Aldrin had less communication with Ground Control during his 21 hours on the moon than you have available to you on your three-hour-long flight. 

I think we can all agree, moreover, that meal time(s) on any flight is a firm reminder of just how not-bus the plane should be. When the wheels of that divine cart rolling down the aisle are heard, it is as if the plane lights up with glee. Tray tables are down, people are waking up from naps, maybe even nudging the person next to them if they share that greedy gene. On buses, eating is regarded as a suspicious act — some say you can, some say you can’t, and some say some weird variation of the two. I have eaten on a bus before and I was judged; I have eaten on a plane and I was celebrated! 

I do not intend to pit two immensely valuable forms of transportation against each other. I have love for both. Buses will get their own article one day, I’m sure. I simply aim to illustrate that travelling on a plane should not be casual. It is objectively a big deal to board something that flies through the air and can land you across the world in a matter of hours. I know some of you are itching to bring up Airbus, but just because it humbles itself doesn’t mean we should. The next time you board a flight, turn on that flight mode, enjoy that airplane food, and make the most of the thrills of flying.

Illustration by Haalah Bint Hashim