Have a Safe Flight

Sometimes it's better not to say anything to someone at all. For example, I don’t understand why people are compelled to say “have a safe flight” to me just before I’m about to fly somewhere. What kind of pressure is THAT to give to someone who is about to get on a plane with a couple of hundred other passengers? Really, unless you’re the pilot, what else can YOU do to control the overall safety of a flight?  When someone tells me to “have a safe flight” I feel that I have just been surreptitiously given ownership of the flight's total safety over the next 3000 miles for a group of stinky sandwich eating, drooling, loud mouth passengers.  Sometimes I think the person might be trying to send a covert message to me about a premonition they had about the flight but they really don't want to be the one to tell me about it.

I doubt we'll ever hear a pilot say during a pre-flight announcement: “Uhhhhhh ladies and gentlemen thank you for flying with us today and uuuhhhhhhhhhhhh if anyone has any uhhhhhhhhh suggestions on how to make our flight safer, don’t uhhhhhhhhhhhh hesitate to notify one of our uhhhhhhhhhhh wonderful in flight service attendants. Because uhhhhhhh to be quite frank people, we’re uhhhhh just plumb out of ideas up here! HA!”    

I think the next time I get on an airplane I’m going to put my carry-on bag in the overhead and then proceed to make a scene by exclaiming out loud “Please, if everybody would look up for just a minute; As you can see, I put my bag in the overhead compartment. It fits securely behind this door with a nice latch in the middle of it. I think if you all do this with your bags it will make us much, much safer…Is everyone with me on this one?

So the next time you feel compelled to express such a wish on one of your friends maybe give them something they have a running chance to control. Something like: “Have a reclining seat!” or “have an unoccupied lavatory”.

Have a nice day! ;)