The Snob in 34B

Every day more than 400,000 travelers depart, arrive, or connect through New York area airports—and I allow myself to feel superior to just about all of them.

Photo by Phill Brown on Unsplash

No consumer experience has degraded more in my lifetime than commercial air travel. Airlines have fully given up on offering even a whiff of glamour, a fleeting moment of luxury, at least they have in coach…err…Basic Economy. Most American airlines, from Delta on down, have abandoned the illusion that moving through the air at 37,000 feet is in any way remarkable and that every passenger is somehow special.

But I haven’t.

I’m still impressed and a little astonished that I can take off from the sunny shores of Queens, pop open my Macbook, pay an unreasonable sum for GoGo Wifi, work for four hours, and somehow wind up at the In-N-Out Burger on Sepulveda. Kind of amazing! At least when you stop complaining and just accept it for what it is: transporting you and your laptop from one end of this vast and varied country in the time it takes to watch The Brutalist with trailers and wait time at the concession stand.

But astonishment isn’t the best of all the feelings generated by air travel. That would be the smugness I invariably feel. Nothing compares to the deliciously satisfying feeling of superiority I feel over my fellow Economy classmates that begins the moment I arrive at the terminal. Actually, no. If I take the A train to the AirTrain to the terminal—at a total cost of $11.50 which funds the MTA and contributes zero carbon emissions— that warm smug feeling starts to blossom a full hour sooner. (And yes, you’re welcome.)

No other group activity puts us in our place more visibly than airline travel, where everything is hierarchical: There are now six different levels of service on most airlines and mine is invariably the one which includes a non-reclining seat that also shares a thin plastic wall with the bathroom. There are hierarchies of security clearance: Clear, TSA Pre-check, Global Access, etc. and a half dozen methods of transportation from helicopter to limo service to Uber and Lyft and Curb to gypsy cab to the Howard Beach bound A train.

At the airport itself, the opportunities to flex are endless. A bright purple neck pillow for your three hour flight? Us Weekly, really? And hey, why not treat yourself to a $15 bag of Chex Mix? And as tempting as it is to comment on the attire of my fellow travelers, let’s just say, that’s a little beneath me, don’t you think? I’ll just say that unless your given name is Tom Brady and you’re not Danny, the digital marketing director from Braintree, you are wearing another man’s work uniform on today’s flight to Atlanta. But thanks Danny, I feel better already.

Somehow everything fuels my feelings of superority, even being at the bottom of the service options, because that’s the kind of lazy, liberal consumer critic I am. I pity people stupid enough to splurge on Premium Economy. Rubes. I don’t pay for nonsense like that unless it’s the kind of nonsense I value and which, in having the good sense to value, makes me feel that much more superior. Everything else sucks.

There are so many ways to advertise your consumer values during air travel, nowhere more than the flight itself. It’s an hours-long chance to show the world just who you are. Such is the level of my self-awareness that I always bring a book that’s has a little more cred and cache than than the one I’m actually reading. I don’t dare show up with any of the contemporary novels by the Rachels or the Emmas or something that’s going to end up on Netflix next year. I prefer something old and undeniable that kids don’t get taught anymore or a dense and challenging non-fiction book about something impressively boring or a current work of literary fiction too weird for Sarah Jessica Parker. Crack open the Saul Bellow while the dishy Emma Cline book lurks in the carry-on. You can’t risk being seen reading the same book as another passenger. I also bring no fewer than three New Yorkers, and a brand of French chocolate you can’t buy in an airport that isn’t Charles De Gaulle.

I make a point of not watching any of the in-flight movies so I can sneer disdainfully at the young men watching Marvel movies, even more disdainfully at the grown men watching Marvel movies. I’m Richard Brody in 34B, scrutinizing your movie selection while you prove to be every bit as basic and incurious as I knew you’d be. I’d probably harrumph if I thought I had the gravitas and bearing to pull it off.

And when my book—the one about the history of parking lots, or salt or 19th century horticulture—gets too boring (and it always gets too boring) my eye will wander over to a local screening of The Notebook or a Jon Cena comedy a few rows up and a few seats over. And furtively I watch The Notebook (because someone is always watching the Notebook), checking in between paragraphs of the book, just long enough to confirm my decision to not ever willing watch it except every time I’m on a flight somewhere.

Oh, and of course there’s mealtime. Anyone who doesn’t love a mini Salisbury steak with scorching hot mash potatoes or a pasta chicken dish with bubbling cheese clinging to the foil wrapper has clearly lost touch with all earthly pleasures, because the best cheese is the cheese melted in a United Airlines microwave 30,000 feet over Nebraska. Who among us is too lofty, too refined, too removed from their own primitive desires to not relish the chance to consume a warm, compact, ultra processed three-course meal while hurtling toward their final destination? (And by the way, who are the poseurs that brought toro scallion rolls and that tidy little container of wakame salad? What? And miss out on the free Biscoff?) Enjoying the meal is part of the triumph and magic of air travel flight and more importantly, it’s a belief in the common good, the humble submission to the group experience as we soar together through space. Because when it comes to flying, aren’t we really all it in together?