Or is it that I am not built for airplanes? Not quite sure about that one.
On my business trip in August I flew out of Manchester and my flight to Salt Lake City has a layover in Detroit. The plane to Detroit was small. Very small. It was the jet equivalent of a puddle jumper and leg room was pretty much nonexistent. It highlights to be why it’s been my policy for the last decade or so that unless I need to travel over water, I can just drive wherever I need to go. Sure, it might add a day of travel time on, or, if it’s cross country, possibly even two, but to me it’s worth it. Until this trip I had managed to keep this policy, too. The company wasn’t so keen on turning one day’s travel into three, however.
Sure, arguably planes are faster, but my knees and legs hurt so much on arrival that I am not sure it’s worth it. When I sit in a standard seat on most commercial aircraft my knees are jammed into the back of the seat in front of me. This in and of itself hurts enough, but if the person sitting in the seat in front of me, or in the case of the last plane, to the side as well, tries to move their seat back it can be downright damaging. All this in the name of squeezing one more row of passengers into the plane.
On the upside the flight from Detroit to Salt Lake City wasn’t so bad. The Airbus we flew had rather a lot of room on the bulkhead aisle and I was able to put my legs out and rest my knees. There is still a bit of challenge with width on those planes, but that’s a whole different problem.
I probably need to start flying business class just for the sake of my knees. Too bad that’s not something the company will pay for.
