Travel by air is now one of the areas where little niceties can take on a big dimension. Those were the words that Elana Carter, a Manhattan traveler said after a short altercation during one of her flights between New York and Miami: a flight attendant had given her coffee, but no water that she also ordered. The man who sat next her soothed the situation by correcting. “She asked for a water as well.”
The interaction was later posted on TikTok by Carter, who received over 4 millions views. The video worked because it presented one of the few things that many travelers can appreciate and that is having a stranger realize what is happening in a busy cabin, and then take action without turning it into an act. Carter, an Instagram user who posted screenshots and a selfie of herself on the flight, jokingly wrote in her post that she was now engaged, and later said to Newsweek that the moment was almost surreal. My neighbor in the seat was very courteous, and quite punctual, too, she added.
The feeling in the cabin, Carter insinuated, was not made on nothing. Her flight came when there was an overall chaos in the weather problems during winter which had frustrated several people leaving many exhausted and rerouted with the travelers and the crew running on fumes. It would have been a drink order amended, in that sense: a small reestablishment of order, a reminder that someone in the immediate vicinity was not deaf to other things but was minding overhead-bin space guarding or grabbing an armrest.
Such attentiveness can be attributed to the fact that numerous flyers enter the plane with defensive anticipations. Carter frequently expresses concerns about being stuck between a rude or obnoxious person, which she said frightens frequent fliers: personal grooming in mid-flight, inconsiderate sprawl or someone who talks a lot, forcing the hours to pass. Rather, she had had what she termed natural and modest, which was easily romanticized.
Etiquette gurus tend to suggest the same course that Carter underwent in that she/he needs to remain calm in the beginning, to stay factual and not to allow a cramped situation to escalate into a confrontation. In a situation where a seatmate is too noisy, too drunk, too obnoxious, or just too obtrusive, advice is often to counsel passengers to direct the crew instead of trying to be a winner at 30,000 feet. Going in planes and having tight seats and a short temper, it is better to ask rather than to negotiate the boundaries in front of people, especially when the stress is already high.
Behind the scenes is a fact that the airlines and crews have to deal with: actually violent events are rare, and the Federal Aviation Authority is tracking two events in 10,000 flights in a recent tally. But the daily irritations, space, noise, nerves, are always there, and the passengers are usually more sensitive to them when they have been delayed, missed an appointment, and had a snarl up with the weather.
The reason why Carter made something go viral on the Internet was that it did so without all the accompanying scripts: no censure, no humiliation, no call to action. It resembled more of a micro-alliance between strangers someone telling the other one about something she missed that would take her back into the system so that the other one would just be able to get what she wanted.
It also foreshadowed something a more mute fact flying: the neighbor may be an irritation to deal with, or a ray of hope. At some point, it is about whether anybody is ready to make a simple thing that should be said.
