“If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.”
Casablanca (1942)
There are innumerable emotions attached to travelling. Be it the happiness of meeting your loved ones after a long time, the gloominess of leaving a place you may never return to, the excitement of a vacation, or the lump in the throat when you wave goodbye and the list goes on. But no matter how you feel, there are some questions about flights nobody has answers to!
So while you may find flights tiring, scary, or monotonous, below are the 5 things you may have no idea about:
(Prologue – I am an intelligent person; this is not an intelligent blog. See what I did there? 😉)
1. Switch off your mobile phones!
This is the most annoying thing about flights. There isn’t any network signal up there, so how does a small mobile phone affect the functioning of such a large airplane carrying at least 200 people? Are they just messing with us?
2. Panel Lights
If switching off mobile phones and electronic devices wasn’t enough, there are other annoying activities that you may observe during take-off and landing. Panel lights will be turned off, and you are told to keep your window panes open. How in the world these two things matter still remains a question unanswered. Maybe they think it’ll give us superhero night vision or help spot UFOs? Who knows!
3. Why do your ears stop working?
So the flight has now taken off, and you can use your electronic devices. You may want to listen to some music, but what could be more frustrating than not being able to hear anything at all! Forget music—sometimes your ears simply won’t work during most of the flight. What’s the crazy reason behind that? Is it some bizarre altitude conspiracy? Or just nature’s way of telling us to enjoy the silence?
4. I am the Pilot Yadda Yadda Yadda
And then there is the pilot, also known as the Captain. Why does he have to say the exact same thing that has already been announced? His voice is never clear, and we definitely need subtitles every single time he speaks from the cockpit. Honestly, Captain, just let the crew handle it. Your time is better spent keeping us in the air than trying to be our in-flight entertainer.
5. How does this whole thing work?
In the spirit of an Ayushmann Khurrana movie titled Hawaizaada that came out in 2015 (and went mostly unnoticed), one question is pretty pertinent: how does a plane really fly? I mean, helicopters and rockets take off differently, and neither of them carry as many passengers as planes do. So how do they really fly? Even if we consider taking off with high speed, what explains their moving forward in the air? It may not be rocket science, but I am sure it’s pretty close! 😉
Now that you have read my blog, next time you may want to ponder these questions or, better yet, try to get the answers while you are up in the air. Bon voyage! 😉
