From Pan Am to "Yasss Queen"

It was unusually hot in Texas that Monday in early October as we pulled into our gate at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. I’d spent the morning crammed in various places.

First, before the sun rose, I was in our master closet in suburban Virginia, trying to get dressed for the unexpected business trip back to Texas without waking my sleeping wife or disturbing the baby (I’d been in Austin just the day before). Then, I sat squeezed against the wall of a window seat I’d managed to book on two days’ notice, four rows from the bathrooms at the back of the plane.

It can be challenging to see when you’re trying not to wake anyone before the sun rises, and it’s even more difficult to see on modern airplane travel; the unshowered sweatsuits who pass for the current year’s weekday airline passengers have decided they’d rather sleep, windows closed, than look out over the country or work on their day’s business.

I was fortunate enough to deny my middle-seat neighbor that modern decadence as we flew, bright morning sunlight filling our cramped little row. But the rays revealed more than the beauty of West Virginia, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Arkansas—even Oklahoma: my slacks were wrinkled and oil-stained, better suited for a day working in the garage than a day of meeting with my colleagues.

“OK,” I thought. “No problem. I’ll buy a pair at DFW.”

But it was not to be. As I stalked the half-mile terminal, I passed newsstands, electronic shops, and two whole places hawking neck pillows, but no menswear could be found. Not in Terminal C. Google Maps came to naught. I called a car to Kohl’s a few miles away.

Andy Ospina

The Republic of Wrinkled Pants

I’ve since learned that if I’d been a little better at research and took a Skyline train to Terminal A, I could have made my way to Johnston & Murphy—a last remaining vestige of civilization in an airline experience gone to Juicy sweats, Crocs, and those disgusting little neck pillows.

Not that the overall experience has held up, either. Today’s airline travel is an adversarial affair, starting with algorithm-powered price gouging that targets ticket shoppers. Matters don’t improve while walking through TSA, though Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy’s decision to let us keep our shoes on has restored at least one scrap of dignity.

Last time I flew through Atlanta, a fat, rude woman with a uniform and a badge broke the tail off of my nine-year-old’s favorite raptor toy, for fear that he would use it to kill the pilots and hijack the plane. It had taken us two hours in the wheelchair TSA line to get to that point because of our infant in a stroller. The boy quietly cried while I appealed to a supervisor, who agreed it was an unlikely weapon and restored the plastic tail to our family. It wasn’t the first time they’d confiscated one of our kids’ toys, and it won’t be the last.

A Sky Full of Barbarians

Once inside the terminal, crowds of fellow travelers beach themselves about the halls, slouching or sleeping around outlets. In both Philadelphia International Airport and aboard an American Airlines first-class f light from Baton Rouge to Washington, I’ve come across piles of human toenails, monuments to Americans’ all-too-generous tolerance for antisocial behavior.

For the vast majority of airports, there’s no fresh air inside—for fear that our Islamist cousins might use an open window for mass murder. I’ve only seen two airports where you can even find a room in which to enjoy a cigarette. You’re lucky to buy a beer for under $13. And if you want to feed your wife and kids lunch, be prepared to multiply that by 10.

Even if you do manage to find a decent meal, like a steak at JFK’s Palm Bar & Grille, you’ll be given a dull plastic knife; again, lest you try to use your airplane for mass terror.

You can count yourself fortunate if your day improves once you’re onboard your plane, but here, more than anywhere else, we, the passengers, seem to be the ones to blame. In those deeply stupid early days of COVID, policies like “stand up one row at a time” required deputizing stewards and stewardesses as all-powerful sky tyrants, and they wielded that authority capriciously even as harsh words, fistfights, and other generally antisocial behaviors increased among the flyers.

Back then, I wondered which came first. Were my fellow humans (the women, in particular) acting like animals because they were treated as such? Or were we being treated like animals because we had indeed become beasts?

It was only after a degree of normalcy returned (as far as that’s possible post-9/11) that the answer became clearer. Greetings, smiles, and small favors have made a comeback among airline staff. Children are once again invited to tour the cockpit by friendly pilots. The relaxation of rules seems to have led to less agitated passengers.

Terminal Decline

But just as the rules have relaxed, so too have passengers’ standards of how to act and dress in public. Every flight has at least one fat, hairy man in a sleeveless shirt, shorts, and open-toed shoes. Every flight has multiple fat, hairy women, dressed with even less dignity. Adult passengers bring strong-smelling foods into the tiny, confined space, and some even take their socks off mid-flight. It’s a wonder smoking is still banned, considering the airlines’ tolerance for flyers polluting the shared air.

And there’s no hint of shame among those who bare their flabby midriffs in public. Instead, there’s an incredible sense of entitlement. We now live in the royal “Yasss Queen” era, but lack the basic trappings of middle-class manners.

Well-groomed travelers in professional wear have given way to unshowered masses barely dressed to leave their own bedrooms, and in case it isn’t already clear, it’s more than enough to stir absolute contempt for our fellow man.

It’s little wonder you can’t even buy a pair of slacks in a major airport. You can read it in the reactions to Secretary Duffy’s simple request that Americans carry themselves with a little more dignity when they travel. “How dare you ask me to dress up!” they howl on social media, as if it were the first time they’d been told to have a little respect for themselves and others.

Maybe brighter skies are ahead, and those reminders will pay off. I hope they do. In the meantime, I’ll sit here as quietly as the one-year-old will allow, sipping my bourbon and ginger ale, dressed for a public outing. Windowpane open, all the way.