I spent yesterday and most of today in Chicago on business. On the way down yesterday, I flew on a 40 year old DC-9 on Northwest. I could not get on a Northwest flight coming back today, so I flew United. Oh my gosh, what a different experience that was.
The plane was an Embraer 170. Even though the flight was full, it took 10 minutes to load the plane. There are only 2 seats on each side, and it has 70 seats total. All seats are leather. And each row in coach has as much space as an exit row on a DC-9. If this is the future of domestic air travel, I'm very enthused.
Unfortunately, the experience was not entirely pleasant for reasons that had nothing to do with United or the plane itself. The guy next to me was watching a movie on his computer as we were waiting to leave the gate. When the flight attendant told everyone to turn off all electrical devices, he dutifully did so. However, once we started moving and the flight attendants all took their seats and got buckled in, but before takeoff, he turned the movie back on.
As we approached the runway, I touched him on the arm and said "you know, you are supposed to turn have that off." He proceeded to get in my face. "Is there anything else?", he said at least 3 times. "You know everybody ignores that rule," he then said. I told him that I had never seen anyone intentionally flaunt the rule before. What happened next was interesting because I didn't say another word. People in the rows around me piped up, and much more aggressively than I had done so. He responded to them, "butt out, it is not any of your business." Believe me, that didn't go over well.
After being cowed by others into turning off the computer, the guy quietly said to me during takeoff that if I had only been more polite, he would have happily turned off the computer. According to him, it was all a "misunderstanding" of my making.
The world is full of a**holes. I was just glad to see one get put in his place today.
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