So, the Air Marshal Service Breaks Up an Impromptu Reunion

The Traveler: 

The Brunettutan and I are on the same flight from LHR to DFW! The thought hit me like a lightning bolt.  We’d been apart for 2 weeks, and worse yet one of those weeks was her in Israel, utterly without phone service. So my only means of contact with her  were her Facebook updates that were frequently things like:

“Hey look at me, pressed with 16 different points of body contact up against a NASCAR driver… He’s so Awesome… I think I wanna marry him...”

or

“out in the middle of the desert at an Rave… they bussed in hot guys to dance… I don’t know why I’m the only hot girl here… woot!”

And so on.

Needless to say, I was missing her stupid monkey face, and feeling ever so slightly out of sorts with my apparent position in the pack order when I noticed her last Facebook Status update:

Packing going to the airport…

But it’s Saturday, I thought… I’m traveling home on Saturday, she was supposed to be coming home until Sunday. Then I remember, that she said she arrived at 730… which is the same time I arrive, but a day “earlier”.

Her simian self was clarly confused… you lose a day going to EMEA… you gain time coming back. She had it backwards...

Now knowing that we were on the same flight… I began to scramble. Her company, which sucks because it’s populated by testosterone fueled middle aged frat boys and wireless engineers, and … -- wait that’s not why it sucks… it sucks because she has to fly back of the bus, toilette class.  Why I fly business… So I scramble, trying to get her upgraded, before I leave Lisbon.

That was a solid hour on the phone, to no avail. I can’t upgrade her with miles… but I learned there were “lots of seats” available… so just buy them at the airport. And it would probably be cheaper.

Now of course I was also seriously late getting to my gate. And mate later because Portugal apparently like Poland, also insists you go through passport control when you LEAVE instead of when you enter. WTF?

3 hours later – LHR. I connect with The Orangutan at the AA lounge… Kiss-kiss hug-hug we got 20 minutes before the flight boards… she’s terribly surprised, but we gotta hustle. I work the club desk. “Hey… look, so I’m stupid, because I didn’t know we were on the same flight… but I was hoping”.

Those words escape my lips and I look behind me at the line forming and I want to kick my own ass. This is the kind of lack of preparation and forethought that usually causes me to want to humiliate other people pretty dramatically. I hate that I’m that guy right now.

I’m told of course that there are not “lots of seats” in business. Business is in fact sold out. There aint nothing anyone can do about it.

I look at her sad brown eyes, eyes that almost regret two solid weeks of partying, and status updates that drove me seven different kinds of crazy – almost – but not enough to actually – you know – stop…  I shrug… Hey… you know babe… I tried…

She looks at me like: “You could always downgrade…”

I look at her like she just shit a unicorn.

The desk lady calls, “Oh wait, good news, Sir.”

We both turn excited.

“Because business was oversold, we’ve bumped you up to First.”

“Both of us?” I ask.

“Uh, No…” She said.

That’s all right; First class on an American 777 is one of the nicest ones out there. They have these private pods that are nearly 7 feet long by 3 feet wide. Where the seats not only turn away from each other but also lay flat into beds… What’s more, when upright the pod can actually be 2 seats! What is the foot rest half of the pod is actually bigger than a coach class seat, and has it’s own seatbelt… and the table can fold out between them -- for if you and a colleague wanna play scrabble or something.

So kiss – kiss – bye, bye, I’ll go work my magic on the purser and get her up front after take off –

I explain my tale of woe to the purser… I share with him the photos of her pressed up against a NASCAR driver, like, Hey common; yes I’m an idiot, and I should have planned better, and had I this would be a non-issue, but I haven’t seen the girl in a couple of weeks, help a brother out here, huh?

Sympathetic he said usually they don’t allow people to cross classes of service but he’d do some checking at let me know.

I’m pretty hopeful, I got good game with flight staff.  But he came back 5 minutes later shaking his head.

“Sir, ordinarily, I’d be happy to accommodate you, going back to the United States, it’s a security issue – I checked with our security staff, and the Air Marshals won’t have it.”

Fate is funny. If I hadn’t been upgraded, we probably could have connected at the boarder between business and coach… but now there was a whole class of service between us.  And while the purser was standing there, as if for effect, one of the other FA’s announce that under no circumstances, due to security measures was anyone to cross any classes of service on flights back to the USA.

The purser looked at me: “The seat next to her is solo, I could certainly convince that passenger to trade with you.”  Meaning downgrade me two classes of service.

I look back at the photo of the orangutan and the NASCAR driver. He couldn’t have been even a very good driver, what with his job being driving tourists around a test track…

“Uh.. yeah… no.” Enjoy coach, bitch.