Let’s face it: there’s not much to do on flights. Once you’ve browsed the absurdities in SkyMall, watched the first ten minutes of the in-flight screening of Norbit, and listened to all your mp3’s three times each– forwards and backwards– you sooner or later find yourself face-to-face with the chair in front of you. What to do?
Well, if you’re an unattached person on the prowl who’s smart enough to plan ahead, you chat up the cute girl or guy sitting next to you. Here are five not-so-easy steps for discovering inflight romance.
1. It all starts at the gate. The single most important choice you can make is where to sit in that mass of chairs at the airport gate. The unthinking person will simply plop down in the first available seat, but the would-be casanova knows better than that. Out of the dozens or even hundreds of passengers waiting to board their flight in this area, you can usually count on two or three to stand out from the rest. In order to have a chance, you’ll most likely need to sit by them and chat them up at the gate. But how?
2. Choose your seat wisely. If she’s the only one in six rows of chairs, walking up and sitting right next to her is just about the creepiest thing you can do. Instead, sit one or two seats down, putting your carry-on items on the seats between you. This keeps anyone from sitting between you two, and also allows her to see just how expensive your luggage is. (Note: Does not work with cheap luggage.)
3. Establish some common ground. Uh-oh, the talking part– but this doesn’t have to be scary. Take out a pack of gum nonchalantly, and offer her a piece. (If I know one thing about women, it’s that they love gum.) Then ask, for example, “So, where are you headed?” or if you have an especially dry sense of humor, “Excuse me, do you know if this is a non-smoking flight?” Please say this line with at least a half-smile, or she will think you’ve been in a coma since 1950. Ask what she’s reading. Tell her you liked that book but there weren’t enough pictures. Again, say this with a slight smile, or she’ll take you for an overgrown nine-year-old.
4. Try to sit near him/her on the flight. If the conversation allows it, ask where she’s sitting on the plane. If the gods are smiling down on you– as they were in a recent flight of mine– you’ll find yourself next to each other. But more often than not, she’s in 12J and you’re in 28A. Not exactly good flirting proximity. So you’ve got to make your own luck. Walk up to the airline counter– asking your new friend to watch your bags– and ask if it’s possible for you to switch seats to sit next to your friend. If the ticket agent says “no,” or “we’ll see,” by all means take that as a yes. Sit in the wrong seat– what’re they gonna do, arrest you?– until someone tells you to move. Yes, this takes a certain amount of guts, but the saying is not, “No guts, glory anyway.”
5. Look through, ugh, Skymall, then set up something for later. Sure, SkyMall contains a bunch of useless crap– though not all Gadling bloggers agree— but I will give the magazine credit for this: it is a great conversation starter. When the conversation eventually hits a lull, as is bound to happen with a complete stranger on a four-hour flight, grab SkyMall from the seat pocket in front of you. From pets to home and garden to sports and everything in between, SkyMall will help you learn more about a person than you ever wanted to know.
If the conversation goes well, mention to her that you’ve got a several hour layover, and wouldn’t it be nice if you could grab dinner or drinks at one of the airport’s “charming and reasonably-priced” establishments? (Note: Referring indirectly to the fact that you’ll be paying will increase her chances of acceptance considerably.)
If she says thanks-but-no-thanks to your date offer, what have you lost? You’ve merely been rejected by someone you’ll never see again, and as a bonus, you’ve made the flight go by a whole lot faster. To paraphrase Einstein, “Sit next to a smelly guy on a plane for ten minutes and it feels like four hours. Sit next to a pretty girl on a plane for four hours and it feels like ten minutes. That’s relativity.”