Whether you’re excited about a getaway or dreading a family reunion, one of the most stressful parts of travel around the holidays has to be the boarding process.
And we can make that process easier for our fellow travelers, or go into full Scrooge mode. Looking to indulge your inner Grinch? Here are eight tips.
1. Regardless of your boarding group, move to the front of the line. Try to convince the gate agent you are special and can get on early. If they make you wait, then make everyone else squeeze past you.
2. Put your boarding pass in a safe place in the bottom of your purse or bag. Take plenty of time to dig it out when you get to the gate agent. Or use a mobile boarding pass on your phone, and hide it well down in your emails, so that it takes a while to scroll to find it.
3. Do plenty of shopping at the airport, because extra bags you get after security don’t count towards your carry-on requirements. Or, they shouldn’t. Defend your rights loudly at the gate on this issue.
4. Once you get into the jetway get as close to the person in front of you as possible. After all, you will all be in close quarters once you are seated, so you might as well get your fellow travelers into the sardine mentality as soon as possible.
5. Put your carry-on in the most forward overhead bin that is available. Who cares if the people sitting in that row have no place for their bags? And besides, it will be there for easy retrieval when you deplane, and you can hold up people behind you while you stop to get it down.
6. If you have books, snacks, a pillow or anything else you need on the plane, keep it in the bag you put overhead until you are actually stowing the bag. It’s the airline’s fault for limiting your carry-on bags, anyway. And, with luck, you can hold up a whole line of people while you are standing in the aisle.
7. Spread those carry-ons out in the overhead bin. You want that space in front of you for your legs, and you don’t want to crumple your coat or anything under your seat. With a little work, you can take the entire space above your row as a single person.
8. If you are traveling with children, demand that your fellow passengers change seats so you and your children can be comfortable and together. This is especially fun when you and your kids have scattered middle seats, and you want good seats that include a window and an aisle.
Of course, if you’re not a Grinch, you wouldn’t consider any of these obnoxious behaviors, would you?
Janice Hough is a California-based travel agent a travel blogger and a part-time comedy writer. A frequent flier herself, she’s been doing battle with airlines, hotels, and other travel companies for over three decades. Besides writing for Travelers United, Janice has a humor blog at Leftcoastsportsbabe.com (Warning, the political and sports humor therein does not represent the views of anyone but herself.)
