Air fare...or lack thereof

If Steven Slater's shenanigans have taught us anything it's that a) avoiding the wait on the JFK tarmac is worth committing felonies and b) air travel just isn't what it used to be.  Disgruntled flight attendants aside, flights longer than two hours have become a Ghandian exercise in self-preservation.  That is to say, where the heck has all the food gone?

Frankly, I've never been overwhelmed by in-flight meals...something about witnessing 250 previously-frozen-now-radioactive packages being passed aisle by aisle doesn't do it for me, but damnit if I'm not starving after 6 hours from New York to San Francisco.  My most recent cross-country journey afforded me a first-hand peek at those few rogue passengers attempting to beat the system and simultaneously survive their very limited personal space with on-board sustenance, as well as the few hundred others of us who didn't. 

The cleverest of passengers trade in contraband, those "outside real world" foods that actually make it through the security checkpoint.  I have yet to see a full meal get successfully past TSA (I'm talking burritos--they are portable after all--maybe a nice tupperwared pasta or a deli sandwich), although smaller snacks abound.  Most popular among these are the obvious: apples, bananas, fruit and nut mixes, carrot sticks, pretzels (if one is so unlucky as to be flying on an airline that offers NO free snacks whatsoever....yes I mean you, American), and of course assorted less-than-healthy nibbles along gummy bear/mike-n-ike lines.  When I witness a co-passenger pulling out a Trader Joe's labeled snack bag I think to myself, "Here is someone with foresight, someone who plans ahead, cares for their welfare and will thereby be effective in an emergency situation".  These are the people you want to align yourself with in case of emergency or flight-attendant mutiny.

Then there are those who fall prey to the airport cuisine (if TGI Friday's, McDonald's and Sbarro can be called that), knowing full well their on-board options will be limited.  This group of travelers possesses expendable resources and a hearty appetite yet lacks the wherewithal of those in the first category.  These are the misguided souls who feel that wasting $15 for a sub-par wrap or less-than-authentic sushi in the terminal will ultimately be rewarding mid-flight, and who fail to realize they are really supporting the very system they believe they are bucking.  Airport food most generally sucks, and what with airlines now serving little to no food at all, an all-out passenger boycott and a handful of clever restaurateurs could really turn things around terminal-wise (an attempt to do just this is being made at La Guardia, for now I will reserve judgment).

The third category of passenger are the foodless, those who pass the hours examining what everyone else may or may not be eating. These travelers are split into two separate groups, the stubborn old-schoolers who believe in-flight snacks are a god given right (and damnit if they will spend $12 for a bullsh*t Lays snack pack), determined to starve it out at all costs and damn The Man! (I fall into this category); the second are the naive Europeans who have yet to realize that domestic American carriers really screw you over both monetarily and gastronomically.  There is, however, a proven test to distinguish between these two sub-categories lest you be confused: the stubborn Americans maintain more of a teeth-clenching, temple-pulsing rage while the faces of the unsuspecting Europeans become more gaunt and drawn as the hours drag on.

Over the course of 6 hours I witnessed a family of three savor and suckle the remaining half a tin of winterfresh Altoids while up in business class they were enjoying a choise of cedar-plank smoked salmon or New York strip steak (complete with accouterments) accompanied by a crisp Northern California Chardonnay or a robust Cabernet Sauvignon, respectively.  Perhaps classicism comes with the territory but it seems largely un-American to relegate all of coach to the fickle whims of large-scale conglomerate snack producers...or maybe that it is so wholly American is what makes it so upsetting.  I'm beginning to think Mr. Slater was really onto something...