How to get and keep the aircraft seat you want - When you should and should not swap seats

Aircraft seats. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

 To get the seat you want, first check the season (month) day of the week, times of day of your flight and the prices. An early flight might require an early checkin and getting up early to leave home or check out of your hotel. 

Breakfast

You might be missing breakfast. One year in the USA I had four breakfasts, one at home and three on flights, and was offered another on arriving at my hotel. 

Check seat availability. The window seat alows you to see the scenery, take photos, sleep against the wall. The aisle seat is good for jumping up when the toilets are free, hailing the passing steward for food or a query. 

I like the aisel because I have a mild claustrophobia and fear of flying at heights, seeing down the aisle, watching other screens and crew looking calm, not seeing the ground far below. It is easier for my husband to find me, check up, chat, help me with overhead luggage, and surrptitiously pass me chocolates. I would be happy to change an window or middle seat for the aisle. 

The middle doubles your chances of chats with a new friend. You can hop out to the toilet when the person in the aisle gets up.

If you are in the aisle, when you get up for a restroom break, you might ask the others if they wish to go. If you are not in a hurry, if you let them go first, you don't have to stand up again when they return.

You can lift the armrest of the aisle seat to let yourself and the others out more easily.

Should you swap seats? If the other seat is an advantage. If you don't care. If you are not obliged to abandon the goods in your overhead locker. 

On a cheap flight with non assigned seats, sometimes the crew ask you if you would mind changing seats.

On a large aircraft with assigned seating, sometimes the crew ask you not to swap seats until after takeoff, and to resume the correct seat during landing. That is so that in the event of an accident, the right family is informed of your injury, death, transfer to hospital, whatever.

You also want to consider your speed in exiting the plane, if you are in transit, or being met by a taxi or family. A seat nearer the front exit might suit you better.

In flight Special Meals

During the flight, staying in the correct seat is helpful if you have ordered a special meal. It saves the staff from having to hunt for you. No risk of your meal being given to the wrong person or not getting any meal.

Losing the aisle seat during takeooff and landing could mean that you don't get to see the view and take photos. However, mostly if the person by the window has their eyes open, or their own camera taking pictures, they will gladly take a photo or two for you using your camera or mobile phone.

Useful websites

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How To Avoid Losing Things: On Aircraft At Airports, In A Mall, And When Travelling

Problem
Airlines have lots of items left behind.
1 Once you are off the aircraft which has landed, they will probably refuse to let you board again to look for lost items.
2 A lost item could be taken by passengers, crew or cleaners.
3 A black jacket or suitcase could be taken by somebody else accidentally.

What experience do I know about?

Passport Losses

1 Indian friends who lived in the same block as my family in Singapore lost her passport at Changi Airport. She said her passport was taken from the luggage trolley as she stood in the check-in queue. A group of lads had been standing, talking and larking about behind her.

2 My passport was stolen in Singapore along with everything else in a shoulder bag taken from me by what I later realised was a classic triple action. An elderly man behind me bumped into me from my right to distract me. I felt my bag go - my left arm felt lighter. I turned to see two younger men apparently in deep conversation. Presumably the nearest had slit the strap and passed the bag to the furthest. Or it was concealed between them under a newspaper.

When I reported the loss to the British Embassy in Singapore, I was shocked to learn that if anybody handed in the bag and passport and money, nothing would be returned to me. A sign said so. The embassy confirmed it.

3 A couple left their passports in the seat pockets of the plane. On the newspaper report, more than two pages of comments came from people who were unanimous in saying: do not put passports or other valuables in seat pockets. Nor anywhere else. Keep passports in your clothes' pockets or handbag.

Never put down valuables. In a second you can get distracted and your valuables could be stolen or you could forget.

Don't expect any help from anybody.

Stolen Passport Story
When my passport was stolen in Singapore, the British passport I was given cost me a lot of money and was only a temporary passport to get me back to the UK. That took three trips, to register my loss , deliver photos signed on the back to verify they were a likeness, and collect the new temporary passport.

At Heathrow, that temporary passport was taken by officialdom.  I had to go to London after filling in more forms, getting more photos and spending more money to get replacement passport.

I had hoped that if my stolen passport was ever round or used, it might be returned to me as a souvenir of my travels, or with my photos intact. Or that I might be informed of the country where it was used and the nationality of the person fraudulently using it. Was it somebody in Singapore? Somebody from a nearby country such as Malaysia or Indonesia? Or a member of a gang from South America.

Stolen Bag
A friend from my South African book group had her bag taken by a South American in a shop in Singapore. She ran after him and a man with a walking stick, resting at the top of a flight of stairs was able to point to the ladies hairdresser which the man had run into to hide.

She ran into the hairdresser, asked if a man was there. Yes, he had run in and was in the toilet. He'd said his wife was having her hair done. Nobody in the shop knew him.

She told the shop owner to lock the door and call the police.

The thief eventually emerged and said, "I give you back the bag. I give you back your money. Let me go."

The shop owner retorted, "The police told me not to open the door until they arrive."
The police arrived quickly. An easy job for them. Three witnesses, the woman who lost the bag, the old man who saw the thief run past with the bag. The hairdresser shop owner who saw the man with the bag hide.

The police raided the place where he was staying and found a group of South Americans, supposedly on holiday, evidently a gang which had come to Singapore supposedly on holiday. Their rented flat was full of stolen bags and the contents.

The moral / lesson is this.

1 Never let anything out of your sight.

2 Don't put valuables down when unpacking. 

3 Put everything into your internal zipped safety pockets.

4  Alternatively use a lockable bag which you keep on you.

Fire Alarm Story
I recently had to leave a building when a fire alarm went off. My bag, a few feet away, had to be left behind as we were all ushered out of the exit. 

Later, other people went back into the building and could have taken my bag, a person searching for the key to the office to switch off the alarm, assuming it was a false alarm, the firemen, any passer-by who felt like ignoring the alarm, anybody else getting back into the building after we were allowed to return, who managed to reach the room before I did. 

At this point I realized the importance of always having your credit cards with you:

1 So the vital cards are not lost, missing, stolen.

2 So you can use credit cards to buy clothes, transport replacements for your bag and laptop left behind when you leave a bus, coach, plane, or building in a fire or other emergency.

3 You also need your phone on you to summon help. If you heard an explosion and ran, you would not run towards the smoke or terrorists looking for the phone which was only the other side of the room in your bag. You would race away and have no means of summoning help or telling anybody you were safe.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Safety At Sea: What To Do When Sinking Like Titanic

After a lesson at a gym I got talking, as usual to a retired policeman I shall call 'Ed'.

Ed watched a Youtube video of a wealthy couple sailing the world on their two-person yacht. At night the husband sleeps and the wife wanders on deck filming herself, for the entertainment of all, but, Ed says, tutting, without a life jacket, helmet, or the two lines of ropes tied to herself.

'An ancient waiting to happen,' says Ed. I frown, 'But why is it dangerous? Surely a lot of people would do that?'

'Yes, but they shouldn't.' Ed shakes his head. 'She looks over the side, or she's hit by a swinging sail, the boat lurches and she falls off. He wakes up three hours later, miles away. He takes three hours to sail back to where she was - assuming he knows what time she fell and where. How will he find her?

'Look at the ceiling. Imagine falling from their into water, even perfectly calm water. How will she survive? Even falling from more than six feet flat into flat calm, water, it hits you so hard, it knocks you out, so you can hardly breathe, or float, or swim.

'It also depends on the water temperature. In some places you'd only survive half an hour. In others less than ten minutes.'

We ponder. 'So what should she, or you or I, do on a boat?'

'I've told you why you need a life jacket. You need the helmet in case worthing swings and hits you. Of you fall against something. Then you need two ropes. The small one when you are near something like a steering wheel. The bigger one when you want to go to the far side of the boat. The bigger one is longer and stronger, thicker. If you fall overboard, not only does it keep you near the boat so others can help you, you use it to pull yourself back up. It has knots at intervals all the wall up so you can pull yourself up it.'

I object, 'But if the boat is sinking, the rope attaching you to it will pull you down with the boat.'

Ed laughs. "You shouldn't be sinking. You should be on the boat baling out and stopping up any hole.'

'How do you stop up the hole?'

'Anything - even a blanket.'

'But the flow of water pushes it into the boat."

'You get a piece of wood or a couple of pieces like a cross bar to hold it in place?'

'Where do you find the wood. Say, you're on a cruise ship, like the Titanic. You don't have any tools to hack at the wood.'

'You take whatever wood you can find. A deckchair. A dining chair. Anything to hold a piece of canvas or blanket over the hole. The water rises up to the level of the hole and then the pressure of water keeps the blanket in place so no more water can flow in. Meanwhile you are baling out. On a cruise ship you have a thousand passengers. And dozens of crew. Get them all to help you.'

'The ship might still sink.'

'Yes, but, that gives you another three of four or five hours. Meanwhile you can be building lifeboats, floats, anything to throw into the water. You might not save everybody. But you can save some people. It's better than nothing.'

'How do you know all this?'

'When you are on police duty in London, for a big event, you have time off to eat and rest at a central police eatery - eating place. Around the walls are safety instructions. I look at them. Especially the ones about boats and boating because I sail.'

'Thank you for telling me. Now I know what to do.'

Please pass this post on to anybody who might need it or be interested.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author, teacher, speaker.

Phones ringing from missing aircraft

   Very sad that the relatives of those on a lost flight are still stuck in a hotel waiting for a free flight to a crash scene which can't be found.
   The latest story, which I think is a 'false hope' story, is that phones of the missing are still ringing. one could be wishful thinking or ringing a wrong number. But a group suggests there must be a practical reason.
   Several people have said that phones which are inactive or destroyed appear to be ringing because the network generates a ringing sound.
   If the phones ring but nobody answers, nobody is alive to answer. Not even the owner of a stolen phone.
   If the sound is generated from the location of the phone. If. Then the two most likely practical reasons are that the phones are intact underwater. Or intact on land.
    I hesitate to speculate. Often what one thinks is disproved by news the next day.
   
   What has happened to my family in the past? We have two phones because using your home phone on an overseas network is expensive. Or we travelled without a phone and had to buy another at the destination. Some people have a work phone and a private phone.
    With all those people on a plane, several of them, most of them, will have two phones.
    My first thought is some of them forgot their phone which is still at home. Others left at home the one on the local network, planning to buy or hire another phone in the other country's network at lower cost.
    Another possibility is that the phone was in their luggage which was sent on a different plane. Either deliberately. (Stolen suitcases - baggage handlers. I've read articles or books on this.) Or accidentally misrouted.
    There are hangars full of lost luggage. Those ringing phones could be in a hangar, and never left, or landed elsewhere.
   Or the phones are waterproof and managed to survive underwater or on a coral reef. Or inside luggage or in a coat pocket in an airplane cupboard in a bit of tailplane deep underwater.
   Who were the 'first class' passengers? Is there a connection between phones still ringing? The same network? Crew or first class all at front of plane?
  What has anybody to gain by discussing this? Agitated forum readers often ask why one story dominates the news, when more are killed by wars or accidents elsewhere. Often it is because of the mystery. Suspense. Whodunnit. A missing child, a murder mystery, a missing plane, a phone which rings when the owner is missing.
    We, the world, the authorities, the public, are learning all sorts of important things about safety. Checking passports.
    We are troubled by mysteries. Our brain keeps churning over the facts looking for the answer. Once the mystery is solved, the newspapers will stop running the story. Our adrenalin will stop. The families will be able to 'rest in peace'.