Airplanes are better than buses. Obviously.
That’s why we pay premium prices. Because planes have wings. Planes are glamorous. There’s champagne on them, and freshly baked cookies, and those face towels so hot the smiling flight attendants need tweezers to hand them to you to burn your face off while you recline and stretch out. Planes get you to far-flung places in record time, on time. Bless those Wright brothers for giving us the miracle of flight.
Maybe the only thing that makes buses better is there are hardly any middle seats. And whilst the seats don’t recline on most buses, you are never sitting with a stranger in front of you reclined into your lap at an angle that allows you to see how many fillings they have, which is nice.
Also, if someone sitting next to you on a bus is eating Thai takeaway with garlic – which happens fairly often now on planes because they actually don’t serve champagne or cookies, or any food at all really unless you’re in Business Class – you can open the window.
In fact on a bus if someone sitting next to you on a bus ate Thai food with garlic the night before and farts – which also happens fairly often on planes because the glamor that used to be on planes seems to have been sent to a remote destination on a one way ticket – you can open several windows instead of just having sit there and wonder who was responsible, like some kind of airplane Thai food fart game of Clue.
Also, you can bring a bag on a bus – because you know, you’re traveling and will need clothes – and there will be no extra charge. On a plane, bringing a bag with clothes is extra.
On a bus there are also no overhead storage bin wars you need to fight , or stampedes you have to endure to get to the storage bins first, again, because bags are free. Hell, on a bus bikes are free.
On a bus there are also no strict uniformed attendants yelling at everyone who did not find an overhead storage bin/lost the war to surrender their bags to be checked – now at miraculously no extra cost.
Tickets on buses are easier too actually. When you buy a ticket for a bus, you will actually be able to take the bus. There’s none of that selling you a ticket and then telling you the bus you planned to take – and have a ticket for – is oversold.
They will also not tell you that because it’s oversold, you have to take another bus even though you paid hundreds of good dollars for a ticket at a very particular time because you needed to be somewhere like, um, a wedding which is generally scheduled for a very particular time. Airlines say “oversold” like the say “arm the doors and cross check” – it’s just how they fly and make money.
Speaking of money, tickets are also less when you take a bus. And the price you see is the price you pay. On a plane the price you see is usually about $50 more once you get into actually booking it because they don’t account for your bags, the chances you might want legroom, a meal, Wi-Fi, and of course sitting at an emergency exit is a privilege…
On a bus there also aren’t any of those strict uniformed attendants donning surgical gloves constantly demanding you help clean the bus, whereas on a plane you have to help clean all the time, otherwise apparently the plane will be late for the next group of people who have been oversold and actually won’t all be able to get where they want to go.
On a bus you also don’t have to sit through Virgin America’s painfully long sung safety video, or any kind of crew jokes at all really. Bus drivers are beautifully humorless. (Anyone else think someone at Alaska Airlines bought Virgin just so that humankind need never sit through that thing again? Thank you in advance Alaska for changing it.)
Also, when the bus gets to where its going, you will have your bags at that same destination. They will not be traveling separately to Wichita for the weekend.
Granted, a bus takes a long time to get anywhere, but I am not advocating we all start to take buses. Obviously. But am I saying planes should be called what they are now? Buses with wings? Maybe.
I think if the Wright brothers made it to heaven, they wince every time a plane goes by now. This is partly because they invented flying – flying for heavens sakes and we still don’t know both of their names without googling them as one entity – but mostly I think they wince because what was once a genuinely miraculous endeavor – has had all the joy removed. Airline companies have turned flying into a banal mode of transportation, wedging us into such tiny seats they have to use the free shoe horns they hand out in Business Class to wedge out us back out, and then charging us for that pleasure, and every other. And that’s if we even get on the flight.
Flying is an amazing way to get to hard earned holidays, much missed families, places of work and new adventures to eat real Thai food. That’s why people used to hug and cry at Arrivals. Now it’s out of sheer relief they are actually there.
I’m not saying we need warm cookies on every trip, but maybe they can just try to keep some of Orville and Wilbur’s* dream alive.
Yes I googled their names. With theWi-Fi I paid extra for on a plane.