Yesteryear (about 40 years ago):  Ever see Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can?  Besides thinking, “Whoa, that was Jennifer Garner playing a hooker!” you also probably noticed that back in the day, airplane travel was elegant, classy, luxurious. 747s had piano bars on the second level, getting a job as a stewardess was one of the more esteemed and desired professions for women, and passengers dressed for flight as if they were going to their own Bar Mitzvahs. Flight was elevated to an art form.

Today (and right now, I’m flying from Tampa to Salt Lake City on an oversold flight with a guy who weighs 265 taking up a quarter of my seat space):  Flying on most airlines is like being stuffed into a flying bus. Coach is about survival (I've got it!  Next season of Survivor – Survivor: Coach Class, where 4 teams compete for 7 seats and room for their luggage while living in an airplane cabin and surviving on a steady diet of airplane Chex mix and cranberry juice). Seats are cramped, flights are overbooked, airports are crowded, security is slow and sucky. Since flying is more affordable than ever, you’ve got more people than ever, jostling, crowding, and genuinely being stressed, frazzled, and confused assholes who won’t get out of your way.

So to all people of all cultures and class: men and women, older and younger and their screaming baby sisters, an angry primer on how a Better Guy should be on an airplane. The following are our suggestions how we can all live together in peace and harmony for a couple of hours in a tight, hot space with a cholicky baby behind us and someone with bad gas next to us. Many of these guidelines also apply to bus travel and train travel. If you travel by boat, give us a call. We want your job.

1. Personal Space, People!  Keep your self to yourself. Don’t go touching the folks next to you or invading their personal space with your reading material, gadgets or general girth. If you’re watching the movie and your seatmate’s reading, let him or her have the armrest.  And if you’re standing in the aisle, guaranteed, your butt is within four inches of someone else’s face. Consider yourself informed and sit yourself down.
2. Why Can’t We Be Friends?  Most folks don’t want to talk to you or anyone else like you on a flight.  Look, I’ve already got friends.  I’m not on the plane to make some new ones.  Keep that in mind, especially when you spot a fresh woman on your flight, which you probably will.  You have to treat the situation delicately, and if she’s sitting next to you, understand that while you desperately want to talk with her (among other things you want to do with her), she may very well not want to do the same with you.       
3. Hit the Head Before the Flight. Going to the bathroom before you get on-board greatly reduces the irritating cluster-F that occurs outside the loo in a cramped cabin.  And if you have to go more often than the average guy, because your bladder’s the size of a thimble, sit on the aisle so as not to disturb others who are seated peacefully.
4. Chow Time  Coach food, if there even is such a thing these days, blows. It’s perfectly acceptable, and recommended, that you bring your own grub on-board. Just be aware there are certain foods that don’t bother other people (blueberry muffins, roast beef sammies, yogurt) and some that do (onion cream cheese, crunchy apples, tuna fish sammies). Be sensitive to others or I’ll break out my Indian lamb vindaloo from my Tupperware case and stink y’all out!
5. Be Nice to "The Staff"  Stewards and stewardesses are more than waiters and waitresses in the sky. They’re there for your safety in addition to your comfort and you need to show respect to these people. This is their office, the place they go to work every day. They don’t come to your work and cuss you out because you came into work two hours late, but we’ve heard many yahoos do that to stewardesses when the plane is sitting on the tarmac for two hours due to bad weather or engine maintenance. 
6. Phone Home…Later  There is NO privacy on a plane, and there’s nowhere to go to get away from other people.  So if you pull out your phone before or after the flight (they’re legally not allowed to be on while you’re in the air), everyone around you gets to partake in your conversation.  And that ain’t right.  Save your phone chatter for the gate when everyone can get a little space from each other.
7. Kicking and Screaming  Ever been in a seat that keeps getting violently thrust forward by the jabs from the knees or feet of the person behind you? Us, too. Don’t do that to other people.  Don’t let your kids do that to other people. If someone’s kids do that to you, you are completely within your rights to turn around to the parent and ask them to reign his orher child in…and then you can whap ‘em all in the head with a full can of Sprite from the beverage cart.
8. Stand Up, Sit Down  You know what we hate? We hate it when the plane comes to a stop, everyone rushes outta their seats, stands up, grabs their stuff, bangs it off everyone else, and then stands there inert for another ten minutes while the plane is prepped for exiting. You got nowhere to go so to all:  just hang on, we assure you, you will get off the plane. Yes, it’s tight in here, but you just made it a thousand times worse by clogging the aisles with you and your crap.  Stay still, stay chill. The Best Airline Story We’ve Got  When David's wife's plane arrived at the gate after a cross-country flight, everyone jumped to get their bags when a short businessman bullied his way past her to get his. He pulled his bag down onto himself and others, including Amy, David's wife, who took the brunt of the bag's weight squarely on her shoulder. Now Amy, who’s 5’8” and curvy, can inflict some hurt on a guy when she’s mad (ask David, he knows). So she lowers her shoulder and body checks the twit and his bag into an empty seat, glasses askew. She walks off  to the cheers of others who also got nailed by this guy’s bag drop. Now that's a woman!

    

9. Do The Right Thing  Help folks who need help with their bags and suitcases.  Don’t just stand there looking around and thinking, "Wow, Grandma’s really wrestling with that American Tourister and it looks like she’s losing real bad!”  This includes kids, older folks, and all women.  Offer to put the bag in the overhead compartment, smile, and get to your seat.  It’s the right thing to do.

10. Hey, Mr. DJ  Even if we like your musical taste, it doesn’t mean we want to hear it for a full flight.  Remember, this is a tight space and loud headphones can be heard by a lot of people.  And though we don’t feel like listening to Hilary Duff’s latest (and you shouldn’t either) or early N.W.A. right at this very moment, we respect your right to listen to what you want but not your decision to make the rest of us listen right along with you.