Sunday, January 26, 2014

Fantasy Boarding Announcement


Ladies & Gentlemen:

Welcome to Jet Stream flight JS 678. Your flight will be ready for boarding in few minutes. Please listen to this announcement in its entirety before crowding the boarding area.  I have been told to personally assure you that all of you in the gate area have an assigned seat and no one else is going to usurp it from you; most importantly, the flight isn’t leaving without you.

We will be boarding by many categories. Some have been identified as appropriate by our airlines operations staff; others, we have introduced in keeping with times. Please be assured that each of you will find yourself in one of the categories - do board only when your category is called.

First, we will board families with infants and young children, as well as elderly passengers and others who need special assistance. Right after them, we will welcome families with adorable but not so young children whose parents pretend to have the need for special assistance for them.  Alongside, we will accept somewhat elderly looking but perfectly able people who try to masquerade as disabled passengers.

Next, we will welcome our first class and Titanium class members of our frequent flyer program. Please give room for the Titanium frequent flyers, they demand their well-earned privilege and will rip us apart if something were not to happen to their satisfaction.  By us, I mean not just us airlines staff, but potentially you as well. For your own safety, if not for ours, please, stay away from them.

Business class passengers and Zirconium class frequent flyers will board next. Everything I said about Titanium class frequent flyers is applicable for this group too. Let’s give them their space, shall we?

Helium class members will be invited to board next. If I told you to be scared of our elite Zirconium and ultra-elite Titanium class frequent flyers, I’d say be terrified of the Helium class folks. They are Zirconium and Titanium wannabes, but at this time,  just a lot of hot gas. Consequently, they tend to be explosive. As a rule of thumb, just stay away from our road warriors. You don’t think earned the title of warriors for no reason, did you?

We will board by zones following these elite members. We do believe the zones are a good way to efficiently board. When Zone 1 passengers are called, we also will accept Zones 2, 3, 4 & 5 passengers who ignore everything around them by pretending to listen to music and sneak past us. Likewise, when we call Zone 2, we will accept Zones 3, 4 & 5 passengers as well, this time employing alternate tricks such as being engrossed in the book they are reading.  Zones 3, 4 & 5 will follow them. But who cares, right? The boarding area typically is near empty by this time. It’s as though a significant portion of our passengers have a sudden loss of comprehension of English language.

When I call Zone 5, if anyone is actually left in the boarding area, I’ll be damned! Do you realize you are the true elite? You haven’t lost your ability to understand English; you have infinite patience that will come in handy every day of your life. I bet you are truly satisfied and happy with life and take things in your stride with a smile in your face.  I will personally ensure your hand luggage finds place inside the cabin – our airline has an area by the first class cabin earmarked for your luggage! Tell you what, we will give a free round trip ticket in our airline to anywhere we fly.


Ladies and gentlemen, Jet Stream flight JS 678 is now ready to board. 

7 comments:

MG said...

Right on the mark! :-)
Wouldn't mind waiting for Zone 5 to be called;)
Well written

Raagaa said...

Insightful and funny!

krvs said...

Very funny, but so close to what happens all the time.

spinoza said...

This is a revelation at several levels. Most boarding announcements sound like MP3 that runs at 3X its intended speed. May be someday you should consider writing about the fictitious passenger in row 45, seat A at the back of the plane standing up to disembark soon after the touchdown.

spinoza said...

This is a revelation at several levels. Most boarding announcements sound like MP3 that runs at 3X its intended speed. May be someday you should consider writing about the fictitious passenger in row 45, seat A at the back of the plane standing up to disembark soon after the touchdown.

Suhas said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

@spinzoa - Thanks for the tip on window seat passenger in the rear of the aircraft. That, along with cabin baggage haulers will make another good read if done well.