Whether it’s your first flight of the year or your 50th, there are certain characters you’re bound to encounter every time you go to the airport—and there’s no better time to people watch than during the busiest travel season of the year. From frequent flyers to honeymooners to old high-school acquaintances, here are the 11 people you’ll run into while travelling home for the holiday season.
The Manic Family
They’ve been looking forward to this trip for months, maybe years, yet they still manage to leave it until the final call before they think about leaving McDonalds and making an awkward sprint to the gate, bags bouncing, sweat dropping and tears streaming. They’re likely to lose something on route; the kids, teddies or, god forbid, passports. They don’t care, they’ll do head counts later. ‘To the gate, team…’
The Drunk
Probably part of a stag-do, this one lost a bet and had to down his drink. One thing led to another and now he’s either asleep in the corner (about to miss his flight), or he’s mouthing off at the air hostesses at the gate for not letting him board. Probably not a bad thing because he probably spent all his holiday money buying the rest of the lads penalty beers as he proceeded to lose more and more games. Drinking games are a downhill battle.
The girl who missed her flight
“But… I thought… LaGuardia and JFK… were… the same…” you hear her hiccup to the attendant between sobs. She’s holding up the line, but we’ve all been there, and it sucks. This twenty-something solo traveller will be flip-flopping between sassing the attendant and frantically wailing to her mom on the phone (all of her social graces are long gone by this point). Buy her a peppermint mocha and reassure her she’ll get home in time for Christmas.
The honeymooners
Maybe they’re making a silhouette of a heart with their hands and trying to get a shot of the plane through it, or maybe they just always seem to be holding each other up. These two are milking their newlywed status so hard, they’re practically dragging tin cans behind their suitcases. Try to beat these two to your gate before they butterfly-kiss their way to first class.
The baggage claim Santa
His suitcases (plural) are crisscrossed with “Heavy” tape. Wrapping paper tubes jut out the sides of his backpack, and his carry-on is definitely pushing the limits of overhead-compartment capacity. Meet the baggage claim Santa: that person who just wasn’t thinking ahead when he bought Mom a crock pot and Dad snowboard boots for Christmas. Lend him a hand if you’ve got one—who knows, it may just get you some nice-list karma.
The behemoth backpacks
They look like cartoon hot dogs from behind—two tiny legs shuffling under the weight of a 5-foot tall backpack. These are either donned by seasoned travellers on a year-long expedition, or girls who’ve packed every crop top they own for three weeks in Europe.
The frequent-flying executive
They’ve accessorized their suits with other suits, carefully hung in garment bags. They swirl whiskey in the first class lounge, chatting on Bluetooth headsets or not at all, only nodding when the airline staff greet them by name. They fly like it’s an elevator ride up to their corner office, and you thought you caught a glimpse of an eye roll when he overheard the girl-who-missed-her-flight freakout.
The woman who packed every liquid and aerosol in her purse
“Oh, goodness me”, she chuckles, oblivious to the line of death stares behind her as she pulls out tube after tube of hair serum, hand cream, lip salve, body butter and nail polish. 10 bucks says she’s also the lady stretched across four seats reading an Agatha Christie novel while the rest of her gate perches on the window sill.
The high-school acquaintance you really didn’t need to catch up with
In the immortal words of Chandler Bing, “What a small world, and yet I never run into Beyoncé”.
The Plug Hogger
It’s only a 2-hour flight but, yes, she does need her personal phone, work phone, Kindle, iPod, iPad and laptop and yes, they do ALL need a quick battery top up. She searches the waiting area for a multi plug dock. She finds one, her heart skips a beat and then the race to untangle her chargers and nab every last plug begins. She does it, she feels smug. As the queue for boarding begins to grow, she’s faced with a dilemma… to join the queue and get a good seat or to give her electronics another 3 whole minutes?
Main image: iStock.com/M_a_y_a
