Survival Guide # 6 - How To Survive A Budget Airline

These days, it no longer seems enough to get around with just a car or an EZ link card, you need peddles and an inflatable boat, which makes travelling on a budget airline worthwhile again.

How to survive a budget airline.

1. Emergency exit seats

‘Leg room space’ is a term that was thrown out the equation when they created budget airlines whose true motto is “discomfort for all who is cheap”. The seats are so cramp, the only way you can have any remote comfort is unless you plan on amputating your legs after the flight, or you are a leprechaun.

Your best bet is to be seated at the emergency exits. Beg, bribe or flash a boob if you need to secure the seats, but it’s imperative that you get it if you intend to feel your legs after the flight. You might be the first to die if the doors blow open in mid flight, but at least you’ll be comfortable till that happens.

2. Turbulence

You are in a plane that offers $1 flights, either way, your best bet of surviving a turbulence is praying that your seat belt works and that they aren’t going to be charging for life-jackets. I’ve learnt from a recent trip that when they tell you to return to your seats in an event of a turbulence, they are kidding around with you. Being in the toilet is just about the worst place to be, it’s just like sleeping next to the propellers.

3. Entertainment

There should be a law that mandates that any time spent in the air over an hour should be accompanied by a private in-flight screen that comes with the best selection Hollywood has to offer. Since this is a flight that charges everything down to the air we breathe, a laptop or portable DVD player is your best friend since Lassie.

You need to ration your bag with magazines, playing cards or a blowup doll, just pack anything that will keep you from slitting your wrist in mid air. You’ll need it.

4. Alcohol

If you need to smuggle anything on board, let it be a whole range of vodka or sleeping pills, because you will need this when all else fails. Somehow time passes faster when you are asleep, or drunk – doubly fast when it’s both. So the key here is to make a 3 hour flight to Bangkok feel like a trip from Kallang to Bedok.

5. Parachute

Airlines allow you to hand carry luggage on board, so let’s be smart about it and make it something that counts, like a parachute. There are things in life that we must always be wary of, like strangers, ex-girlfriends, cholesterol, condoms and unknown flashing lights from a video camera – sometimes all those collectively. And budget airlines ranks in at the top with them.

Let’s look at this objectively, you will be spending hours on the plane torturing yourself because you decided saving money on airfare was an astute decision like voting against communism, but it actually means that you just saved enough money to invest in a parachute.

If that plane goes down, in that instance before that, you’ll be the most popular person on board, because you will have that one thing that actually mattered.