Comfort might be possible if you could fly in peace, but I also have the world’s worst superpower: I attract crying babies. High-pitched kids inevitably draw close to my seat, like diapered, howling magnets.
And it turns out their screams do more than strain the ears. A study just released by researchers at Jean Monnet University in France found that toddler’s shrieks cause the body temperature of people around them to spike – we literally get hot and bothered by their stress.
Not that most of us need the help. Increased rates of chaotically bumpy flights certainly aren’t helping. A few high-profile turbulent journeys, including on Singapore Airlines, have made the headlines, but they’re far from outliers.
This dangerous phenomenon can even occur when there’s no stormy weather: So-called “clear-air” turbulence, invisible to pilots, has ballooned in rates by 55 per cent since 1979 in some areas. The culprit: Warming air from climate change. The prognosis: Not good, according to researchers who note that “turbulence strong enough to pose an injury risk could double or triple in frequency”.
No wonder there are legions of airborne pessimists like me. Singaporean Jaclynn Seah, who runs a blog called The Occasional Traveller, is one of them. Seah has visited some 60 countries, and agrees that flying has lost much of what glamour it had, even as they add sneaky expenses to your user journey.
