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The first time I bought a ticket on an international flight, I was asked if I preferred the smoking or the non-smoking section. I was not a smoker, but I lived among smokers, so I said it made no difference. I was young and timid, and I didn’t want to make a fuss.
It took me less than an hour to realize that I had made a huge mistake. The smoking section turned out to be a torture chamber. The air burned my throat and nose, and the smell was unbearable. I counted the minutes until the plane landed and never sat in the smoking section again.
After smoking was banned, I rarely complained about air quality. Yes, flying coach was no fun, but the air, dry and full of airborne viruses, did not stink except for the stuffy bathrooms. The only things left to complain about were bad food, crying babies, lack of legroom … and now dogs.
I'm probably not the nicest person. I worry when I see a baby during boarding. I know it’s going to be a challenging time for the baby, the parent, me, and everyone else. So I don’t know what’s worse: sharing a flight with a screaming baby or a dog.
If I hadn’t been on a six-hour flight last winter, cooped up with an emotional support dog 25 rows ahead of me, I might have said I’d rather have a dog than a baby on board. Babies are active at all hours, but dogs sleep most of the time. You can let a dog sit on the carpeted floor and soon it will doze off. But you can’t do it with a baby. Babies need attention. They get hungry, uncomfortable, and bored. So dogs are easy, right?
Wrong.
When I saw the dog walking with its female human toward the gate, I didn’t give it much thought. The only thing that crossed my mind was, “This dog looks old.” Then the plane took off, and I forgot about the dog.
Five hours into the flight, a stinky, icky smell I couldn’t pinpoint started to spread through the cabin. A flight attendant ran to the back of the plane. When she passed by me again on the way to the front, I didn’t stop her to ask what had happened. I expected an announcement explaining the hulabaloo. But nothing came. Then the smell exploded everywhere. It was terrible.
I still wasn’t sure what it was until the human I’d seen at the gate, walking with her old dog, appeared, running it toward the toilets behind me, and the smell was unmistakably oozing from the dog. The smell of dog diarrhea sealed every molecule of air inside the flying canister I was sharing with more than 200 people. Is “terrible” the right word?
The crew attempted a response. One attendant appeared with an air freshener and frantically sprayed the air above us to camouflage the stink, offering no explanation. At this point, I don’t know if I saw or imagined the brown pool on the carpet near business class, but despite the awfulness, I couldn’t help feeling a bit of schadenfreude.
Now I worry more about dogs than babies when I fly.
Then again, on the flight home, the man next to me was feeding a tiny dog on his lap.
