Editing 2525: Air Travel Packing List

{{comic
| number    = 2525
| date      = October 6, 2021
| title     = Air Travel Packing List
| image     = air_travel_packing_list.png
| titletext = I know the etiquette is controversial, but I think it's rude when the person in front of me reclines their seat into the bell of my trumpet.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is another in a [[:Category:COVID-19|series of comics]] related to the {{w|COVID-19 pandemic}}. 

The comic is about a proposed air-travel packing list, and the humor stems from the fact that many people have not been flying during the pandemic, and thus they might have forgotten what to pack. So [[Randall]] is so kind as to provide a packing list with 20 items. However, apart from the first item, the rest is not something you would or even should normally bring on an airplane.

Many of the items are already found on passenger airplanes, some items would seem like they could be useful on a plane, while others could actually be useful in case of a plane crash (but only if you survive), while many others would be counter-productive to safe air travel, even in the event of a crash. Below in [[#Table of items|the table]] is a quick summary of each item.

The title text references the idea that there is a trumpet for each passenger provided by the airline, which is item number 16 on the list. This item also states that you, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, should remember to bring your own mouthpiece for the trumpet as a safety measure. 

The trumpet idea is then combined with the common debate regarding reclining your seat in airplanes. About half of the people think that reclining is rude as it takes up the space of the person behind you. The other half think that seats recline for a reason and the person in a seat has the rights to the space behind them. See for instance this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08A30v8isRs video] about such a debate. Reclining a seat has resulted in actual [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/fight-airplane-man-punch-video-b1895402.html physical fights] on board airplanes.

Here it seems that Randall sides with the anti-recliners, although maybe only in the context of the comic, because he states that reclining would prevent him from playing his trumpet, as the seat hits the bell of the trumpet. The person in front could certainly argue that playing the trumpet behind them would be very annoying, to which Randall could reply that because the trumpet is provided by the airline, he has the right to play it. This would add a new layer to the debate. This could also be Randall's way of arguing against the right to recline a seat, just because it is possible.

===Table of items===
{| class="wikitable"
! Item
! Explanation
|-
|Seat cushion
|This item is a play on sports stadium bleachers (sports stadiums were another venue commonly closed during the pandemic), because many sports fans find stadium bleachers uncomfortable and prefer to bring their own seat cushions. Airlines usually provide their own seat cushions for passengers, which are specially designed to float in water in the event of a plane crash.
|-
|{{w|Parachute}}
|Parachutes are normally used to slow down your falling out of the sky to a relatively safe speed in case of a severe problem with your aircraft, and are routinely used as a safety device by (para)glider pilots, test pilots, military aircraft crew and in similar situations when being unable to land safely is a significant concern. A parachute won't be very useful in a typical passenger airplane (even a small one) as there is no easy way to safely exit such a plane in-flight. Even the airplanes used for {{w|skydiving}} need to be specifically designed or modified for that purpose, such as having wide sliding doors that are unaffected by airflow. However, there were individual cases of people being ejected or sucked out of a passenger airplane, often during partial or complete break-up of the aircraft; in such case a parachute could arguably be useful.{{Citation needed}} Famously, [[D. B. Cooper]] jumped from an airplane in flight, with a parachute but was never knowingly seen again.
|-
|Wing glue
|Probably to repair wings in the event of damage, potentially in a crash. This would be tricky (but not necessarily impossible) to apply mid-flight. This is the first of several items that are potentially useful to the flight crew or maintenance teams, but would not be useful or appropriate for passengers to bring aboard. Minor repairs (including to the wings) can be made by service personnel using {{w|speed tape}}, tape specially designed for high-speed applications. Speed tape might be mistaken for ordinary duct tape by passengers.
|-
|{{w|Air horn}}
|An air horn uses compressed air to make a very loud noise, very easily. This may be important for drawing attention to yourself in the event of a crash. Typically, emergency life-jackets on a plane are provided with a light and whistle for this purpose. The noise of an air horn might prove more effective for this purpose than a whistle, but it would become useless as soon as the compressed air ran out. Its inclusion is probably meant to suggest that the word 'air' in its name indicates that it's designed for use in an aircraft. Using one in a non-emergency situation would infuriate everyone else on the plane.{{citation needed}}
|-
|{{w|Sextant}}
|In combination with star charts, a sextant can be used to determine your position based on the location of stars in the night sky. Alternately, in combination with an accurate clock, a sextant can be used to find the position of the sun relative to the aircraft to determine the vehicle's position.  In a crash, you could use this to find your way to a safe place, but sextants are rarely used, and most people are not trained on how to operate one. GPS will also allow you to find your position, is built into many phones, and is faster and easier to use than a sextant. If you've got a homing beacon, it probably makes more sense to just activate that and wait for help to arrive.

Until the early 1980s, long-range airplanes had a {{w|Air_navigation#Flight_navigator|flight navigator}} who used sextants and {{w|celestial navigation}} to determine the position of the airplane. Interestingly, it was much more accurate than early {{w|inertial navigation system}}s, and the accuracy of celestial navigation is still useful today. What made the sextant redundant was the INS' lower workload - the error accumulated by the INS during a long oceanic flight could always and easily be mitigated by other means, for example with {{w|VHF omnidirectional range|VOR}}/{{w|Non-directional beacon|NDB}} radio beacons.

A form of the sextant has also famously been used in {{w|Apollo_PGNCS#Optical_units|spacecraft navigation}} and similarly applied {{w|star tracker}}s have been used extensively to guide space-going craft ranging from suborbital missiles to interplanetary probes.
|-
|Nose plugs and goggles for pressure
|Nose plugs and goggles are commonly used in swimming but would be useless for dealing with cabin pressurization or depressurization. Since your mouth and nose are interconnected, nose plugs would be useless on their own. Trying to hold your breath in a sudden depressurization event will cause lung damage, so nose plugs wouldn't be a good thing, even if you could also seal off your mouth. Goggles would also not be useful. During depressurization, the air would just seep out. During pressurization, they would just become uncomfortable and difficult to remove.

Goggles were a typical piece of equipment for pilots of open cockpit airplanes, whose popularity peaked before the pandemic.{{Citation needed}} Nose plugs may be a reference to the spark plugs used on the engines of such vehicles.

Or nose plugs may be mentioned as it is similar to, but a silly mistake to use in place of, the ear plugs some people use on airplanes to help prevent discomfort as a result of a change in pressure.

|-
|Airplane shoes
|Airlines typically don't require the use of special footwear for passengers, nor do they provide special shoes. Before emergency egress, certain shoes (like high heels) must be discarded, though. Aircrew are also prohibited from wearing such shoes. May also be a reference to {{w|boat shoe|boat shoes}}, which are designed to reduce slipping on the wet decks of watercraft, or Japanese {{w|Toilets_in_Japan#Toilet_slippers|toilet shoes}}, which are put on as a sanitation measure when entering a toilet.
|-
|Navigation crystal
|Mystical form of navigation, presumably either for navigation during flight or to help you get home after a crash.
Crystals that polarize light can be used to find the sun on cloudy days and during twilight, a so-called {{w|Sunstone (medieval)|Sunstone}}, but despite historical records and archeological findings it has been difficult to replicate their utility.
|-
|Spare batteries in case the plane runs out
|Airplanes will generally use more power than any battery small enough to be easily packed in a bag could provide. The aircraft will generally use either 115V AC at 400Hz or 28V DC, both of which are very uncommon outside of aviation. The airplane will almost never use its own batteries in-flight anyway, getting its electric power from the main engines, the APU, or, in emergencies, the ram air turbine or similar generating device. The batteries are generally only used on the ground when the engines are not running. Could be to charge a phone or similar device if the plane runs out of outlets.
|-
|{{w|Birdseed}}
|So one can attract birds. In practice, this wouldn't work for multiple reasons (high speed, altitude, and sealed windows being some of most obvious ones) and would pose a significant hazard of birds getting stuck in an engine if it did. Spreading birdseed before boarding ''could'' work to attract birds, but would be seen as misconduct by airport authorities, as attracting birds close to aircraft would pose a danger to the aircraft. Alternatively, birdseed can be used to attract birds after surviving a crash, e.g. to catch them for food.
|-
|{{w|Homing beacon}}
|Once activated, a homing beacon will send out a continuous radio signal so that rescuers can find your location. These can be very useful in a plane crash, but airplanes already carry them ({{w|Emergency position-indicating radiobeacon}}s), so you don't need to pack one yourself. Incidentally, the {{w|COSPAS-SARSAT}} system for locating distressed airplanes and ships was a cooperation started by the United States and the Soviet Union, and it was an elegant and simple solution that uses the {{w|Doppler effect}} of radio signals for accurate location - long before the {{w|Global Positioning System}}.
|-
|Meteorite antidote
|Meteorites are pieces of space rocks that make it all the way to the ground. They can cause injury but they aren't generally poisonous{{Citation needed}}, so an antidote would not help. The antidote could be an antidote to something else, possibly snakebite and be derived from meteorites but meteorites also lack verified medicinal properties.
|-
|USB wing connector
|This is just a wire connector, but because it has wing in the name is on the list. Alternatively, the plane wings connect by USB, and this can be used to reattach wings. Airplanes usually use the {{W|ARINC 429}} protocol (or, increasingly, TCP/IP, RS427, RS232, or even CANBUS) instead of USB protocols to facilitate electronic communication between flight computers and the engines, for example.
|-
|Emergency siren
|Very much like air horn, would be useful for helping with locating you in the event of crash. It shares many of the same downsides, but would also more likely get damaged by water in case of a water landing.
|-
|Spare {{w|Flap (aeronautics)|flaps}}
|Flaps can be moved to adjust the lift/drag ratio of a wing, and are generally deployed during takeoff and landing when the aircraft's speed is slower. Flaps are very large and mounted on the wing, outside the passenger compartment, so bringing spares would be very difficult and completely useless. Flaps failing to deploy can usually be remedied by just landing at a longer runway.
|-
|{{w|Mouthpiece (brass)|Mouthpiece}} (pandemic restriction; airlines still provide the trumpet)
|A part of a brass instrument like a trumpet. Randall jokes that trumpets are provided on airplanes (which would be very obnoxious to other passengers), but due to the pandemic you cannot use a shared mouthpiece. (You shouldn't share mouthpieces for anything anyway, in general.)
|-
|Luggage ballast
|Likely to make plane more balanced. While balancing weight in a plane is indeed a real problem, it is solved by rearranging luggage and adjusting engine power slightly. Introducing ballast would mean additional weight for no real reason.
Alternatively, while a common passenger issue is to have hand- and/or hold-luggage that exceeds the airline's personal allowance, this person has ''under''weight baggage and does not wish to 'waste' the difference, so bulks it up. (Noting that someone already with the rest of the items on this list is unlikely to suffer this 'problem'.)
|-
|Flag (international flights)
|To identify your country of origin. Other flags are also used to communicate between boats without electricity, in the event the boats are in distress, so they could be used in the event of a crash.
|-
|Decoy tickets
|Maybe these would used as a distraction so you can sneak onto the plane without paying?
But also a typical trope for fictional (and real life?) attempts to evade being tracked or followed. Buy tickets for one destination, that one assumes the opposition will be fully aware of, but also arrange for another set (probably with a 'clean' identity) for your intended destination and switch to using those once in the chaos of the departure-lounge.
|-
|Keys to the plane
|Although some people pushed for it after an airplane was stolen in the {{w|2018 Horizon Air Q400 incident}}, most commercial planes do not require keys to start the engine(s) like a car does. Likewise, plane doors are not locked with a key. Instead, they are secured with a tamper seal. If a seal is found broken, the plane is thoroughly checked for any wrong-doing.
|}

==Transcript==
:[A lists of 20 items is given in two columns with 10 items in each. Each item is preceded by a checkbox. Most items only take up one line, but in the left column two items take up two and in the right one item take up three, so they take up the same space. Above is a large heading, with an explanation beneath it.]
:<big><big>Air Travel Packing List</big></big>
:<big>If you haven't flown in a while, you might not remember what you need to bring. Use this handy checklist to pack!</big>

:[Left column:]
:☐ Seat cushion
:☐ Parachute
:☐ Wing glue
:☐ Air horn
:☐ Sextant
:☐ Nose plugs and goggles for pressure
:☐ Airplane shoes
:☐ Navigation crystal
:☐ Spare batteries in case the plane runs out
:☐ Birdseed

:[Right column:]
:☐ Homing beacon
:☐ Meteorite antidote
:☐ USB wing connector
:☐ Emergency siren
:☐ Spare flaps
:☐ Mouthpiece (Pandemic restriction; airlines still provide the trumpet)
:☐ Luggage ballast
:☐ Flag (International flights)
:☐ Decoy tickets
:☐ Keys to the plane

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Aviation]]
[[Category:COVID-19]]
[[Category:Animals]]