Matt Heath: History tells us long-haul flights are nothing to complain about

OPINION:

Flying to the other side of the world can be a painful experience. We become bored, uncomfortable and whiny on long-haul trips. There is, however, an easy way to make travel more bearable and
it doesn’t involve a humiliating neck pillow, a change of undies or a support animal. All you have to do is think about the past. Imagine telling a person from the 19th century that you find flying from Auckland to Paris in one day a challenge. They would laugh you out of your reclining seat. Big flights are a breeze with a sniff of gratitude for the amazing time we live in.

I am writing this aboard an Airbus A380, flying at 1050km/h at 38 thousand feet. It’s 73 metres long, 24 high, weighs 560 tonnes and is currently using physics I don’t understand to stay in the air. The flight will take 17 hours to get to Dubai, there will be a three-hour stopover there and then seven hours to France. It took the French sailing ship Comte de Paris more than five months to make it to New Zealand in 1840, including 10 days stuck on a mud bank. To refloat the boat, passengers were ordered to throw their luggage overboard. There is zero chance we will be asked to biff our carry-on out the airlock to keep this plane in the air.

Four months into the Comte de Paris’ journey, lightning struck the mast, smashed it in half and very nearly capsized the ship. Four hours into this flight, the guy in front of me got upset after he was served a merlot instead of a pinot noir.

The food on the boat 150 years ago consisted of salted meat, rock-hard bread and weevil-infested oatmeal one hundred days in a row. We can barely stand the time between finishing our meal and it being cleared. Just moments ago, I looked down at the leftovers of my beef rendang, assorted cheeses, cake, biscuits and a glass of red and complained to my two friends, “I hate this bit, just sitting in my own filth waiting for them to clear my rubbish.”

Three people died on the Comte de Paris’ journey, including a man one day from arrival and a baby named Marguerite David who had been born a month into the journey. That poor girl was one of two children born on the trip. The other one, Armand Isidore Desprairies Libeau, was named after the second captain, so despite the drama, they must have thought the crew were doing a decent job.

As I write this, I can hear a baby crying somewhere down the cabin. It’s much less annoying when I think of the horrors of the Comte de Paris. If you call to mind that mother 182 years ago, going through childbirth on an unhygienic, dangerous boat and then losing the baby months later, it’s hard to be annoyed at a healthy one having a little cry. Nowadays it’s considered a major feat to transport an infant long-haul. People talk about it for weeks in advance. No one is giving birth up here.

The fact we can travel around the world in one day is a recent miracle of human brilliance. Our species originated in Africa around 200,000 years ago, for nearly all of that time we have gotten from place to place using our feet. Even as recently as 1960, it took eight days to fly from Europe to Auckland, with stops at Damascus, Karachi, Singapore, Darwin and Brisbane. Here I am travelling at .85 Mach, with a bunch of mates, texting my little sister my arrival time using on-board Wi-Fi. On this trip, instead of finding ways to feel hard done, I will choose gratitude. I will marvel at the human brilliance that has us travelling halfway around the planet in a day, mindful of the hardships endured by my ancestors, and spend these few hours in the sky appreciating the excellent times we live in.

Having said that, my seat is starting to feel a little rough on my linen pants and it’s ages until the NRL Grand Final appears live on my screen. After all I am going through to get there, the All Blacks better bloody win.