GETTING TO KNOW ONE'S NEIGHBOR

Hello from NY. Flew over on Monday afternoon and got here Monday evening. Had an uneventful flight (other than it being over an hour late leaving).

Security at Heathrow was substantially more than what had been the norm previously of course. The US bound BA flights out of Terminal 4 were all herded into one area of the terminal, where there was an additional security checkpoint just before the gate area. There, we were all asked our destination and (one more time) if we had liquid in our hand luggage; at that point, they chose to stop and search individuals for reasons only the security people know. At the gates themselves, just before departure, Met Police with dogs wandered through, and the canines appeared to be sniffing out . . . well, whatever canines sniff out.

Once aboard, the flight seemed the emptiest we had experienced crossing the Atlantic in some time. Our seats were in the middle row of 4, where it was myself and the wife in two, no one next to the wife, and then another woman on the end. One row up from us and adjacent, in a window bank of three, proved to be the in-flight entertainment -- at least for those two people in that row.

By that I mean after we had taken out seats, we saw man in his thirties board and he took that row's window seat. He caught our eye because at first glance he had appeared to have managed to have gotten through security with what seemed two carry on bags, but which we supposed had been one inside the other at security (they were not letting anyone with more than one bag through security). Sometime a short while later, a woman, who also appeared in her 30s, boarded and she took the aisle seat. After we were aloft, we noticed she seemed obsessed with a Sudoku book. Otherwise, nothing really memorable about her.

During the routine lunch/dinner, the wife and I watched "The Da Vinci Code". (Not a bad film, really.) After the film ended, with the cabin lights dimmed, we both nodded off. I don't recall how long we'd been asleep, but when we awoke, we noticed that that man and that woman in that nearby row had obviously gotten to know each other much better and were now sitting right next to each other. Having noticed the empties and what the woman then was drinking, the wife believed she'd had at least 5 bottles of red wine -- minimum; he a similar amount. Neither had said much of anything earlier either to anyone else or to each other; but by this time she hardly could keep quiet, giggling like teenager as they -- I can think of no other way to describe it -- "made out".

She spoke English with a sort of Scandinavian intonation; we never really heard him speak clearly enough to catch an accent, but when we saw his passport cover later it wasn't British or American. At one point during their "intimate conversation," a flight attendant appeared to take an interest at their "doings" and stood right next to them, obviously making sure nothing "more" was going on.

Upon landing at JFK, that woman asked that man if he was going on "public transport" and although we never heard the answer, they walked off -- for her, staggered might be a better description -- together into the non-US citizen passport line, where we last saw them. The wife joked with me the next day that, given their behavior for several hours during the flight, it was entirely possible that on Tuesday morning she woke up next to him . . . somewhere.

Ah, isn't that nice? British Airways isn't just "the world's greatest airline." It actually "brings people together."

[Posted 7:02 AM NY time]  ¶ by Robert, Thursday, September 28, 2006