
One of my favourite cartoons shows a couple sitting in luxury at the front of a plane, the wife peeking through the curtains to the cabin behind. ‘I’m so glad we’re in business class, darling,’ she says to her husband. ‘There seems to be some sort of hijacking happening in economy.’
People who have learned to play a game by one set of rules are bitterly affronted when the rules change
Because we must consort with strangers for several hours, planes and airports amplify the normal human sensitivity to status.

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