In-flight service has always intrigued me. At present, it is slowly disappearing not because airlines realized that having uniformed people serving you in your seat is closer to a distant past than to the fast-changing present, but because they need to reduce costs and they think a good way to do it is making passengers pay even for their water. Perhaps the solution would be to equip airplanes with snack machines so that whoever wants to eat or drink can do it on demand, without the need to call the flight attendant and be served. I kept a coffee stirrer from my last transatlantic flight –the only flights where you get a meal nowadays- mainly because I wonder if its aerodynamic shape had to do with its context rather than its function: no doubt it is a poor stirrer; but it does suggest the formal vocabulary that goes with the idea of flying, a mixture of aerodynamics and ephemeral comfort. I must be one of the few who enjoys in-flight meals not because of their quality –needless to say- but because they are a ritual attached to my personal history. I have also noticed that they are very wasteful –everything is disposable, including the small stirrer I kept as a souvenir. At the same time, the fact that airplanes need to reduce weight, and their tools and objects are designed for lightness, gives this small injection-molded plastic utensil a whole new meaning.
