Glowing Boeing into Cartagena! Man Meets Dreamliner, Man Dreams On

Strange thing. Or not so strange.

Airplane manufacturers, like all manufacturers, want to bring us the next big wow — not just now, but right now! Online, I once saw, circa 2015, an Airbus outline for a plane sheathed in a transparent material that would expose passengers to the nitty gritty of the elements outside — wind shear, sudden shifts in visual perception, severe lightning, hail, the wobble of touch down through hurricane force winds. You name it, we the passengers would be all agog to see it, Airbus seemed to think. They were blowing our mind, one report at the time enthused.

How cool was a see-through plane?

Not.

Zero cool.

Novelty for the sake of novelty does not success guarantee. Remember New Coke? Well no, perhaps you don’t.

Airplane passengers are human. We have established needs. One of them might just be to feel protected from the elements when we fly in a minute-by-minute, moment-by-moment, kind of way.

So goodbye Airbus transparent plane idea and hello Boeing.

Pre-pandemic, I got on my first Dreamliner. Avianca, pre-bankruptcy — now how about that! — was flying one of their newly acquired Boeing 787’s on the 1-hour flight from Bogotá to Cartagena and I was on board. Super number of people wanting into Cartagena, Colombia; the plane was full. A flight attendant in a voiceover before takeoff explained that the 787 normally runs the Bogotá-Buenos Aires, Bogotá-Sao Paulo, Bogotá-New York routes, but here we were with such high demand for the stone throw’s hop to Cartagena that Avianca was offering us a 787 on a short domestic flight.

We should be thankful, I guess, was the gist. Avianca was throwing us, mere domestic passengers, a bone.

Take off from Bogotá seemed particularly slow, as if we didn’t in fact have sufficient speed for liftoff. I am here to report that we finally did. And next thing you know shortly into flight, an invisible DJ began to play with tints on the windows, an impresario schooled in 1970’s disco.

Why?

Who knows? Now when we needed a voiceover of explanation, none was forthcoming.

Lights and window shades went up and down, from dark to light, without comment.

Was this Boeing’s competitive advantage over Airbus — a disco light show while flying, I wondered. Let’s dim the window lights in broad daylight in tonalities of blue so that the passengers on board will feel like they have entered the Twilight Zone, or are flying under water. What a great idea!

Again not.

Let’s confuse passengers as to whether it’s night or day outside. They are sure to be amused. If not amused, at the very least entertained.

This passenger was neither amused nor entertained.

On my flight, the pilot, chief steward, or wannabe dj, seemed to be in control of the disco window tints. The shadings of light came and went for no discernible reason other than novelty. God forbid that I should ever be on an overnight flight controlled by these automatons on let’s say a 10-hour flight to Madrid.

Yikes!

Descending through cloud into Cartagena, despite CNN’s reporting that the 787 has a system that can detect turbulence and change wing control surfaces to counteract its effects without human intervention, the turbulence was so severe that the entire plane erupted into shrieks and shouts the likes of which I have never heard in my lifetime of flying.

And yet on successful landing in Cartagena, all was forgiven. Disembarking passenger after passenger (in Cartagena you walk down external stairs to deplane) wanted a picture with the newest plane on the block. The swooped-up engines seemed to be a particular draw. Selfies in front of the engines were de rigueur.

Dear Boeing, I am not a believer. Visual manipulation when flying is not yours to give, neither yours nor Airbus’s.

In fact, any kind of manipulation of passengers’ mindsets when flying is not yours to bestow. Could you get back to your engineers on this? They seem to have forgotten.

We, your passengers, despite what you may have imagined up to now, are happy (relatively speaking) to just sit back and watch the sky, or blankness, or video screens, go by until we get to our destination.

Could you concentrate on guaranteeing our safety (the turbulence, for example) once again? No further oohs and ahhs, or window tints, required.

Luckily for me, my destination on that trip was Cartagena, where many oohs and ahhs are, in fact, in order.