Practices of waiting: dramatized timing within air travel

ABSTRACT

Timing has a notable, yet often inconspicuous and tacit impact on the ordering of everyday life. Based on an ethnographic study, this paper is concerned with different time requirements that emerge in the course of air travel. It starts with the ambivalent temporality of such travel, focusing on the many delays which passengers face on their way to the fastest means of travel available nowadays. Since the route to the plane is characterized by time pressure, the airport is a case of dramatized timing. On board, however, temporalities change noticeably. There is a systematic split between the time of the working crew members and that of passengers. This split not only concerns a strict division of labour, but also of motility: Passengers are materially and normatively bound to their seats while attendants provide them with a service for basic needs like nutrition or sleep, which is timed in accordance with the plane’s motion and with logistic times. This can create conflicts with passenger’s personal timings or preferences in time use. In sum, timing on board is materially dramatized and this paper suggests carefully examining the impact of materialities (of im/mobilities) on temporalities.

KEYWORDS:

• Waiting
• temporalities
• air travel
• motility
• coordination
• adaptation
• (re-)ordering

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Before this route and its deadlines, there are of course numerous other forms of exclusion: In order to successfully book a flight, one needs an appropriate passport, enough money, technical know-how, and infrastructure. A growing body of literature reflects on these phenomena (e.g. Kitchin and Dodge 2011; Amoore 2011; Amoore and Hall 2009; Adey 2002).

2. Dant (2004) has elaborated on the driver-car as such an assemblage, arguing that a symbiotic relation between driver and car emerges (once driving is a routine). He convincingly illustrates how technical and embodied motion meshes, even if the body itself accomplishes primarily tiny movements. However, his analysis does not consider the assemblage of the passenger-car, i.e. less active mobile practices. Thus, my considerations are also an extension of his remarks.

3. From a humanist point of view, this includes a certain potential for conflicts, since there are many people who complain about being treated like objects (instead of humans). This leads to a notable effort to affirm a demarcation between humans and non-humans. Maybe, the openly practiced status differences in air travel are part of these affirming practices (in this regard, see Latour 2008 on security belts).

4. Comparable efforts, although at a considerably bigger and technically much more sophisticated level, are made to harmonize the rhythm of cities (cf. Coletta and Kitchin 2017).

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) under grant number [271437443].