11 hours ago
5
November 3, 2025 — 5:00am
In the film Bad Moms, there’s a moment when an exhausted mother confesses her greatest mid-life fantasy is a “small” car crash – just enough to land her in hospital, so she can take a break from the kids, the dishes and her husband.
That’s what flying long-haul in economy for the first time without kids in close to a decade feels like for me: a complete and utter respite from the mental load, no matter how awful flying long-haul economy can be.
Science has clearly established that flying is not great for your health. From interrupting your circadian rhythms to impacting your cardiovascular system, causing gut issues and leaving you dehydrated, flying long-haul is physically gruelling. Mentally, too, the anxiety is real: confinement, the lines, the cattle-yard feel, the lack of space, and the awful fluorescent lighting in airports.
Then there’s the social aspect of flying – also a nightmare. Tedious things that shouldn’t bother you get amplified. People who play sound on personal devices out loud, people who recline (or don’t recline), who want the shade open or closed, the wait in a six-person queue in both directions for a toilet, only to discover there is no loo paper left.
And yet after nine years of flying to Europe with kids, paying a small fortune to sit together, facing disapproving looks, and having bodily fluids from one end or the other leaking over me every flight, it’s hard to view my first solo flight as anything other than a blissful experience.
I love my family, I adore my kids. I love taking them travelling. Watching them light up like little sprites when they run into their grandparents’ arms at the airport, their squeals of joy as they snorkel with tropical fish, their delight at seeing snow fall for the first time. The mild trauma of flying with them is worth the core family memories and formative cultural experiences they have. But getting there? It ain’t easy.
Travelling with children has set the bar oh so low for me that this simple block of time not having to juggle four passports, eight bags, one collapsible overpriced cabin-approved stroller, enough snacks to feed the entire plane, and 28 Matchbox cars is like some sort of gift from a merciful god.
So when I settle into my aisle seat, I feel exceedingly smug. On my flight, I finally read a paperback. I watch an uninterrupted movie filled with swearing, blood, sex and guts from start to finish. A steward pours me a generous beverage that is more gin than tonic. I eat my dinner while it’s still hot. I nap, uninterrupted.
Somewhere in the background, a few seats behind, someone’s kid is grumbling. A few seats in front of me, a baby whimpers. But they’re neither my responsibility nor my problem.
All around me, though, people can’t stop complaining. The food, the toilets, the discomfort, the slight delay, their tight connection, the armrest, that one guy snoring, and the existence of – gasp – mere children on the flight.
I, too, love a good grumble and indulgent whinge. But no one else around me seems that happy to be on this flight. Perhaps we’ve gotten so used to travelling long-haul that we’ve forgotten the sheer privilege and convenience air travel offers us.
Being waited on with food, coffee, snacks and booze, with my own personal entertainment system? Not shabby, even if it’s a little uncomfortable. For everyone else, travelling long haul might be hell. For this mama, it’s a much-needed break. And with that in mind, I press play on a slasher flick.
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