Dialogue: Flights full of passengers dancing down the aisles

Fears about economy class syndrome have induced passengers to start doing all sorts of odd things on long-distance flights, writes BARBARA EWING*.

You will have seen them. There have been hundreds of articles in the newspapers, here and all over the world, about deep vein thrombosis acquired through long air flights.

There have been horror stories of young, fit people dying, and athletes collapsing; studies of the number of deaths; scientific and medical opinions; advice on exercise while travelling.

The conspiracy theory (that the airlines knew all along and were not telling) has had an airing and I understand that no firm conclusions have yet been drawn.

Pictures of legs have been published, with arrows showing where the blood flows up and down the leg, where the pain can start and spread out to, where blockages can occur.

I have been making those long flights between England and New Zealand since the 1960s. So I have, of course, studied all these reports avidly: looking at the statistics, weighing up the chances, checking my knee joints - all the stuff you do even though you know in your heart it could never happen to you.

I decided, many years ago, that yoga was the answer - not to avoid deep vein thrombosis (I didn't even know about that) - but to avoid boredom, stiffness, depression, rage, insanity, all of which attack me at various times as the piece of machinery moves from one side of the world to the other, full to the brim with crumpled human beings.

In the olden days when the long-distance planes were not full and code-sharing had not yet begun, economy class was the place to be.

I became an expert at grabbing a row of empty seats just before the plane took off, and then raising the armrests and lying stretched out across more seats than I had paid for, drinking wine.

We mocked the briefcase-carrying passengers in business class whose armrests were immovable. (And only dreamed of first class: that's the way we would travel when we were film stars.)

But these days as you are welcomed aboard "this Air New Zealand Flight X, Singapore Airlines Flight Y, Virgin Airlines Flight Z" every seat in economy class is usually taken. Any extra little seat is fought over, with the strongest (or the most cunning) passenger being triumphant.

I have sat on countless occasions, squashed, for 24 hours or more, trying very hard to take comfort in the fact that we were using less fuel, and, therefore, adding less to the world's pollution, than we might have.

Even the alcohol seems to be rationed: I presume one too many passengers has attacked a crew member in alcohol-fuelled air-rage for them to be as liberal as they were in the good old days.

Recently, armed with my bottle of water, having read that aeroplane water can contain all sorts of unmentionable things, and my cutting from the newspaper showing the anatomy of the leg, I flew from London to Auckland, with a two-hour stop at Singapore.

The plane was full, of course. Not a spare seat to be fought over anywhere - the usual story. But now there is a new development.

Every little nook and cranny of the plane, every corner by the toilets, every space beside the kitchens or the baby carriers, is now full as well.

Everywhere you go, should you perambulate, you come across people hopping and skipping and rotating their ankles.

The passengers in economy class have been reading their newspapers and watching television.

The potential victims of economy class syndrome are well-informed, and are taking appropriate action.

You are perhaps dropping off to sleep in an aisle seat when you are aware of a rugby player in the aisle nearby, tap-dancing in the darkness.

Elderly women pirouette, humming Swan Lake and holding on to the back of your seat for support. Young mothers dance their children on the table by the emergency door.

As I also, of course, try to do my middle-aged yoga at the back of the plane, I add to the confusion.

Just occasionally a passenger who knows that it could not happen to him opens one eye, shakes his head in disbelief, goes back to sleep.

Does the plane shudder more with all this extra activity? Even those watching the movie are lifting their feet up and down.

And what, one wonders somewhat uneasily, is happening on the flight deck? Surely the crew, regular flyers and so much more in danger than the casual traveller, have been given, even though they are not flying economy class, deep vein thrombosis instructions?

Are they rotating their ankles and doing arabesques for the sake of their health? Who is driving?

Towards dawn, one of the dawns we pass or that passes us, the activity slows somewhat. Everyone is simply too weary.

The dancing plane finally approaches Auckland Airport. We arrive in New Zealand, gratefully (there is always gratitude, just for a moment, as the wheels touch the ground: once again, you made it).

As I get off, hit at once by the heat and the blue sky and the feeling of home, I ask an air hostess if she found the new activities of the passengers a nuisance.

She smiles very sweetly: "It is a little troublesome when we take the trolleys through. But we do understand, madam, and feel it would be much more troublesome if you died."

She said it with exquisite politeness, smiling all the time, as if we passengers, tap-dancing and rotating and blocking the aisles, were doing her a favour. Which, of course, if you look at it from her point of view, perhaps we were.

I suppose most of us will forget about deep vein thrombosis and find it hard to believe we were pirouetting over Kazakhstan. Till next time.

* Barbara Ewing, an actor and writer, divides her time between London and New Zealand.

Feature: Economy class syndrome