April 11, 2024

THE PHOTO ABOVE was taken in Boston, a week or so ago in the newly expanded section of terminal E.

The plane is an Airbus A340. But what’s important is that yellow box. See it, along the right edge of the main boarding door? Any guesses what it’s for?

Turns out it’s a sort of dry-erase board — an empty placard onto which crewmembers can write greetings to the passengers. “Welcome aboard,” and that kind of thing. Maybe everyone signs their names, or someone draws a whimsical sketch of mountains or a palm tree, depending where you’re off to. On the interwebs you can see reels and photos of flight crews getting creative.

Things like this restore my faith in commercial aviation. It’s one of those personal, friendly little touches that customers remember. And it costs virtually nothing. (It’s bloggable too, and good for publicity.) Airlines need to think like this more often.

So good on Lufthansa.

And good on me. Because I thought of it first.

I once concocted my own version, from a template I’d made on my computer. I’d print out a sheet of paper, with my airline’s logo and the standard “Welcome Aboard” at the top. I’d write in the pilots’ names, the flight number, and the expected flight time. Then at the bottom I’d sketch a small pictorial of the arrival weather: a sun, for instance, or a raincloud, and next to it the temperature in both Celsius and Fahrenheit (these were usually international flights). Using masking tape, I’d affix the piece of paper to the same spot where Lufthansa’s yellow rectangle is.

It was a pleasant way of saying hello, I thought, and gave customers something to look at while bottlenecked at the end of the jetway.

Not everyone agreed, however, which is why I gave the practice up. More than once I was chewed out by flight attendants, who claimed that people were pausing to read the sign, which meant it took longer to board. Other times, pilots I was flying with took issue with their names being shared.

Whether or not these objections were justified, I stopped doing it. Which made me feel nostalgic, and a bit resentful, when I learned about Lufthansa.

But, I don’t know, maybe it’s best that I stopped. The geek factor was, I admit, a little heavy. Walking past that Lufthansa jet, I pointed out the yellow block to one of my colleagues, and told him how I’d once improvised the same idea using paper and tape. He shot me a puzzled look. “You did what?”

Try to forgive me. I was back from a five-year furlough and excited to be flying again.

Litter. Litter would have been a valid gripe. I didn’t always remember to take down the sheets before the door was closed. And, no, they were never still attached when we landed. More than a few of my homemade greetings have long ago disintegrated into Jamaica Bay, no doubt, or found their way into airport storm drains.

PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR