Well, I’ll Never Make This Travel Mistake Again!

Hillary Frey
·2 min read
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A person with a star-eyed emoji for a head looking at their phone on a flight.
Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Getty Images Plus.

This is One Thing, a column with tips on how to live.

A few weeks ago, while preparing for an eight-hour flight to Berlin to visit my husband, I downloaded the latest episodes of The Morning Show and Billions to help kill the time before boarding my flight. (I am a chronic early arriver to the airport.) It was great! I was very entertained while I enjoyed a Nathan’s hot dog in the Delta lounge, along with some complimentary sparkling wine.

But shortly after takeoff, I realized my folly. I had not downloaded nearly enough stuff to get me through a true emergency: a flightwide outage of the entertainment system.

When I realized that the TVs weren’t working, I panicked; surely someone was going to have a meltdown. Would first class revolt? (Probably not with their floofy pillows and comforters). There seemed to be no children on the plane, which was good at least. I was relieved that iPad-less parents would not need to suffer the duration without Bluey on the screen. But then I looked to my right, saw a man about my age happily watching what looked like some installment of Taken, and felt what I can only describe as an all-consuming jealousy. He was pacified! He was smart! He had downloaded movies for the flight!

I was extremely bummed. I had basically memorized the Delta catalog, thanks to multiple summer flights for my wedding and honeymoon, and had been looking forward to some old Veeps and dozing off during John Wick. (I do not know why, but that movie puts me out completely.) Instead, I had nothing. Not even the flight map worked!

I will not make this mistake again. I have a list of (nice and long) Michael Mann films to download to my MacBook and rewatch on future flights. Maybe I’ll throw the Godfather trilogy on there too. L’Amour Fou would take up about four hours, but that’s kind of the opposite of what I want to watch on the plane.

Please, take this as a cautionary tale, and figure out your emergency movie plan ahead of your next trip. Streaming services allow for downloads on certain plans and for certain titles. Podcasts and audiobooks are another good backup. But I’m personally going to stock up on visual media—and on multiple devices. When I need to put up that tray table for naptime, I want to be drifting off to John Wick playing on my phone.