I love it…. as long as I can avoid the following top 10 bad passenger behaviors on an airplane.

Being a professional flyer (I haven’t earned my wings yet, but I do have a lot of miles and a lot of great benefits on American Airlines) I’ve learned, as George Clooney did in the movie “Up In The Air”,,there’s certain people that you really, really need to avoid as much as possible, and it starts before you even get to the airport.

1. Print out your boarding pass ahead of time and learn the art of the carry-on baggage. I don’t care if you’re going away for 10 days, you should never have to check your luggage. It adds at least an hour to your trip. Unless you’re status on an airline, which most people are not, you’re going to wait in a long line to check in your luggage, you’re going to pay a fee, the luggage is then going to go down a chute, it’s going to get the shit kicked out of it, maybe rummaged through, and then hopefully will get to the destination in one piece. And when it does get to the destination, you’ll be waiting for the carousel to start. If there’s ever a storm at the destination, or you’re arriving late at night, the airport usually is understaffed, so you’ll wait even longer. Learn to pack well, compress clothes, get a suitcase designed for carry-on, there are lots of things you can do. So, armed with that information, when you get to the airport, you’re already armed with your boarding pass and you immediately can go into the security line.

2. Scan the security line. When the security line disperses to four different lines after you wait in the main line, never, ever, ever go behind the family. You’re done. Little Timmy with his little suitcase, little Mary who just learned how to tie her shoes, the mother with the infant, the grandpa who forgets to take his belt off before going through the metal detector, the grandma freaking out because she has to go through the body scanner, they’ll all hold up that line. Never go behind the old people. They take forever with their stuff. Always look for the business people line, the businessman, the businesswoman, the solo person. Not the couple, because the couple can trip you up with an argument and anything else. When you make it through the security line, never act annoyed. Always smile at them. It’ll get you through a lot faster that way. When you’re up, be prepared. Laptop out, shoes off, jewelry off, belt off. Don’t be the guy who holds up the line.

3. When the flight is called, don’t all of a sudden go to the front of the line and pretend like you don’t know your group. You know you’re in group four, so just chill out and wait. Stop going up to the front of the line when you don’t belong in the front of the line, causing a log jam. Stick by your group.

4. Know your luggage dimensions. Wheels first, or wheels out. Bag vertical or bag horizontal. Don’t be the person who puts the luggage in sideways, wastes all that space, and leaves no room in the luggage overhead for anyone else. It just means that the plane will take off later. Don’t go to the bathroom when everybody is boarding, and then you got to work your way backwards against the flow of traffic. I love those people. You knew you had to pee before you got on the plane, you should have peed before you got on the plane. You don’t want to have to fight your way back. Do not put your luggage up way before your seating area.

5. If you’re in row 30, don’t throw your stuff up above row 10, it’s not fair to the people in row 10. You put your luggage in the row that you belong in. Don’t just dump it somewhere and then walk all the way to the back of the plane. Don’t be a luggage dumper.

6. Do not ass your neighbor. When you’re bending down to do something in your seat, do not stick your butt directly in someone’s face in the seat around you. You got to know the dimensions of your body by now, you’ve been in it your entire life, so do not ass somebody.

7. Do not bash somebody in the head with your carry-on bag. You know the dimensions of your carry-on bag, carry your bag on facing forward. Don’t sling it over your shoulder so it hits everybody in the head and shoulder as you’re going through the aisle. You know they way your bag hangs, don’t pretend it doesn’t do that just because it’s behind your back.

8. Don’t pretend you’ve never flown before. To get ready for takeoff, put your seatbelt on, turn your cell phone off, turn the ipod off. I love people who do that, they will keep the cell phone on and the headphones in the ears. If they tell you power off all electrical equipment, it means power off all electrical equipment. Mean, anything that has an on/off button, press the off button, that simple. You don’t need your phone on, you don’t need to wait for the last-minute text or the last-minute e-mail.

9. Never, ever buy McDonald’s and bring it on an airplane. The entire plane is going to smell like McDonald’s. There’s no worse smell than being in a closed compartment with the smell of Big Macs and French fries. So if you’re one of those people who loves McDonald’s, do everyone else a favor and eat it before you get on the plane so you can save the skin and clothes of everybody else. If you’ve ever been on an airplane with McDonald’s, your entire clothes stink like McDonald’s, your face smells like McDonald’s, everything smells like McDonald’s.

10. Acknowledge the person sitting next to you, but do not vomit words at them. The best people are those who share a seating area with you, they sit down and they don’t even say hello to you, at all. This way I know you don’t want to talk, you just say hey, how are you, and that’s it. Do not share your life history with somebody if they’re not interested. If you’d like to talk to the person next to you, go ahead and start a conversation. But it’s a long flight. If they do not respond to you, they put their headphones in, or they stare into a magazine up in their face, it means they don’t want to talk to you. Don’t continue talking or complaining or blabbering on if the person you’re talking to doesn’t care.

11. If you know you have a weak bladder or a bladder the size of a pea, do not get a window seat and then proceed to drink 100 gallons of water during the course of the flight and make the aisle seat person get up five times to let you out. On a two-hour flight, you do not need to be fed and watered every five minutes. There are plenty of times in your day when you are not eating and drinking for two hours. Granted, you need to hydrate on an airplane because you’ll feel better, but one 16 ounce bottle in a two-hour flight is sufficient.

12. This is not your bathroom at home, so do not bring a book or a newspaper with you into the bathroom. Do not sit there for a half hour and read a book while you are on the toilet. Go in, do your business, and get out.

Ok, so a little more than a top ten list. It’s amazing how a little bit of etiquette with people will do you wonders on an airplane. You’re sitting in a large cylinder with a group of strangers, so treat it that way.

And I don’t even want to mention the people who have chronic gas.

You are on a ten hour flight coming back from wherever you’ve been — from a secret location vacation. That’s what I like to call my vacations: secret location vacations. (We had a great time on ours by the way).

So we are nearly at the end of our ten hour flight back to Los Angeles, when the flight attendant becomes just really annoying. Here we are, watching our fourth movie and enjoying it. It was a really great movie called “My Sister’s Keeper,” and we’re getting close to the gut-wrenching end when the poor girl is dying of cancer.

Then, all of a sudden, the movie freezes on the screen as the flight attendant gets on the P.A. system to talk to us about . . . money. Yes, she wanted to announce that they were sending around a bag to collect money for UNICEF.

Now maybe if they had brought around a giant plastic pumpkin — or even one of those orange boxes like we used to use when I was a kid — then I might have given them my leftover change. To pass around a garbage bag, though, is just showing there there is no innovation.

It was also really annoying to have her go into this long speech about UNICEF when I just wanted to see the end of the movie. When the movie final did resume, the pilot gets on the speakers.

Who cares that we are almost there. Just land the plane. Then he gives us a guided tour of what is below us. As I am in a middle row, I can’t possibly see that we’re flying over Vegas.

Then the movie comes back on, except it is interrupted again by one of my favorite things in the world:the welcome to America video. It’s such a wonderful video. It teaches you how to make it through customs as if you are retarded.

Look, I’ve flown into England, Germany and lots of other countries, and nobody else plays a video about what to do when you get there. That’s part of the fun of going — not knowing what to do, what to claim and what to fill out.

The United States, however, has an entire patriotic video. Any of you who work for the government are probably cringing right now because I probably sound very anti-American.

The truth is that I am not anti-American at all. I just do not want to watch these videos . . . especially during a crucial part of the movie I’m trying to finish on the plane.

When they finally put the movie back on again, then the flight attendant comes over and says she wants to put my headphones away before we land in another 20 minutes. I looked at her and said, “No, you’ve already interrupted the move fourteen times.”

So if any of you work for the airlines, please help out and see what you can do about getting rid of those videos. Also, although I don’t mind giving money to causes, do we have to be asked while we’re on a plane?

We already give money everywhere we go. You are at the airport and a Hari Krishna hits you up before you hit the plane. You get off the plane, and some guy in a priest outfit is hitting you up for some type of Catholic school thing.

I mean everywhere you go, people are asking for money. Really, I’d like to see some ingenuity at least from the people asking me for the money. I’d like to see the first bum on the street with a credit card processing machining. That would really impress me. Instead of asking for change, they could tell you that they take PayPal, American Express, Visa and Master Card.

My feelings about airplanes would be different if the airlines offered better things on a plane. It would be different if when you boarded a plane, they asked if you were single and seated you with the other single people. I mean, how many times have you walked down the aisle of the plane toward your seat and thought, “Why aren’t I sitting next to THAT person?!”

You could change seats throughout the flights and get to socialize with lots of different people. They could designate a whole singles section in the back of the plane. It could be like a mini speed dating event in the back five rows.

They could have a section for each group. Singles could hang in the back few rows. Divorced people would sit in rows 3 through 7. Couples would hang out in a section together. There would be a section just for swingers. All all the screaming kids would be put in their own section.

Better yet, why not have an entirely separate plane just for kids. No adults, just the kids. Instead of flight attendants, there would be adult babysitters on the plane. They would walk around the plane serving three kinds of milk: breast, whole and skim. Can you imagine what those flight attendants would look like by the end of each trip? Green pea spit up on their shirts and all sorts of other craziness.

I actually think that singles should have their own plane . . . and even their own airline. On that airline, the cart would go around serving shots, cosmopolitans, martinis and Jaegermeister. Instead of peanuts, they would hand out condoms to each person.

There would be a special place for people to go to hook up and join the mile high club. If you think about it, this is a great idea and actually superior to other ways people meet and hook up.

Think if you were on a ten hour flight and ended up getting laid. Is that so crazy? People hook up all the time after two or three hours of talking to someone in a bar. Ten hours sitting and talking with someone on a plane is a long time to get to know someone. It’s like three dates worth of conversation smushed together into one trip.

On the singles airline, if you get laid on the flight you would earn triple miles. just think, three trips to Europe getting laid on each one and you’re executive platinum status. If you think executive platinum has benefits on American, on our airline you get your own waterbed in the back complete with a Hugh Hefner silk robe. Talk about priority seating. . .

This singles airline concept would definitely save the airline industry a lot better than collecting for UNICEF.

I’m not here to tell you who I voted for yesterday because the last time I decided to talk about politics in the blog I got shit for two days afterwards. And all I was asking is who’d you prefer to date, Obama or McCain?

None of you seem to care about my political views – all you want me for is my advice! So I’m going to give it to you today.

So in this article, Barack Obama said something very interesting. He said that if you want to avoid disappointing others, don’t disappoint yourself.

I find that concept really interesting. You have to start answering to yourself. You have to start looking at yourself and thinking about whether or not you commit to yourself.

Do you commit to yourself? Are you committed to your goals? Are you a person of your word?

All you have in life is your word. If you can’t go ahead and take action, and you keep disappointing yourself, you’re going to do the same thing to other people.

So maybe you’re not ready for a relationship. If you are someone who disappoints yourself on a regular basis because you cant seem to stay committed to goals or appointments, then don’t start getting involved with anybody else.

Right now, you need to understand that you have to start embracing yourself and listening to yourself. You have to start redeeming yourself – to you.

And as for the election yesterday – whatever. This ain’t no political blog. This is a dating advice blog. If it was political, I’d tell you right now what I think and where I believe our country needs to go – but none of you seemed to care the last time, when I posed the important question to you: who would you rather date, Obama or McCain?

And as far as my mindset today…..I enjoyed every minute of lasts nights election. Where were you last night when history was made?

And whether you love him or not how do you feel this morning when you woke up to a whole new beginning?

We just witnessed history and no one man can change the mess of the last 8 years but we now have a new attitude and direction.

How do you feel today about this.

Let it out its good for you!!!

I have never written a blog about how to meet women in an airport? It’s very simple.

First of all, airports are places that women go to connect to other places, right? If you think about the psychology of the airport, about half the time you’re traveling for business, and the other half you’re traveling for pleasure. But 100% of the time you want it to be pleasure.

So if I see a woman standing in line at Starbucks – because there is basically a Starbucks in every single airport – I would just say to her, “so, where are you heading to?”

She might respond, “well, I’m heading to San Francisco.” I can ask, “really, do you live there?” She says, “no, I’m just going on business.”

Then you can say, “alright, so we’re in an airport. If you could go anywhere right now, where would it be?” If someone is just going for a business trip, it’s not that big of a deal. They might be going to a great city, but if they are there on business, they probably won’t be able to see much of it.

But if you can get someone to talk in fantasy-mode – if you can get them to talk about where they really want to go – then the conversation can be more fun.

For instance, if the woman says, “oh, I’d much rather go to Italy,” you can ask, “why Italy? What about Italy? Where in Italy?” If you’ve been to Italy, you can contribute something to the conversation and you can have a conversation about where you want to visit and where you’ve been.

It’s fun. You’re also getting someone out of that whole “oh my god, I can’t believe…” zone. “I can’t believe I have to go on this business trip.” You’re getting her to think about things and talk about things that are pleasurable. You’re talking about things that are fun.

If you’re looking up at the flight departures/arrivals board you can do the same thing. Look at her and say, “where are you heading to?” She answers, “oh, I’m heading to Iowa.” You ask, “okay, if you had to pick any place on this whole board, where would you go and why?” And you say it with a really big smile.

That’s how you start conversations in the airport. Make it fun, make it quick, and just be different! You can find out so much about someone when you do it in this way. Not only that, you’ll be able to find out where they live, where they are going – and who knows? Maybe they are from your hometown but are heading off for vacation, and you can have dinner with them when they return

Or maybe they are heading to the same place you are, and you have a date as soon as the plane touches down!
So what about on the plane? Particularly if you’re not sitting next to them?
It’s really the same thing on the plane. You take an inventory of where they are sitting, and then when you get up to use the restroom, you smile at them as you walk by. She’s probably totally bored on the plane, and she sees you smiling at her, and then the next time you pass by to go to the bathroom, just smile at her again and ask, “how’s the flight?” Or you could say, “oh man, you are so lucky you’re sitting back here right now, I’ve got the kid kickers behind me! You wanna switch?”

I’ve done that. Or sometimes I’ll walk over and I’ll look at her and say, “are the flight attendants treating you as well as they’re treating me? Because I’m sitting up front.” I’ll play around with it, and have a good time.

Those things work every single time on an airplane. You don’t need any more. Those are just simple ways to approach.

Now what if you see people in the concierge part of the airport – not near the gates, would you still just approach them and say, “where are you heading to?”

Why not? “Where are you heading to?” Let’s say you’re sitting in the lounge, waiting to take off and the woman in there is cute. You can stand next to her and say, “going home, or going on vacation?” If she’s on your flight, you’ve already made contact ahead of time. “Going home, or going on vacation?” That’s how you do that.

Let’s say you’re walking around, killing two hours in the airport between connecting flights. You see a woman sitting in an area that implies she’s going to San Francisco, and you’re going to Los Angeles. You go over there and sit down next to her and ask, “wait, is this the flight to LA?” She’ll say, “no, it’s to San Francisco,” and then you can say, “oh man, I am so tired from traveling,” and then share your story with her.

“Man, I’m so tired right now, I’ve been on business trips all week long, and you know what? San Francisco sounds much better than going to LA on business anyway! Are you from San Fran?” You have her laughing and you’ve shared a little bit of a story. What happens next? You start communicating with her.

If you’re in a bookstore – I’ve done this a lot as well – and you see a woman with magazines, you can say, “oh, People magazine – you must have a long flight! Where are you heading to?” That’s it. You don’t have to be so funny.

As I am writing this I am being chatted up by Alan a business traveler who has been making me read this whole thing to him and he has a question.
Go ahead Alan ask away.

Alan…… Right, you can get in a funny line a couple of minutes down the road, but I like to have a good, funny line to open, and that’s where I’m thinking and not acting. And it’s like the three-second rule – I’m sitting there waiting, and then it’s almost creepy when you wait too long!

David: Yeah, you’ve waited way too long and things are not going well. And the fact is, once again, this should all be based on observations. You’re not doing anything that is so earth shattering; you’re just getting inside her head. It goes to the whole theory of becoming a natural at doing this.

You’re not walking over there saying, “let me ask your opinion, do you like 747s better or 767s?” You’re not breaking her train of thought. The reason why so many guys mess up, when it comes down to it, is that you’re pulling her out of her train of thought. You don’t want to do this.

When you pull someone out of their train of thought, you’re inevitably going to crash and burn. She’s not going to be thinking about what you just said. You’re trying to make her think on an entirely different wavelength.

By opening her with observations, you’re getting her to think on the same wavelength of what she’s already thinking about.

So there you have it in airports!

And Alan as you asked me what I was working on to strike up this last part of my blog, you can do the same with women!!

Its summer travel season and I am off to Hawaii tomorrow, so i thought i would share a recent travel related adventure with you all….

By the way airports are great places to meet people.

Recently I was sitting in the Las Vegas airport and I realized – why would anybody actually want to fly Southwest?

They just landed the flight, you get three minutes to board the plane so they remain on time – basically I think Southwest should just move all of their terminals to the Greyhound bus terminal, because really Southwest is just the bus in the sky.

Everybody’s lined up in their little groups like robots, waiting to get on the plane. They then hustle on the plane so that they can go find a seat next to somebody they don’t want to sit next to in the first place – really if you think about it, flying on Southwest is a great way to meet people. You can pick and choose whom you want to sit next to!

On the plane ride here, I actually got on the plane and I was going to sit down, and there was this perfect seat in the front of the plane. This guy was sitting there in the corner all by himself, and everybody was walking by him and I couldn’t figure out why.

So I go put my bag in the overhead compartment, and as I start to sit down, all I can smell is the lovely smell of underarm sweat! Apparently, this man didn’t believe in using deodorant.

It’s amazing that a person can get on an airplane in a public place and smell like they just finished a six-hour workout. He smelled so bad, he made Burger King and McDonald’s smell delicious – which is definitely a tough thing to do.

So as I was waiting for the bus in the sky to get home, I realized it’s just not the most civil and humane way to do it. So now I’ve decided that Southwest needs to land in the middle of the city, basically right next to the Greyhound buses, so you have the two options.

This plane I’m on right now has been to six places – it went from Midland to Albuquerque to Phoenix to Las Vegas to Los Angeles. Some people actually got on in Albuquerque to save $3.50 over all the rest of the airlines so that they can spend six hours in the sky instead of spending just two hours flying direct from Albuquerque to LA. Time is worth more to me than saving $3.50!

It’s pretty amazing, because I once flew Southwest – well, I had to, there was nothing else to fly – Southwest is generally my last option. I flew on this flight that took me from LA to St. Louis and I was sitting down next to someone who was going to Long Island, New York. He had six stops to get there!

It is literally a bus – it flies up in the air, touches down for three and a half minutes, everyone hustles like a bunch of sheep to get on the plane. The cheery Southwest flight attendants then tell some kind of joke – and they are pretty good, they’re a lot better than the sourpusses that work for American Airlines and United.

I asked the guy with six stops going to Long Island how much his airfare was and he told me it was like $265. Do you know I fly to New York City regularly on American Airlines for $299? I told him that he’d saved $34 to spend the entire day on the airplane, and he said, “huh. I guess the commercials don’t tell the truth!”

Let me tell you guys – I’m a huge fan of saving time. If you think about it, unless you are socializing in the aisles of the airplane, flirting with everybody on there – what’s the point of being up there for nine hours just to save $34?

It’s just not worth the extra time. I’d rather spend my time in the airport, flirting with the person next to me, having some fun and exchanging phone numbers – and then getting on that plane knowing that I had a good time and I can get somewhere automatically.

You don’t really need to fly a bus in the sky. I think that Southwest should change the shape of their planes to look like buses.

One more thing about flying – on a 45-minute flight, you really don’t need to give out peanuts and water and everything else. You don’t need to feed the people for 45 minutes! It’s ridiculous – people can survive not eating for 45 minutes. It’d actually do some people good!

Perhaps instead of offering peanuts, they should offer some stretching exercises instead. People don’t need to be entertained 24/7.

How about this idea: how about a speed dating event in an airplane for 45 minutes – that would be more fun!