Practices of waiting: dramatized timing within air travel

Timing has a notable, yet often inconspicuous and tacit impact on the ordering of everyday life. Based on an ethnographic study, this paper is concerned with different time requirements that emerge in the course of air travel. It starts with the ambivalent temporality of such travel, focusing on the many delays which passengers face on their way to the fastest means of travel available nowadays. Since the route to the plane is characterized by time pressure, the airport is a case of dramatized timing. On board, however, temporalities change noticeably. There is a systematic split between the time of the working crew members and that of passengers. This split not only concerns a strict division of labour, but also of motility: Passengers are materially and normatively bound to their seats while attendants provide them with a service for basic needs like nutrition or sleep, which is timed in accordance with the plane’s motion and with logistic times. This can create conflicts with passenger’s personal timings or preferences in time use. In sum, timing on board is materially dramatized and this paper suggests carefully examining the impact of materialities (of im/mobilities) on temporalities.