Would You Rather Be On A Barf Plane Or Have Your Flight Delayed?

Today, crazy winds wreaked havoc on the Northeast, blowing over trees, knocking out power, and causing a bunch of people on an airplane to barf their brains out.

Turbulence is scary; turbulence that makes you blow chunks is scary AND gross. On the other hand, delayed flights are stressful and maddening affairs that fuck up your schedule and turn you into the kind of person who would race a kid to the only empty wall socket in the terminal.

I hate waiting, but I hate barfing more. (Not to brag, but I’ve done it recently, and it’s very bad.) Think about what it would be like to be on a plane where “pretty much everyone” is throwing up. The sounds of the retching and coughing and crying, the smell of bile-soaked partially digested airport fast food—I’m gagging just writing this—it’s a living nightmare. And there’s nothing ear plugs or those little air vents in the ceiling can do to make that situation any better.

Most Deadspinners were pretty solidly on the side of taking the plane delay over the barf flight, for various reasons: terrified of turbulence, don’t mind the idea of entertaining themselves in airport bars, want to avoid public mass pukings. A few, however, including one particularly passionate pro-vomit staffer who I’ll call Barfy Pukechesky, said “The most unhappy I’ve been in my life is during long flight delays,” and “I would happily fly covered in my seatmate’s barf if it meant I could be guaranteed no delays,” and “I’d eat the barf for my inflight meal.”

So, would you rather your flight be delayed or hop on the barf flight? How long would the delay have to be before you were all aboard the throwup plane? How scared are you of turbulence? What if the flight delay happened while you were already on the airplane and you just had to sit on the tarmac? Would you be willing to eat barf as your inflight meal?