Not that bad an experience - more like an education.
Was on a plane that three seats on each side and I had one of the aisle seats. A woman comes on board with a baby and heads for the back. I braced myself for five hours (non-stop flight east to west) of crying/squalling/yelling. The guy next to me craps out immediately and slumps on my shoulder. I shove him over and figure I on the Flight from Hell.
Then this scraggly-looking black dude with a long raincoat draped over his arm shuffles up and seats himself in the middle row opposite me. Nothing exceptional except that he looked in pretty bad shape. The other aisle guy gave me a look and rolled his eyes. “Better him than me” sez I in true Christian compassion.
About a half-hour into the flight there is a stench of vomit wafting through the cabin and I thought that damned baby had barfed. The guy across the aisle looks at me with a distressed look on his face. About then the scraggly black dude gets up, with vomit trickling off his folded raincoat and heads forward for the first class toilets, leving little vomity footprints as he goes.
The stewardess quickly comes up and sprinkles coffee grounds over the tracks and magically the air is filled with the smell of fresh-ground coffee. The guy alongside me wakes up and says, “Man, that coffee smells good!”
I told him he didn’t want to go there, but never forgot that tip on how to suppress a bad smell.
I actually got a little nauseated reading about your experience. I have no desire to get on a commercial airliner. I will drive if necessary.
Ah yes, life and its little episodes. The best cure for plane misery is to take a Greyhound bus somewhere. The sights, sounds, smells and interesting people you’ll encounter on a Greyhound and at the Greyhound station will totally recalibrate your misery threshold.