Have you ever had a crush at the airport?

Ideally, the moment when you have a crush on a guy or a girl is imagined differently. At a party, during an outing with your friends, certainly not when you're heading to the gate to catch a flight, let alone when you're already seated in your airplane seat, especially considering that your outfit and appearance in these moments might not be at their best. Yet, at the airport, there seems to be a sort of magnetic attraction towards strangers, a certain romanticization of the encounter with the perfect stranger. Do you know the feeling that surges through your body when you make eye contact with someone your age? Well, at the airport, that feeling is almost always amplified, but why? Assuming that each of us experiences this situation differently (It probably depends on how passionate you are about rom-coms and how accustomed you are to imagining fake scenarios), it's something that inevitably gets carried away by a healthy dose of fantasy. After all, how can one imagine meeting the love of their life in a place like the airport if they don't have improbable scenes from a romantic movie etched in their mind? Beyond that, there may be psychological reasons to explain this phenomenon that can sweep everyone off their feet, regardless of age. The first cause would be related to a simple mental association game: especially when traveling alone by plane, it's not so unlikely to connect a place like the airport with anxiety, uncertainty, and novelty. After all, if you're there, your purpose is to take a means of transportation to go to an unexplored, new, different, or at least far from home place.

As explained by Ira Hyman, the author of this article, in situations of anxiety or stress, people can feel excited much more easily, especially if they don't experience flying as something ordinary and "normal." This is why they can feel emotionally vulnerable and thus overly attracted to their seatmate. To support this, the experiment of Donald Dutton and Arthur Aron, a staple in psychology, sheds simple light on the topic of human attraction. In their experiment known as the Capilano Suspension Bridge experiment, it was demonstrated how adrenaline stemming from a feeling of fear can influence human choices and increase attraction. The experiment involved having two groups of men cross two very different bridges. In both cases, the two groups of people would interact with a very attractive woman who had the ultimate task of leaving her phone number for the men. The first bridge they crossed was short and stable, while the second was the Capilano Suspension Bridge, which swayed and was positioned 70 meters high. The experiment showed that nearly all the men who crossed the Capilano Bridge later expressed interest in the woman through text messages, unlike those who crossed the secure and stable bridge.

This simple study can be parallelly applied to airport situations: in moments of instability and anxiety, we tend to form stronger bonds with the people in front of us. All of this may seem explanatory enough, but there may be another reason justifying the unique tension that arises in airports. This one relates to boredom. In an airport, it's very easy to feel bored, nervous, and frustrated due to long lines and delays, yet another (but different) factor that would drive us to take an interest in others. All these theories lead us to challenge one of the most popular social media phrases of recent times: «Catch flights, not feelings.» These two things seem incredibly connected to each other.