The Flight Where An Onboard Movie Broke Me — Why You Cry Harder On Planes Than Anywhere Else

I don’t think I’ve ever cried as hard outside of losing loved ones as I did watching of all things the film About Time (2013) on a Cathay Pacific long haul flight in first class many years ago.

In the film, Tim Lake learns on his 21st birthday that the men in his family can travel back along their own lives—no grand history fixes, just do-overs of moments they’ve already lived. Awkward and earnest, he mostly uses it to fix social disasters and, eventually, to find love.

He meets Mary (Rachel McAadams), and they fall for each other in a blackout dinner where they can’t see each other’s faces. When helping a friend forces him to undo that first meeting, Tim has to engineer a new one from scratch, using what he remembers about her. It works. They build a life together — dating, then marriage, then kids — with Tim quietly rewinding around the edges to polish bad days and clumsy moments.

The power stops feeling like a trick and starts feeling like a trap when his father is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Tim can’t erase the illness, but he can retreat into the past to visit his dad: re-playing table tennis games, long talks, and an old walk on the beach.

Then he discovers a hard limit: once a child is born, going too far back can change which child he has. Every new baby shrinks how far back he can safely go—turning time with his father into a finite resource.

In the end, Tim chooses to stop rewinding, taking one last perfect walk with his dad in a borrowed day from childhood and then letting time run forward. He chooses living in the present over fixing the past, treating each ordinary day with Mary and their children as the one chance he gets.

For me it tapped deeply into the loss of my own father when I was 16 and all of the unresolved issues that I had there, and the deep desire I had to go back and savor the moments I never knew wouldn’t be repeatable. And so this tweet really struck me.

there’s nothing better than being melancholy on a plane

— mads campbell (@martyrdison) November 28, 2025

The physical environment in the cabin, the way you arrive at a flight already stressed, the “in between” nature of travel, and the way we consume entertainment onboard all push you toward being more tearful.

How The Cabin Environment Lowers Your Emotional Defenses

Most cabins are pressurized to the equivalent of roughly 6,000–8,000 feet. That means:

• Slightly less oxygen in your blood (mild hypoxia)
• Very low humidity, often under 20%
• Constant background noise and vibration

Together they make you more tired, more dehydrated, and a bit slower at regulating your reactions. The same movie scene that might make you sigh on your couch can push you into actual tears when you’re slightly oxygen-starved, dried out, and fatigued.

You Board With Your Emotional Tank Already Empty

By the time you sit down, you’ve usually:

• Packed under time pressure
• Fought traffic and airport lines
• Dealt with security and boarding stress

That’s a lot of low level uncertainty. When the door closes, you finally sit still and there’s nothing left to do. Your body flips from fight-or-flight into a “come down” state. Nowhere is this more so than when you slink into a Cathay Pacific first class seat like I did.

Flying Is Emotional Limbo

A flight is literal and emotional in-between time: not where you left, not where you’re going.

• Loss of control. You can’t change the route, weather, or delay. You’re told when to sit, when you can stand, when you have to darken the window. That powerlessness is uncomfortable, and people are more emotional when they feel they have no control.
• Life events are baked in. People fly for weddings, funerals, new jobs, breakups, college goodbyes, relocations. You’re physically leaving one situation and headed toward another, with hours to think about it and nowhere to go.
• You’re anonymous. You’re surrounded by strangers you’ll never see again. That social anonymity can feel like permission to let the mask slip. Nobody on the plane knows your backstory; if you cry and then wipe your face before landing, there’s no social fallout.

The result is a strange mix of high emotional stakes and low social constraint.

Airplane Movies Hit Harder Than Home Movies

People choose different content on planes than they do at home. You finally watch the “serious” drama you’ve put off, or the sentimental family movie. Then the environment amplifies it:

• Darker cabin, screen close to your face
• Headphones isolating you from the rest of the world
• No pausing to get up (except perhaps for the lav) or talk it out

You’re more immersed and less distracted at the exact moment your ability to regulate emotions is already compromised by altitude and fatigue.

Just Cry It Out

Emotional tears release built-up tension. You have a lot to discharge from travel stress to life events to fatigue. There’s really few other outlets when you’re onboard. And the environment is just perfect for it. So go ahead, watch About Time and enjoy a good cry.