The hottest place to meet singles this cuffing season is the airport
They’re catching flights — and feelings.
Singletons traveling amid cuffing season are in luck — the best place to look for love may just be at the airport.
Imagine: You’re waiting at the gate for your boarding zone number to be called when you meet eyes with someone, about the same age, who would otherwise be a 5 in real life but is suddenly an undeniable 10, even under the terminal’s fluorescent luminescence.
The phenomenon, dubbed an #airportcrush, has taken flight on TikTok, where videos — which show users beautifying themselves mid-flight on the off-chance their airport flame spots them — using the hashtag have garnered more than 128 million views.
“It’s like when you’ve had a couple of drinks and those beer goggles come on,” internet personality Josh Moss told Business Insider.
“Unfortunately, you can’t take them off until you’re sober. It’s the same thing when you’re at the airport — you’ve got your ‘airport goggles’ on,” Moss said of preflight meet-cutes.
The airport — where we go, dressed our worst, to marinate in acrid, stale plane air until we reach our final destination — apparently has a certain hypnotizing je ne sais quoi akin to the gym or the workplace.
You’re both in the same place, doing the same thing: traveling.
“You’re close to people geographically in an airport, so it makes sense that you might be drawn to someone there in a different way,” sex therapist Leigh Norén told Business Insider.
Then there’s the air of mystery that comes with airports, a thrill from “being able to go anywhere and experience anything,” according to Norén.
“There’s so much left to the imagination, because you can be anybody you want,” Jacqueline Fae, a professional matchmaker, told Business Insider.
Experts also chalk it up to anxiety, which is commonly misattributed as arousal because of the similar physical manifestations, such as sweaty palms or a racing heart, making it easier to “feel attracted to someone at the airport,” explained Norén.
“Once you leave the airport, you’re out of that setting, and you’ve calmed down, then you can look and see, ‘OK, were my airport goggles fogging my judgment? Or are they really attractive?’” Moss said.
It may just be a bleary-eyed mirage under the cabin’s dim lighting.
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