Fitness in Flight

The passenger in seat R-25-1 would appear to be a belly dancer practicing her routine in seat-belt situ. Almost since takeoff from Cologne on Lufthansa's flight 408 to New York, she has been rotating her midsection, rolling her eyes shimmying her shoulders and flexing her thighs. And she is not the only one-just about everyone aboard is doing this "sitdown rumba." Is this a traveling company of A Chorus Line? In-flight ecdysiast transcendentalists?

Not quite. "You are now seated aboard the first airline on which you can get a little exercise while you fly," says a recorded voice. "I'll bet you didn't ever realize just how much life is still in those curves around your fanny!" And so, to the tune of such muscle-toning music as Strangers in the Night, passengers contract and tighten their muscles--starting with their toes and working up to their arms. Leg thrusts (under the seat in front) and shoulder rolls follow.

Lufthansa's new in-flight Bonn-ton program, which aims to relieve the frazzling effect on passenger extremities produced by prolonged jet travel, derives directly from the mini-gymnastics devised for cramped U.S. astronauts on flights to the moon. Explains Juergen Palm, the German airline's fitness guru: "The problem of long-distance airline passengers is the same as that of astronauts: how to keep the muscles from going all slack and the blood from settling in legs and feet and to keep the joints from becoming stiff. For people who are not in shape, getting off a long flight is like a convalescent's getting up from a long time in bed."

Palm's program is already on 126 weekly flights connecting Germany with the Americas, Africa and the Far East, and is also available in printed form. Scandinavian Airlines has followed suit with an exercise program featuring such bracing gyrations as "jogging on the spot," "rowing while seated" and "slalom while seated." Indeed mini-gymnastics aloft may become the biggest thing in air travel since mini-Martinis. Prosit! Skoal! To your health!

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