Before the time of personal device entertainment I enjoyed many an in air conversation with the people sharing my row. I must admit, it is a far more rare occurrence these days — even during holiday travels!

What about you? Do you pop on your headphones and wait until landing time before exchanging time limited small talk? Well after a recent flight, I am going to make an effort to change that. Maybe this story will encourage you to have more conversations with other travelers during your holiday travels.

It was a few weeks ago. I was in the airport grabbing a turkey sandwich before my flight to Seattle. Two hours into the fight it was dinner time and out came the turkey sandwich, so I thought.

I open up the bread to spread my packet of mustard only to find lettuce, just lettuce. No turkey in sight on my bare bread. I was so dumbfounded that I actually vocalized the “seriously?” Garnering the attention of the women in the middle seat.

She thought it was hysterical and we had a fun back and forth. We started chatting and I learned she lives 15 minutes from my house and is in Human Resources (my most frequent client) for a large, name brand firm. What a great connection! We talked for the remainder of the flight and have emailed back and forth a dozen times since then.

My guess is that you don’t usually talk to the people you sit next to on planes. People rarely do. And I might not have if my sandwich had been properly prepared, but I’m sure glad I did. It made the following three hours fly by. You never know who you are sitting next to and I bet most of the time, they are pretty interesting.

I got another great connection out of this situation – whether it’s me being able to help her think about the next step in her career, her hiring me for some coaching or training for her company, or just a great conversation between new friends, you never know what will come out of saying hello to someone new.