Flying in a sardine can and other travel misery

[lapislzi]

12. No doubt about it. Flying has become a very unpleasant experience

When my parents were young adults, flying was an unimaginable luxury. If one could afford to fly at all, one dressed up--men in suits, women wearing their finest millinery. And it was an event. One's family escorted one to the gate and there were good-byes and handkerchief wavings. I remember a friend going to study abroad when I was a teenager. There was a farewell party in full swing at the gate.

Nowadays (and don't mistake me for a pearl clutcher), we're lucky if folks who are boarding the plane are at least not wearing their pajamas. (Although often they are).

As a child, I aspired to fly in a plane one day. Obviously, I've got my wish many times over, and as ironies are wont to go, I hope I never have to again, at least under the current conditions. It is demeaning, humiliating, uncomfortable, expensive, and unnecessarily time-consuming. It's supposed to be FASTER to fly somewhere than to drive there. Now I take a hard look at my destination and adjust the fly/drive threshold. Anything closer than 8 hours away is worth driving to.

When the best you can say about an airline experience is that it "wasn't awful," something's wrong.