Aging Gracefully

The Wonder and Indignity of Flying

I’ve taken a few trips recently, and it’s got me thinking about the great paradox of air travel. Let's start with the scientific marvel of being able to FLY anywhere you want. To get into an airplane (why isn’t it called an air-car?) and go anywhere in the world. To soar across the sky and look out from the clouds to see the land and sea beneath you. On an airplane, it’s not just the rhetoric that’s soaring.

It is majestic and astounding the first time you do it. And many times after. The take-off, the landing, the seemingly sitting still as you sip on a cocktail while jettisoning across the country and world and earth. We take it for granted but it’s truly mind-blowing if you’re willing to think about it.

And all of that juxtaposed against the horrific experience that air travel has become – starting with the airport. Let me count the ways. The stressful race to get to the airport only to find complete mayhem when you arrive. The nightmare of traversing the security line, the flights being delayed or outright canceled. The lack of information or misinformation from the cagey airline as you helplessly wait for news that isn’t coming or is noncommittal. The uncertainty and lack of control are maddening.

And that’s before you get on the plane. Once onboard the giant Tylenol (Airplane, 1977), you immediately fear that you’ve boarded the plane too late to have room for your overstuffed bag to be crammed into the insufficient overhead space. (Some items may have shifted during travel…). Then, you yourself are crammed into tiny seats. Maybe you have a middle seat - just had two of them flying cross-country back & forth - and your neighbors are boxing you in with elbows, bags, or girth. Or worse yet, talking to you.

You’re ready for take-off only to hear about a delay based on weather, runway traffic, co-pilot being late, mechanical issues, or they just don’t tell you why. Finally, you’re Up in the Air like George Clooney and you have to go to the bathroom. Now I use the term bathroom loosely. It’s too small to be a room. It’s more like a bath-pod. To get to the bath-pod, you have to wake your snoring neighbor or wait till he/she wakes up, which as a nonconfrontational person I prefer to do. Eventually you squeeze yourself past your neighbor and squeeze yourself further to get into the pod. Once you look in the bath-pod mirror you realize you are for sure not George Clooney, but a rapidly aging, middle-aged basket case, who’s five years older than he was before he boarded the plane.

You land and think you’ve beat (or at least survived) the system only to learn a new word called “tarmac”, and whatever that thing is, you’re stuck on it and can’t get to the gate that you can literally see from your tiny window. Next thing you know this two-ton aircraft is being towed by the nose - like it’s being punished - at a snail’s pace by a two-hundred-pound four-by-four. You make it to the gate exalted yet exasperated.

How? How do you reconcile the two: the wonder and miracle of flight with the misery of airplane travel?

It’s gotten much worse over the years. As I’ve aged, clearly gracelessly, I’ve seen two dramatic sea changes in flying (not including the Airline De-Regulation Act of 1978, which I’m told impacted things greatly, but didn’t impact me since I didn’t do much flying before 1978, and when I did, apparently I just cried the entire time). They’re pretty obvious moments.

First, everything changed post-9/11. What a tragic shock to the system that was. Airplanes being used by terrorists as missiles to kill people. Prior to that, airport security was a breeze that you could navigate with ease and confidence. On the East Coast, there was an “air shuttle” that ran every hour between Boston, New York and DC, and you could show up 15 minutes prior to take-off to board the shuttle. You slipped onto the plane like it was a comfortable old shoe.

After 911, the shuttle was skuttled as security outweighed convenience. Thus began the era of long security lines, no water, no large-size bottles or tubes of things and taking your shoes off (the shoe mandate actually came from the shoe bomber two years later). The airport became a fear-based slog.

The airlines also stopped serving meals on flights, not that anyone has missed those Swanson frozen entrees. But this meant you had to stock up on food at the airport, having to pay those exorbitant prices. Airport prices are like wedding prices. You’re in a “moment” and are willing to pay more and the vendors/suppliers are all over that.

The second milestone of course was the COVID pandemic. The airlines lost so much money that post-pandemic they: 1) raised prices while giving you less and; 2) cut the number of flights to places. This has led to almost every flight being packed or completely full. And, if the flight isn’t full they just cancel it and book you on another flight later that day, tomorrow, Tuesday or never. Just happened to me last week. No excuses, no apologies. No retreat, baby, no surrender.  

So that’s where we are. I recognize how privileged we are to fly anywhere and appreciate the splendor of it all, but man has it become difficult. Flying is both awe-inspiring and trying. It’s a dichotomy that takes a lot of me.

Airplane photo courtesy of Axios

Security line image courtesy of Hart Van Denburg/CPR News