Today unless the distance I have to drive exceeds half the country, I drive. The amount of time spend is about the same and the hassles are much less.
Jonah Goldberg reminds us that even before 9/11 air travel had become more of a chore than a pleasure.
A No-Fly List? Count Me In
Flying before 9/11 was already awful, and it has only become worse.
Almost exactly ten years ago, I boarded a Northwest Airlines plane in Minneapolis. As I started toward my veal-pen seat in steerage, I saw the faces of the preboarded aristocrats in business class. But before I could glare at them with proletarian rage and envy, I heard a loud bang and felt a sharp pain on the top of my head. Everyone looked to see what the sound was; even the two flight attendants chatting like village women around the well broke off their no-doubt-vital conversation.
The source of the preflight disturbance? I’d smacked my enormous gourd of a head on a television hanging from the ceiling above the center aisle that hadn’t been stowed for boarding. I lifted my hand to my scalp and drew back a palm glistening with fresh blood.
The response from the flight attendants? A shrug from one and the faint hint of a chuckle from another. They went back to their conversation. Dumbfounded, I proceeded to my seat to nurse my head wound, fuming over the fact that customer service at even the most rancid highway-rest-stop taco joint requires providing a moist towelette for seeping head wounds.
Jonah is still a young man and he never experienced the joy of flying at the beginning of the jet age.
Read the rest.
Ditto. My mother worked for American Airlines and we frequently flew cross-country several times a year and I am old enough to have done it on a DC3 prop plane and I loved to fly when I was younger. But now, except for occasional business required flight, we do all family vacations by car and if I must do a business trip I try to steer toward smaller regional airports than the big city hubs.
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