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Wednesday, January 06, 2010

I once loved to fly but ...

When I first began my business career I spent most of my time in airports and on planes. I loved to fly but ....

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.

1 comment:

John Hudock said...

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.