Have a Nice Flight

Charlotte Douglas International Airport

Ah, air travel. We don our finest clothes, wait in luxurious gateside lounges where we are treated like royalty, board an expansive shiny aircraft with spacious and luxurious seats, and exchange greetings with a chipper stewardess in a posh hat who welcomes us with cocktails and a lobster dinner. It’s seamless! It’s glamorous!

Our apologies, we were remembering air travel in the 1960’s.

Fast forward a half-century, and air travel is, thankfully, much more affordable and accessible. It’s also much more stressful: the snaking security lines, the indignities of removing one’s shoes in public, the oversold flights, the shrinking seats, the inevitable silent armrest negotiations with a stranger, the innumerable nickel-and-dime charges (they want us to PAY for the headphones now?) and now we don’t even have the SkyMall magazine to entertain us anymore. Add a series of small irritations, such as restrooms with no provision for carry-on luggage, marathon sprints through poorly-planned terminal connectors with confusing signage, and a dingy boarding area with low ceilings and a flickering light in need of maintenance, and the miracle of flight can start to feel somewhat oppressive.