Was Air Travel Really Ever Glamorous?
Many people think traveling is glamorous.
Well people, I used to travel. Maybe too much. I was a million miler, 1K traveler on United, and I am here to tell you that air travel is all hell.
A while back, I took the Friday night red eye to Miami (on American). Flew back Sunday mid-afternoon. 12 hours in the air, 18 hours on the ground. Welcome to my world.
As a child, a cherished memory is going on a field trip to the airport. It seemed like such an exciting place: comings, goings, bustle, energy. Everything was sleek and modern looking. They even made us put on little paper booties when we toured the airplane. Could you imagine that today, as if they care if the plane is kept clean?
Flying used to be an event. Women wore hats and gloves, men wore suits. Think of the old China Clipper planes, with sleeping compartments and meals served on fine china. It was like a first class ocean liner. I think if you showed up in sweats and sandals, you wouldn’t have been boarded. My uncle once told me of his early cross-country plane flight in the 30s, on a Ford Tri-Motor: Day 1 was NY to Chicago; Day 2 Chicago to Denver; Day 3 Denver to Los Angeles (you didn’t fly at night in those days).
My first cross country flight was to graduate school at Berkeley, on a TWA Lockheed L-1011, a huge aircraft with two aisles, wide seats, and a complete deli buffet in the back of the plane, make your own sandwiches and have as much as you like. TWA and the L1011 have long vanished into history, along with comfortable seats and (free) food on the plane.
It used to be that your friends and family could escort you to the boarding gate, and wave goodbye as you get on the plane. No longer. Now you wait in a long line, take off your shoes, your belt, your jacket (maybe not in that order), and then finally pass through the MRI scanner to make sure you haven’t injested a bomb.
Next you have to worry about whether there will be sufficient storage space on the plane for your bag. Nobody trusts modern bag handling systems. As a consequence, passengers seem to want to carry on their entire worldly goods. If one of these bags fell on you, you would be crushed. I like to travel light. If I am going to a city, then presumably anything I want or need can be purchased there. The ultimate luxury, I think, is to carry nothing. It is well known that the President never travels with a wallet or a set of keys. He has people for that.
Well on this flight, the plane was the flying cattle car known as the Boeing 757, narrow pitch seats, and an 18-inch aisle, basically a flying pencil. I have no status on American, so I was in the back, in the corner, in the dark, and next to the lavatory. Fortunately, my one true superpower is an ability to sleep on planes. I can’t get any work done, but I can sleep. It is one reason my preferred method of flying is via red-eyes. If there was an Olympic event for airplane sleeping, I think I would be a serious candidate for representing the USA.
Arrived Miami, in early February, just as the Sun was rising. Beautiful day. But this trip is for work, not play. I am destined to spend the day in a conference room, observing the view of Miami’s beautiful harbor. In paradise, but not of paradise. I can see people in shorts, heading for the water, while we are freezing in our conference room.
