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Opinion

FORMERLY-FRIENDLY SKIES: Recent Airline Controversies Show How Flying Has CHANGED

I fly a lot. Not as much as I used to. But I still fly. I’ll be the first to admit, it can be a pain in the rear end.

In more than twenty years of frequent flying only once have I seen anything remotely like the weird trend of total chaos at airports and on plane. Back in the 1990s I was flying from San Diego to Charlotte, NC. It was late at night. Some random person came running through the terminal to the gate hollering about something at the top of his lungs. I winced at the thought of missing my flight.

That was what the guy was hollering about – missing his flight. He lucked out. His plane hadn’t moved yet so he was still able to board.

Of course airline travel even twentyish years ago was different than what we have today.

Airline travel to day is basically like riding mass transit. When I lived in San Diego, for a while I used the MTS Trolley (San Diego’s version of commuter rail). I would board a train downtown and ride through various stops and a train change to the Linda Vista stop and from there I’d walk a few miles to our home in Pacific Beach. On mass transit people fall into three categories: a majority that want to complete the trip and be left alone while they do it, people who are four cards short a full deck if you know what I mean, and the glass half empty types that think everything is deliberately working against them in life.

So it goes on planes. Most travelers want to complete their flight without being bothered while they do it. Between the stress magnets and the nuts is where the problems arise. Only the problem is more accentuated because modern airliners are long metal tubes that don’t make frequent stops and often aren’t too keen on letting passengers mix and mingle in the aisle.

Such was the case with my recent flights from Washington, DC to the west coast and back again. We had turbulence so they weren’t letting people stand or walk around all that much. Yet nobody broke out into a fist fight or generally lost their mind as we jolted and bobbled over Ohio and the Great Plains.

There is a perk with airline travel you don’t often get to enjoy when riding other forms of mass transit. Almost every flight I’ve taken has featured exceptionally highly attractive members of the opposite sex. Like my return flight to Washington, DC. The young lady seated next to me was gorgeous.

photo credit: Excerpted from: Daquella manera Pasajeros via photopin (license)

Share if you agree flying has changed so weird things are starting to happen more frequently on airplanes.

Andrew Allen

Andrew Allen (@aandrewallen) grew up in the American southeast and for more than two decades has worked as an information technoloigies professional in various locations around the globe. A former far-left activist, Allen became a conservative in the late 1990s following a lengthy period spent questioning his own worldview. When not working IT-related issues or traveling, Andrew Allen spends his time discovering new ways to bring the pain by exposing the idiocy of liberals and their ideology.

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