Flying just isn’t what it used to be

My wife wonders why I’m a “Star Trek” fan. At least part of the reason has to do with an activity I no longer love. And though it seems weird to write this in a travel blog, that activity is flying.

Flying used to be fun. I recall the first time I stepped on an airplane. The year was 1958, and I was traveling with my family from Hawaii back to the mainland (we’d sailed over the year before on an ocean liner).

Those were the pre-jet days, and our plane was a four-engine, propeller-driven aircraft – likely a Lockheed Super Constellation, the civilian version of the plane that my father had flown for three years as part of the Navy’s Airborne Early Warning (AEW) mission.

I don’t recall what it was like to sit in seats that had to have been roomier than what airlines cram us into these days. I do remember that the roar of the engines lulled me to sleep through much of what was a nine-hour-plus trip (these days you can do it in less than six hours).

I also don’t recall what we ate. But I do know that it was free, part of what you paid for up front. And it had to be better than what airlines serve today – if they serve anything at all other than minuscule packages of Cheez-Its or Sun Chips to those of us stuck back in the plane’s basic main section.

And, of course, the plane itself is only a part of the problem. Even if you have priority status, traveling at times entails waiting in long lines, especially if you’re checking a bag. If you take a smaller bag on board with you, you better hope that you board early or you’re bound to find that there’s no space for your carry-on – in which case you’ll be forced to check it “to your final destination” anyway.

Then you face the trials of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), where unsmiling (often but not always) officials check your identification and direct you toward lines where you have to take everything out of your pockets, load all your possession in trays, make sure they go through the x-ray machines while you wait in yet another line to go through some sort of x-ray exam yourself.

(You’re told that you need to remove anything made of metal from your pockets, which means your phone and car keys, etc. Sometimes I even am told to remove my belt. But paper products are OK … unless they aren’t. I got held up by security at London’s Heathrow Airport in early June because I didn’t remove a package of tissues from my back pocket.

“You were told to remove everything and put it in a tray,” the grim-faced British version of a TSA agent said. I simply shrugged and tried to look as stupidly contrite as I could – which turned out, as usual, to be no problem at all.)

Anyway, back in the U.S., some uniformed TSA worker typically is yelling (or at least loudly proclaiming) directions to the room at large, some of which seems contradictory and at other times changes without warning (example: no more having to remove shoes, requiring you to walk around in sock feet on dirty floors).

Then when you’re through, assuming that the TSA doesn’t flag your bags for further examination, you find yourself elbowing your way to the tray area, locating your stuff and hoping that you’ll be able to find everything amid the crush.

Even after having gone through the process dozens and dozens of times, I tend to overlook something. I once left my laptop in the Cape Town, South Africa, airport (D’oh!). On a recent trip back from New York, I forgot to remove a water bottle from my backpack – rookie error! – and received a chastising glare for my violation.

Back to the plane, as I’ve made clear the seats are not spacious, particularly for budget travelers. Yes, on some flights – we tend to fly Delta Airlines – you have small TV screens that offer you a variety of viewing experiences. But unless you bring your own noise-canceling headphones, you’re bound to have trouble hearing anything through the devices they hand out for free (my wife disagrees).

And the seating situation gets appreciably worse when they person in front of you insists on reclining. And this is no exaggeration, one time on an international flight the back of the seat in front of me got pushed to within six inches of my face.

On a flight last year from Europe we ran into a particularly irritating and uncomfortable predicament. We’d booked adjoining seats on the side aisle of the plane, where we like to sit, yet were told just before we boarded that due a change of aircraft our seats had been changed. Turns out we were then given the two middle seats in a four-seat row in the plane’s rear section.

My wife’s back is still smarting from the strain that the seat change caused (if you’ve ever had to ride in middle seats for any length of time, you’ll know what we both experienced). And though this was an Air France flight, the food was … well, to call it swill would be complimentary. (To be fair, my wife had a similar food experience on Lufthansa, and the food on Delta isn’t anything that the late Anthony Bourdain would brag about.)

Even so, bad food from a French airline: Isn’t that a culinary contradiction?

And assuming your flight does go out on time and you don’t miss any connections (something that has happened to me twice in the last six months), all of this has to be repeated. That is, it does unless you opt to rent a car and drive home – something that isn’t really practical when you fly to, say, New York, much less London or Oslo or Paris or Rome, etc.

Don’t get me wrong. I still like to travel. And I’d like to add to the list of countries that I haven’t yet visited. I just don’t relish flying to get there.

And as for why my wife wonders why I like to watch “Star Trek.” In large part it’s because I long for the wonders of teleportation.

Beam me up, Scotty. Please.