Flying is awesome

Some perspective

Photo by Ross Parmly on Unsplash

The list of complaints is well known. Asinine procedures to get through security. Delayed flights. Lying airline employees. Infuriating rules on the plane. No legroom. Sitting on the tarmac. Lost luggage. People love to complain about flying. I certainly do.

Which is odd, considering this simple fact: flying is awesome.

Several weeks ago, I woke up in Copenhagen. I packed up my stuff and left my hotel for my flight back to the US. I walked through the city a bit, took the subway to the airport, flew to New York, and then drove to my home in Connecticut. The whole process, from my hotel room in Europe to my front door in America, took under 14 hours. It’s astonishing.

Louis CK puts it best:

Flying is the worst one because people come back from flights, they tell you their story, and it’s like a horror story. They act like their flight was like a cattle car in the '40s in Germany. That’s how bad they make it sound. They’re like, “It was the worst day of my life. First of all, we didn’t board for… 20 minutes. And then we get on the plane and they made us sit there on the runway for… 40 minutes. We had to sit there!”

Oh, really? What happened next? Did you fly through the air incredibly like a bird? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight? You non-contributing zero that got to fly. You’re flying. It’s amazing. Everybody on every plane should just constantly be going, “Oh my god!!!” You’re sitting in a chair in the sky.

People say there’s delays on flights. Delays. New York to California in 5 hours. It used to take 30 years to do that. And a bunch of you would die on the way there and someone would have a baby. You’d be with a whole different group of people by the time you got there!

Not only is it efficient, it’s affordable. Flights are routinely available from the East Coast to Europe for under $700 round-trip. A minimum wage worker can make that much in a week. Compared to the “golden age of air travel” of the 1960s and 1970s, airfare is dirt cheap. Consider this ad from the July 1960 issue of LIFE magazine:

$300 round-trip from the US to Europe might sound inexpensive, but that’s not accounting for inflation. That $300 flight from Boston to Ireland in 1960 is equivalent to a sky-high $3,291 today, far more than you’ll pay for an economy seat on any airline. At $429, the Chicago to London route is equivalent to roughly $4,700, more than quadruple what you would pay today. It’s not only international airfares that used to be expensive. Take a look at TWA prices from 1955:

Chicago to New York isn’t too bad, at an inflation-adjusted price of about $400. The rest, however, are significantly higher than today. Boston to Los Angeles is equivalent to just under $1,300. Los Angeles to Kansas City is $827. Granted, flights back then included baggage, food, larger seats, etc. That said, those perks can be had in economy premium in the 21st century for significantly less. Also, the food on airplanes was so terrible that it became the de facto topic standup comedians shouldn’t address, simply because the ground had been trod so often.

As an aside, the second list goes some way in explaining why TWA no longer exists. How many people were interested in flying from Wichita to Philadelphia? Or, even more mysteriously, from Amarillo to Kansas City? It’s worth noting that in 2025, a year with exponentially more routes than 1955, neither of those routes currently has active service.

Not only were the flights more expensive back then, they were slower. Flying from New York to Paris took 14 hours, which is how long it took me to go from Copenhagen to Connecticut door-to-door. New York to Madrid took 18 hours, which now can get you from Singapore to Newark, one of the longest flights in the world. Planes back then had to stop to refuel, often at out-of-the-way airports such as the one in Gander, Newfoundland, which would later find fame in the aftermath of September 11th. Spending 18 hours flying with no in-seat entertainment does not sound like fun to me. Especially wearing a suit and tie.

At any rate, the price differences go a long way to explaining why flying was so much more pleasant in the 1960s than today. It cost a fortune. Children didn’t fly. Blue-collar workers didn’t fly. Only the managerial class or those with serious money were routinely getting on an airplane. In a society where A) people dress up for most occasions, B) only rich people could fly, and C) flying was viewed as an occasion, then of course flying is going to be glamorous. It’s the same way that cruising on a small, expensive ship is more glamorous than cruising with Carnival or Royal Caribbean.

That isn’t to say all the complaints about flying are misguided. Some are totally reasonable. Nobody likes to be lied to, so it’s infuriating to have a gate agent or other air travel employee tell you things that are obviously not true. Last year I flew from New York to Minneapolis. Due to another flight being delayed, two planes landed from New York at MSP at the same time. Because of this, and the unfortunate coincidence that our flight was the last one the plane would take that day, the baggage handlers literally forgot about our plane. After about 45 minutes of waiting for our bags, I put two-and-two together and realized our plane was sitting with all its bags on board. I tracked down every airport employee I could find and was repeatedly told, “Your plane will be unloaded soon.” I explained calmly that no, my plane will not be unloaded soon; it’s been forgotten about. Nothing. Eventually, every other plane that day had landed and unloaded. Still nothing. Finally, after nearly 30 minutes after the last flight of the day was unloaded, and two hours after we walked up to the baggage claim, did someone discover our plane still had luggage on board.

This would be fine as a single event, mistakes happen, but every regular flier has a similar story. Someone makes a mistake, a passenger notices, and is promptly ignored. Because 90% of air travelers don’t understand how aviation works, they make ridiculous assertions. Air travel employees then ignore all passengers, including the 10% who have correctly identified a problem, and they tell the same lies to everyone. Why airliners and airports have decided this is the best way to handle unsatisfied customers is beyond me. Don’t even get me started on the security/safety theater that occurs throughout the flying process, from TSA to putting your tray table up before landing. So yes, there is room for improvement.

That aside, these are usually mere annoyances. Being delayed three hours is a pain, but traveling from California to Boston in nine hours instead of six is still an amazing feat. Being able to fly around the world, even on a low salary, is an incredible luxury that fliers in the 1960s could only dream of. Flying is great. So next flight, try to let the little things go (if you succeed in doing so, tell me how), enjoy the miracle of the jet age, and take a look outside the window. You never know when the clouds will clear and you’ll get a to see this from the plane:

Picture from my plane window flying from CPH to JFK of the Skaftafell Glacier in Iceland. November 2025.