For Thanksgiving 1984 I traveled from Decatur IL to Orlando FL. It was my first commercial airline flight. Turboprop plane on Ozark Airlines. I vaguely remember getting breakfast on the flight. It was new, exciting, and made me feel like an adult.
Today, more or less forty years to the day later, my wife and I traveled from Manhattan KS to Las Vegas NV via Dallas. Flying has changed a lot in forty years, some things are better perhaps, others are worse.
For only the second time in my life, we flew first class. We upgraded a couple weeks ago, deciding that we could splurge a bit. This morning when we got up it was snowing, fairly heavily. As we were about to depart the house I got an email saying our flight had been delayed. Our connection time in Dallas was already short enough that our boarding passes had a warning on them about minimal time to get from gate to gate.
When we checked in at the Manhattan airport the agent said we would certainly miss our connection in Dallas. She booked us on a later flight, but wasn’t able to put us in 1st class. Instead we were in rows 34 and 36, on the aisle.
Our delayed flight made up lots of time and we landed in time to get to our original flight. But we weren’t on that flight any more, and there was no room for us. We hiked to the nearest service desk, where we were able to get two seats in 1st class on the replacement flight, again in different rows.
When we got to the gate I was ready to pounce on the agent to see if someone would trade, allowing my wife and I to sit together. With about 30 minutes to go we noticed that sign at the gate had changed, our flight was now in a different terminal. Since we had switched flights we weren’t getting delay notifications on our phones. Fortunately we were able to get to the changed gate in time.
We were able to swap seats with someone, which allowed us to sit together for the 3 hour flight to Las Vegas. The extra space was marvelous.
Both of us were pleasantly surprised to learn we got a meal. Not just half a can of soda and some stale pretzels, an actual meal. On plates. With metal silverware. A surprisingly good meal– chicken enchilada with rice, a little salad, and some cheesecake. Outstanding.
In the end it was a good day, we arrived safely, all our bags arrived with us, and we got to ride in 1st class. Flying does save time. It would have been a 17 hour drive to get from Manhattan to Las Vegas. This being the first week of December, an extended road trip through the Rockies, seemed like a bad idea. Door to door was 11 hours flying.
We were both exhausted by the end of the day, partly due to traveling, but also due to not being used to so many people, and so much stimulus. We live a quiet life, and, especially since the pandemic, we have lost our ability to “be out among the English”.
We both enjoy going places and seeing things, but we are aware that it is costly, and not only monetarily but emotionally and mentally.