Air Travel really sucks these days

[trekgeezer]

I'm sitting in the Little Rock airport this morning twiddling my thumbs. The wife dropped me off the requisite two hours before my flight leaves (you can never tell how long the security line is going to be here) and now I'm drinking my Starbucks  and typing this post.

I hate the stripping down they make you go through mainly because it's just for show. Anyway I'm on my way to Raleigh, NC for a conference that NC State is hosting and I have to give a presentation Thursday morning about setting up a techs support call center. They stuck us in the last slot (10:45-11:30) so I think we'll be lucky to get two people to come our presentation.  The conference ends at 11:30 and people will have going home on their minds and not listening to me.

I did a lot travel when I was in the Navy back in the 70's and I remember how nice it was. I don't think I ever traveled on a plane that full. Now there all overbooked and I hear a lot more stories about lost luggage now.

Man, I've still got an hour before boarding time and the book stores don't have squat I care about reading. Maybe I'll catch a nap. 

[CheezeFlixz]

I still fly quite a bit, not as much as I did a couple of years ago when I was on a plane 4 or more times a weeks. I find that flying out of my very small regional airport saves me a lot of time and undo annoyances. It cost a little more about a $100, but it save travel time to Memphis, Nashville, St Louis and it's quicker, I can show up about 30 minutes before the flight and have plenty of time. I know nearly all the employees at the airport (all dozen of them). If I go to a international airport I have to do the 2-3 hours early hurry up and wait game which is just annoying. More often then not TSA hasn't got a clue what they are doing, and IMO do more to hamper travel than help it.
But with the rising prices of travel and the nickel and dime fees the airlines are coming up with, along with the rising airport fees (landing/take off surcharges and taxes) it's getting to the point were air travel is getting prohibitive.

[Andrew]

Man, I've still got an hour before boarding time and the book stores don't have squat I care about reading. Maybe I'll catch a nap. 

Something I put on my "before flying checklist" was to buy a book at a bookstore, and also a pack of gum at a grocery store.  The stuff available at airport bookstores is too limited (and I can only take so much Clive Cussler), and the time I actually found a $4 pack of gum still makes me wonder if I could have hallucinated the whole thing.

[Killer Bees]

I did a little travelling in the last 10 years or so and always enjoyed it.  Never lost my luggage and the only time I had a bad meal was on a Air Canada flight to Vancouver in 2000.  The meal was dry and awful and the cabin crew apologised for the quality.  But that was only the one time and only on the leg from Hawaii to Vancouver.

These days it's awful.  In the last 12 months I've gone to Melbourne and Sydney a couple of times for work training.  The seats seem closer together, but that could be my imagination.  So it's not as comfortable as it used to be and the cabin crew frown at you if you get up a walk around.

Getting through the security is a joke and the lines are horrendous.  I don't have the inclination to travel abroad any more.  I'm not a scaremonger at all and very little frightens me.  But it's just doesn't seem worth the risk.  I can't even take knitting on board to while away the time.  And they give you stainless steel forks and plastic knife.  WTF??  I'm no trained killer, but it seems to be you can do just as much damage to the human body with a fork as you can with a knife.

Passengers are rude and why does the guy who obsessively reads the newspapers HAS to sit next to me???

[Trevor]

I have to travel a bit when my office does outreach: sometimes by car and sometimes by South African Airways. I actually prefer driving, as in the case last year when I had to drive quite a few hundred miles to take films to the Bloemfontein Art Festival in July. That I am doing again in a few months. 

I really don't like flying but can control my fear until I'm on the ground again.  I don't mind it when I'm in the air, I just hate waiting to fly.

Security here is very tight and you are subjected to a body search before you can get on the plane. Our airports are very busy: they will be a lot busier come 2010 when the Soccer World Cup is held here.