About55

My name is Dena and I am a plane-o-phile.  No, there is no ten-step program to rid myself of this pleasant addiction.  To me, the anticipation of air travel means more than reaching a destination. It’s the experience that still thrills me.

Aside from the giddiness I feel at takeoff, seeing objects below get smaller and eventually disappear (okay, I am the person who interrupts any conversation with the stranger next to me to press her nose against the tiny window to feel the enormous piece of gadgetry in which I am contained lift itself off the ground), I still marvel at how quickly commercial airlines can get us places in an incredibly short period of time.  You need not think of me as an octogenarian. I am merely the chick who is in the habit of adding up where we have come from in order to appreciate where we are. Five and a half hours to New York?  Four to Hawaii? Eat dinner, watch a movie, take a nap and you’re in Europe? What’s not to appreciate, when countless decades of travelers faced days, months and even years to get somewhere?

Air travel was once considered a glamorous experience, first class or coach. There was no point in shopping around for the best deal, because airfares were controlled by regulation. Travel agents regularly booked air travel for you, especially if you traveled on business, since the airlines all gave them a commission for doing so. If a roundtrip ticket between San Francisco and New York was $249 on one airline, it was the same on all the rest who flew that route, making them vie for your business by touting the superior service they offered.  That means there were more airlines giving you more choices and planes need not be full to make an airline profitable. Before such intense security concerns transformed airports, there were even observation decks where you were allowed to watch planes come and go in an elevated, fresh-air location. Flight attendants, both male and female, were decked out in snappy uniforms, slender enough to navigate aisles without having to even think about it, food was served free, and coats were taken from you and hung in closets.

With the huge changes that have taken place within the airline industry since then, all I hear are complaints. And while I lament the loss of travel-ease, comfort, better service and choice of carriers, I still think air travel is miraculous. When we can catch up with the rest of the industrialized world and bullet trains become another viable means of transportation within this beautiful country of ours, I will become slack-jawed once again.  I guess I am a product of all those futuristic films they used to show us in elementary school, where actors would touch buttons that would drive cars and cook food (much of which has actually come true). For me, to jump on a train in San Francisco and end up in LA just two and a half hours later will surely knock my proverbial socks off and give me even more choices than I have now.

Am I a bit simplistic?  Perhaps.  I believe in the ingenuity of the human spirit to better our lives as long as we can all see the vision and get out of our own ways to make it come true. And since I have but one time to go around, I suppose I am a bit selfish and want it all now. But even if it does not all come to pass, I know I am living in an amazing era, where diseases can be eradicated and where home entertainment has become an art form. It’s also a time when I can order merchandise from my smart phone, whose technology hardware once took up an entire room, and even better, from a desktop computer from which I can tap out my blog, hit the “publish” button, and make it available to millions of readers.  I am still flying high and I hope I never come down.