I’m beginning to question the wisdom of that old phrase “the miracle of flight.”
I mean, it seemed like a pretty great idea when the Wright brothers lifted off at Kitty Hawk 120 years ago. But if you go back and read the story, they had tried and failed from the same spot three days before. That means the first powered flight in human history was delayed by 72 hours. That is what’s called foreshadowing.
These days, if you’re going to the airport, it feels like you should pack a sleeping bag. A few days ago, a corrupted file in a federal aviation database forced more than 10,000 flights across the country to be grounded. That comes right behind a system meltdown at Southwest Airlines that led them to cancel more than 16,000 flights in a 10-day period on either side of Christmas.
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A friend of mine whose bags got stuck in the Denver airport after a canceled flight called to check and was told the airport had 30,000 unsorted bags at the airport. God help any poor souls who decided to pack some holiday cheese.
Our own airport, Charlotte Douglas International, is one of the busiest in the world—more than 43 million people moved through the airport in 2021. If you’ve been to the airport lately, you’ll notice two things: They’re building like crazy, and it’s still not fast enough to accommodate all the growth. It wasn’t that long ago that you could breeze in and get a parking space close to the terminal. Now the airport recommends that you reserve a space online to make sure the lots don’t fill up before you get there.
The miracle these days is not flying itself. The miracle is that any flight to anywhere ever gets there on time. The global airline system is completely connected and insanely complicated. A thunderstorm that grounds planes in New York City can have ripple effects on flights around the world. And when there’s a major glitch, like what happened with the FAA and Southwest, it’s not like dominoes start falling—it’s like they get thrown in a wood chipper.
I fear we’ve come to expect too much from flying. Somehow we have taken for granted the fact that we can sit in a chair in the sky and be transported from here to Seattle in just a few hours. We want that flight to take off and land precisely on time. We want roomy seats and good snacks and cheery flight attendants. And we want all of it cheap.
Of course, that’s what the airlines have promised us. They should know better. So should we.
Tommy Tomlinson’s "On My Mind" column runs Mondays on WFAE and WFAE.org. It represents his opinion, not the opinion of WFAE. You can respond to this column in the comments section below. You can also email Tommy at ttomlinson@wfae.org.
