Flying has gotten complicated with all the opinions flying around. Everyone’s got a hot take on whether air travel is still worth it, whether you should just drive, or whether trains are the future. I get it. But here’s where I land — pun absolutely intended — after years of bouncing between airports for both work and the occasional “I need a beach immediately” trip: flying is still the best way to cover serious distance without losing your mind.
Let me back up. A few years ago I had a consulting gig that required me to be in Chicago on Monday, Atlanta on Wednesday, and back home by Thursday night. I briefly considered driving. Briefly. That would’ve been something like 30 hours behind the wheel in four days. Instead, I booked two flights, spent maybe six hours total in the air, and still had time to grab dinner with a friend in Atlanta. That’s the moment it really clicked for me how much time flying actually saves. Not in some abstract “planes are fast” way, but in a very real “I got my week back” way.
Probably should have led with this, but the comfort factor has come a long way too. I know, I know — everyone loves to complain about legroom and middle seats. Fair enough. But on a decent carrier, you’ve got a personal screen with more movies than you’d watch in a month, a halfway reasonable meal, and sometimes even Wi-Fi that actually works. I once knocked out an entire project proposal somewhere over Kansas. Not glamorous, but productive. Compare that to a road trip where you’re white-knuckling it through construction zones and bad weather.
The international side of flying is where things get genuinely fun though. I took a flight to Tokyo last spring — well, late winter technically, it was March — and the airline served this incredible Japanese curry halfway through the flight. Little thing, right? But it set the tone for the whole trip. You’re already tasting the culture before you even land. And there’s something about being packed into a metal tube with people from a dozen different countries that makes you feel a little more connected to the world. That’s what makes air travel endearing, honestly. It throws you into proximity with strangers and new experiences whether you planned for it or not.
One thing I don’t think gets enough credit: connections. Not the networking kind, the layover kind. Modern route networks are genuinely impressive. I flew from a mid-sized city in the Southeast to a small town in Portugal last year, and it only took one connection through Lisbon. Total travel time was about fourteen hours door to door. Try doing that by any other means. You literally can’t.
Look, flying isn’t perfect. Delays happen. Bags get lost. The guy in 14C will recline into your laptop screen at the worst possible moment. But when you zoom out and think about what you’re actually getting — the ability to be almost anywhere on the planet in under a day, with a decent chance of arriving rested and ready to go — it’s kind of remarkable. I’m not saying you should fly everywhere. A four-hour drive? Sure, just drive. But anything beyond that, I’ll take the airport chaos and the overhead bin Tetris every single time.
