Traveling used to be adventuresome. Now, it seems like it’s
just an adventure.
The destination itself is the prize, of course, but there
used to be a sense of glamor in the journey.
Not anymore.
Planes lose luggage, run late or are outright canceled. And
there’s always the added specter of ancillary fees. Trains sometimes can’t take
the curves of an ancient track or can’t dodge something that has fallen, like a
tree branch, in their way.
If you drive, it’s a longer trip, with sky-high gas prices.
It’s like the old Saturday Night Live skit: You can’t get
there from here.
Only it’s not so comical.
Some of this is not the fault of the travel companies. There
is only so much they can control. The weather immediately comes to mind. But
there are some things they can do.
Take the airlines, for instance. The Transportation Security
Administration predicts a record number of travelers for this Thanksgiving
week. If the TSA can estimate that far in advance how many people will pass
through its checkpoints, then it can surely make the adjustments in having the
proper number of air traffic controllers available and where they are placed.
The same thing goes for the airlines and their problems with pilot shortages.
We are now in a time where we have to improvise, adapt and
overcome.
Travel is a wondrous thing, but it shouldn’t take solving a
Rubik’s cube to get there. If we’ve learned anything, it’s that traveling
should become more situational. Travel is never going to go back to the way it
was.
But we can certainly try to make it less arduous.
It’s going to have to be a group effort, however.
Airlines, Amtrak, bus companies, and even government
agencies like the Federal Aviation Administration must be more flexible and
able to react to the situation. We have long past the days of business as
usual. That’s because business isn’t usual anymore when it comes to traveling.
And we all need to understand that airlines sometimes cancel
and delay flights. Sometimes, there are tree branches in the middle of the
railroad track.
We all need to do our part to return travel to being
adventuresome again instead of packing our bags with loathing and thinking of
it as an adventure in a bad way.
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