Over the course of the next month, I am taking four substantial roundtrip flights. My daughters, meanwhile, are both traveling home from thousands of miles away, twice, to spend the holidays together. And on the one hand, what a privilege to live in an age in which virtually any point on the globe is accessible. On the other hand, it's unlikely all this getting around isn't going to have some real moments of suck.
There are few recent book titles that pack the immediate resonance of legal scholar and Vanderbilt law professor Ganesh Sitaraman's "Why Flying Is Miserable: And How to Fix It." Flying is so miserable for so many of us in the U.S., the notion of fixing it barely seems an option. J.D. Power’s 2023 North American Airline Satisfaction Study found passenger dissatisfaction on the rise from the year before, though travelers in first and business class report better experiences. For the rest of us back in economy, though, air travel is often fraught — especially as we enter the busiest travel season of the year.
