We love to travel (?)

After nearly eight years as an expat, travel remains somewhat of an enigma.

On the one hand, it is amazing to be in different places. I have been fortunate to work for an international company, with offices worldwide and interests across the globe. This has enabled me to see places in the world I never imagined I would go. Seeing and experiencing the different cultures, lifestyles, and geography has been fascinating, and the COVID years of travel interruption only accentuated the almost addictive nature of travel.

That said, being in different places is amazing. Getting there, not so much. Getting there often involves long bouts of air travel, punctuated by shorter but just as essential ground transportation. Both can be interesting, challenging, tiring, and sometimes just plain annoying.

Having lived several years in Japan and now in the United Kingdom, air travel often involves long-haul flights. My company defines that as anything over four hours in the air. In practice, I’ve found the four or five hour flights to be, for the most part, easy and none too difficult. It’s the longer flights – eight, 10, 15 hours or more – that become more considerable.

Over the years of travel, my wife and I have become rather adept at managing our movements from place to place. Booking flights has become more routine (aided by my company’s travel agency, and airline frequent-flyer programmes). We’ve learned to pack efficiently and get by quite nicely with relatively little luggage. Increased airport security has made travel more difficult over the years, but we’ve learned the system and generally get by with a minimum of hassle and delay. To a degree, it is like many other things in life. Resist and things become more difficult and annoying. Learn the system and accept it, and travel gets marginally easier.

For the most part, we travel in what the airlines typically call “premium economy” – an oxymoron to be sure, but generally what I find to be the best compromise between the more comfortable first/business class, and the cattle-car-like confines of coach.

Although my company will allow use of business class, most of the time I just can’t justify the cost. Air transportation is expensive and seems to be even more so since the pandemic. A long-haul flight can cost upwards of $10,000 US dollars in business class, compared to around $3,000 for the same flight in premium economy. For the extra $7000 you get a seat that reclines fully flat, making sleep somewhat more possible, along with a bigger TV screen and better food. Personally, I can usually tolerate a bit less comfort for a few hours for a big cost savings for the company. And for personal travel that I pay for from my own pocket, there really isn’t any choice. I’ll tolerate a few hours of discomfort, thank you very much.

I have to give credit to the flight attendants. On most airlines and most flights, the flight attendants work very hard to make the flight as comfortable as possible. They put up with a lot, including rude and self-obsessed passengers. And typically they do it with a smile, from the boarding of passengers through meal services, to landing many hours later. Can’t be an easy task, to be sure.

One rant about the airlines, in two words. Reclining seats. In premium economy and even more so in coach, reclining seats are a bad idea. You have precious little room in your space on the plane to begin with. When the bozo in front of you reclines, you end up with a seat back in your face (and in coach, often in your knees, too). Most passengers are too self-absorbed to care about any discomfort they cause anyone else. Why the airlines continue to pack seats closer and closer together, but still provide reclining seatbacks, is beyond my understanding.

All in all, airline travel is a necessity. It is, particularly for long-distance travel, the fastest way between two points. It is safe, reasonably predictable, and usually dependable. Of course, there are the occasional delays, unexpected cancellations, and the added challenge of connections from one flight to another. But airlines make the world accessible in a way that never used to be possible.

And although the “getting there” is sometimes uncomfortable and annoying, the “being there” makes it all worthwhile.