He paid the price, but she had the bad experience.

Time and again, flying proves itself to be one of the most undignified forms of transport, even if you can occasionally pay your way into business class. At their worst, airports can be stressful like nowhere else, and an increasing number of airlines have an uncanny way of making you feel less like a passenger and more like an unwieldy piece of cargo. On top of that, they get away with it all, as they are the fastest way to get to most places. They are an integral part of our interconnected modern world.

Still, just because the actual flight is fast doesn’t mean the process to get you on the plane and off the ground is going to be. Airport delays are a common occurrence, and they can get super bad under the wrong circumstances. Getting stuck at a gate for hours is nobody’s idea of paradise, not least when they just want to get where they are going. It is the kind of experience that can put a person off flying for a long time, no matter what the impracticalities of avoiding it may turn out to be.