The best time to write about how horrible plane travel has become is immediately following, or, in this case, during a scheduling and delay disaster that completely upends the routines of life. 

When it doesn’t happen and your flight goes well, you just don’t care that much. But when you are in the thick of it – I’m writing now from a 36-hour international travel time on a 19-hour delayed domestic flight that just took off – it feels like the apocalypse. 

It’s more common now than I can ever remember. I’m at the point of trying not to travel unless I have to because 3 of 5 of my trips these days seem to end up this way. I’ve come to expect disaster and so prepare for it. But most people start with the assumption that all is going to go well because that’s how it always worked in the past. 

Consider the three young women attempting to travel with their foo-foo fluffy dogs who are their best friends. These dogs are well-behaved and perfectly gorgeous animals who manage the scene just fine. Unless there is a problem.