News-Record.com

The issue isn’t increased security. That’s a given in the post-9/11 world.

No, the suffering actually begins with seats that are criminally short on legroom — and takes flight from there.

Now, at 6-foot-2, I'm not exceptionally tall. But no way does the typical space (coach class) in a commercial airliner come close to comfort for someone my height. Then there's the passenger in the next row, who blithely plunges his seat into the inclined position without even considering that he just slammed the legs of the poor guy behind him.

Other indignities are less overt, such as more and more passengers feeling free to kick off their shoes, a not always aromatic prospect for their neighbors.

But my worst air travel experience may have been my most recent, to and from Calgary, Alberta, via Houston. As we were about to take off from PTI, storms shut down the Houston airport. We sat and waited on the tarmac in Greensboro for more than an hour.

On the way back from Canada three days later, storms closed the Houston airport again. Thankfully, I didn’t miss my connecting flight to Greensboro. It was canceled. So I was rebooked on another plane, seven hours later.

I had time to kill in a steamy terminal packed with hundreds of other stranded people, many of whom plopped cross-legged on the floor or took naps in corridors. So I ate lunch at a Chili's and read every single word in about 10 magazines. The cover story that week in U.S. News & World Report: "How to Beat the Airport Mess."

Included was a ranking of "Most Miserable Airports" in the country (Charlotte ranked third-worst, behind Detroit and Chicago's O’Hare). The article also offered tips from experts, such as always planning to spend the night in unexpected places, since airlines hardly ever put up stranded passengers in hotels anymore.

Want to avoid having to make nice with a chatty seatmate? Take headphones.

When someone in the seat ahead crunches your knees, turn the overhead air nozzle directly onto his noggin.

JoAnn Kuzma Devney, author of "99 Ways to Make a Flight Attendant Fly — Off the Handle," suggested this strategy when you’re traveling with a child, are assigned seats in separate rows, and no other passenger seems willing to trade places: "Approach your child, who will inevitably be seated in a middle seat on a full airplane, and exclaim, 'Here's a bag, honey. Let me know when you need to throw up again.' "

Long story short: I boarded a plane in Calgary at 7 a.m. on a Sunday. I arrived home in Greensboro on that Monday, at 12:15 a.m. By that point, I was feeling a little ill myself.

As I drove home from PTI, I remember my first flight as a high school ROTC cadet. Piedmont Airlines (now that was an airline) took us up in a big jet from the old Regional Airport and circled a few times. They served us Cokes and we pressed our noses to the windows, wishing we could reach outside and grab a fistful of cloud. This must be heaven, I thought.

I don’t remember ever flying that high again.