Air Travel and Its Sources of Stress

It is well known that half of the passengers are afraid aboard a plane. It is often only a diffuse anxiety, but it can sometimes take on more spectacular aspects, such as the United Airlines passenger who tried to open the door of the aircraft on a flight from Newark to Guatemala City at an altitude of 11,000 meters. It must be said that a customer’s journey to arrive safely is strewn with an impressive number of obstacles.

Before arriving at the airport

The stress starts as soon as you book. Unless they go through a travel agency that will make their job much easier for a modest price, the customer will have to use their computer or smartphone to select the flight(s) that suit them without knowing the final price of the transaction. Admittedly, the carriers’ websites are generally rather well done, especially if you speak English, and it is relatively easy to choose your flights, except that the fare indicated does not include the basic options.

Depending on the needs, you have to add the price of a carry-on bag or a checked bag, the choice of your seat unless you find yourself in the middle seat, stuck between two other passengers whose size and behavior you don’t know, all at the back of the aircraft, take out insurance or not, and so on. In short, unless the customer is very used to their airline and their route, they still have to wait for their boarding pass without knowing when they will be able to get it, each carrier having its own practices.

However, it should be recognized that obtaining the boarding pass directly and thus avoiding the mandatory passage through the company’s counter is a clear step forward.

The passenger still has to go to the airport and there is additional stress. How long will it take them, especially if they go there by car and moreover if they use their personal vehicle that they will have to park in one of the many car parks whose accesses are not always well indicated? How do they know the traffic situation? What is the check-in time limit if they have a piece of luggage to put on board? How long will it take to get to the boarding gate? As the passenger doesn’t know anything about it, they will take all their precautions, finally arriving at the airport much too early, and they will not always know how to kill time before departure.

Crossing the airport

This is the most delicate and stressful moment, especially when it comes to very large platforms that are very congested, sometimes with faulty signage, and where the distances to be covered are long and not always assisted by conveyor belts. The customer will need a lot of patience and a great knowledge of air transport practices to complete the journey without too much stress. Because the obstacles are innumerable, so much so that one wonders if they were not created voluntarily to discourage passengers.

It starts with the queue at the check-in counter, a delicate moment especially for some destinations for which passengers take a huge package of luggage, trying to haggle over the price of excess weight or even the size of the suitcase. At some airports, all customers, even those with their boarding pass, must pass through this first obstacle. Once this has passed, you must quickly move on to the second one, which is, depending on the case, the police filter applicable or not depending on the country, the nationality of the customer and their destination and, in any case, the famous PIF (Screening Inspection Post) created in the mid-1990s after spectacular attacks and plane hijackings.

This is the place where you will have to endure the perfectly random rules of the gates that ring or not depending on the way they have been adjusted, which varies from one terminal to another and from one airport to another. Fortunately, the major platforms are starting to equip themselves with equipment that prevents you from taking off your shoes, or even taking your computer or tablet out of your suitcase. But this passage remains a mandatory moment and it seems that air transport customers are more dangerous than train customers, who are not subject to this constraint in stations.

The relief is palpable once this dreaded moment is over and the passenger can go to their departure lounge, provided that they have clearly identified it and that it is properly indicated. Their route will inevitably lead them to cross the commercial zone which is taking up more and more space, especially in the major airports. One may also wonder if all the precautions that a passenger must take are not intended only to lead them to create a long moment where they will have nothing to do but stroll in the “duty free” area to make purchases which will ultimately contribute to nearly 50% of the turnover of the major airports.

This is the first part of the journey. I don’t have enough space to get to the end of the trip, which will be the subject of the next column.