Most of the people I met in Bali and Ladakh could not have dreamed of getting on a plane (though that is changing fast); most of them, in fact, would go through ten times as much hardship if it could allow them to see L.A. or New York. In at least one spot in India, impoverished villagers pay $5 — a fortune to them — just to sit in a stationary plane and experience the wonders savored by those of us who sometimes fret over being separated for 10 hours from our bottles of shampoo. As my esteemed colleague Elliott Hester has said well in this space, airline employees and cabin attendants are often unfairly blamed for everything that goes awry, and as many consumers point out, too much does go awry as the skies grow more crowded. But every technological breakthrough we’ve made in history is an imperfect means to an end that few of us now would wish to surrender.Next week, as on many a week, I’ll fly from Jerusalem, where I write this, to London, and thence, all being well, to San Francisco and Santa Barbara. I’ll unpack my clothes at home, pack my suitcase again and, roughly 36 hours after arrival, fly off to San Francisco again, and Osaka and Bangkok, on my way to Hanoi. I expect that some things will go wrong on these seven flights, and many things will go right. I’ll be sorely challenged when the plane is delayed, and thrilled when someone stealthily allows me into a lounge full of peanuts.
But none of that has anything to do with the fact underneath all this: that I — and most readers of this paper — are among the lucky few able to see the global neighborhood, and try to make sense of it, to meet our planetary neighbors, as my grandparents could barely have dreamed of doing. The unfriendliest skies in the world are better than no skies at all.