Nearly a Million Miles and Flying Still Charms Me
In 1987, I boarded a Lufthansa flight in New Delhi headed for Stockholm, with a stopover in Frankfurt. I was in the hotel business by then, so when the meal service came around I understood what was happening in a way most passengers didn't. I recognized the choreography. I knew why the tray was arranged the way it was. The passenger next to me looked at the foil-covered dish with genuine puzzlement. I felt, quietly, like I had a secret.
That flight was my first time leaving India. It was also the moment I fell in love with flying. Not the destination, the flying itself.
Nearly four decades later, my travel app tells me I've covered 945,282 miles since 2008 alone. That's 208 trips, 146 cities, 19 countries and regions, and 1,084 days away from home. And I still feel a small charge of excitement every time I buckle in.
When flying was an occasion
Growing up in India, air travel was a luxury most families simply didn't access. It was aspirational in the same way a five-star hotel was aspirational. You dressed for it. You talked about it afterward. The meal on the plane wasn't just food, it was evidence that you had gone somewhere.
Lufthansa to Frankfurt was an education. Screens mounted throughout the cabin, shared entertainment, nothing personal or on-demand. You watched what everyone else watched, when it played. That felt like magic anyway. The food was served with the seriousness of a restaurant. The cabin crew had a manner about them. I sat in economy and felt like a guest.
That feeling shaped how I think about flying to this day. Not nostalgia exactly, more like a baseline. A standard I keep comparing everything against.
What happened to domestic flying in the US
The honest answer is: deregulation finished what it started, and airlines decided the cabin is a revenue optimization problem, not a hospitality problem. Domestic US flying, particularly in economy, is now an exercise in renting an uncomfortable seat for a few hours and hoping nothing goes badly wrong.
There is nothing to look forward to. No meal. Frequently no legroom. A boarding process designed to generate anxiety about whether your carry-on will fit. The snack, if it arrives, is a small bag of pretzels.
I don't say this as complaint. I say it as description, because the gap between domestic and international flying is now so large it almost feels like two different industries wearing the same name.
International is different, and I still love it
On a long international flight, especially on Etihad, the cabin still carries some of what I felt in 1987. They feed you. Properly. Multiple times. The crew treats the service as service, not as a transaction to complete before landing. There is an arc to a long-haul flight that a domestic hop can never have.
I think South Asians who grew up with flying as a rare event understand international long-haul differently from people who treat it as an inconvenience. When you know what flying felt like when it was a privilege, you don't take a flat bed at 38,000 feet for granted. You notice it. You appreciate the meal because you remember when a foil-covered tray in economy felt like a gift.
You have to orchestrate it yourself now
The days of flying being automatically good are gone, at least domestically. What replaced them is a system where every comfort is available, but none of it is automatic. You have to architect your own experience.
I learned this through friction. For a long time my boarding group was 5 on United flights. Boarding group 5 sounds fine until you watch the overhead bins fill up while you're still in the jetway. That's not a minor inconvenience. That's checked bag fees, gate-checked anxiety, and a scramble that starts your trip badly. I eventually got a United credit card specifically to solve that one problem. Boarding group 2. Problem gone. Worth it.
Loyalty is the other thing I've genuinely come to believe in. With 208 trips behind me, the ones I've enjoyed most consistently are the ones where the airline already knows me, where the status means something at the gate when something goes wrong, and something always goes wrong eventually. Spreading your travel across carriers to chase the cheapest fare is a reasonable strategy if you fly occasionally. If you fly constantly, it costs you more than it saves.
What I've Actually Learned Across 945,000 Miles
- Fix the boarding group problem first. It's the one friction point that ruins the start of every trip.
- Concentrate your loyalty. Status on one carrier beats Silver on four.
- International and domestic are different products. Stop expecting domestic to feel like international.
- The meal on a long-haul flight is still an event. Let it be one.
- The travelers who still enjoy flying are the ones who've built a personal system around it, not the ones waiting for airlines to make it enjoyable by default.
The charm is still there, if you know where to look
I genuinely don't think the love of flying ever leaves you if you caught it early enough. It just requires more active tending than it used to.
When I board a long international flight and the cabin settles and the meal service begins, I still feel something close to what I felt on that Lufthansa flight out of New Delhi in 1987. A sense of occasion. A quiet appreciation that I'm somewhere most people in the world never get to be.
The 945,000 miles aren't a grind to me. They're a collection. Each city on that list was a day I was somewhere other than where I started. That, in the end, is what flying gives you. Not comfort, not always. Not convenience, not anymore. But movement. And movement, if you grew up dreaming about it, never entirely loses its charge.
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