"Getting there is half the fun" is a longstanding slogan or mantra for the travel business. I believe it originated with an automobile company, but it was widely adopted throughout the business. And it's broken.
Let's start with the prototypical trip these days: Fly to a destination, have run there, fly home. If you've traveled at all lately you know that unless your destination was a complete fiasco, getting there was not half the fun. All the fun happened at the destination; getting there provided none of the fun and almost all the grief and hassle.
To start, airports are hostile – you stand in multiple lines then wait hours doing nothing. You crowd and push. You schlep heavy baggage around on its wheels.
Then you stand in another line. Once you get on the plane, things do not improve. You are stuffed into a seat that was designed to accommodate Olga Korbut or Willie Shoemaker, not a modern-day American.
Your airline nickel-and-dimes you for anything that might improve your flight. The program reverses when your flight lands and lets you off. More pushing and shoving for baggage in the overhead bin and for getting out of the plane.
Then, there's the hostile arrival airport. The airline experience is universally acknowledged as unpleasant. "Enjoy your flight" is an empty send-off.
In TV commercials, automobile companies are using airline cabins as an example of bad to compare with their good. Can it be fixed? Probably not. Much of the crowding, line-ups, and pushing and sh.
