Around age 18.....the summer of 1977, I took my first flight (to basic training in San Antonio, Texas). Everything on this flight worked perfect.
Over the next twenty-odd years, with two slight exceptions (a cancelled flight in Dallas, and a five-hour delay in Dallas)....things ran fine.
Around 2000, I began to notice a problem here and there....the cancellations increased....the delays increased....the tarmac delays went up (I sat at a Tampa tarmac for almost an hour once....in the plane.....while some storm passed over).
For a lot of older people, we remember how it was before 2000, and the reliability of a 'ticket'.
Traveling today? I sit down and form a plan 'A'. Then I go and research the airports I might be going through, forming a plan 'B' (listing five hotels in the local area), and then getting to a plan 'C' which is the final destination where I might be extremely late getting there (thus planning an overnight there just in case).
I just plain accept the fact.....the odds of this being a successful flight is marginally at 70-percent.
All of this leads me to question how things will be in fifteen years, and if the chaos multiples or simply doubles in nature.
