Before embarking on a six-day trip to the French West Indies, from which I’ve just returned, I was feeling two chief emotions: excitement and fear. The excitement part should be self-explanatory. Sun, sand, sea. ‘Nuff said.

As for the fear part of the equation, I spent the 12 hours prior to my departure pacing around my home office, obsessively checking my flight schedule and scanning my RSS feeds for news of more flight cancellations, maintenance crises, airline bankruptcies and weather horrors. If you spend as much time reading and thinking about travel as I do, it’s pretty easy to morph from savvy traveler into a paranoid bundle of nerves anytime a trip surfaces that allows little room for unexpected error.

And while I’m certainly not about to kiss the collective rear of the airline industry (gimme back my pretzels, people), but I feel like I’ve got to report that I actually had a totally seamless travel experience on not one, not two, but every single leg of all flights to and from my destination. That’s including flights in and out of Miami International Airport, which many travelers I know would happily trade for a nice afternoon in the fiery pits of hell.

And here’s the thing: my seamless travel experience had very little to do with my own travel savvy, planning or appropriate execution of Macgyver-esque travel tips. It just happened. My flights - on American Airlines no less - all departed and arrived within a few minutes of their scheduled times. My bags successfully made the journey. I didn’t have to pay any inane surcharges, and there was plenty of overhead space for my carry-on. In fact, the only mishap of my entire trip was making the decision to watch P.S. I Love You on my return flight (just don’t do it, unless of course you like becoming emotionally distraught over the fates of characters you can’t stand).

While this is not to say that I plan on abandoning my pre-travel paranoia or expect all my future travels to go flawlessly, at least I know that it’s still possible to go places without sanity-threatening airport nightmares, epic delays or vacation-squashing luggage mishaps. In fact, the vast majority of travelers will reach their destinations with little to no hassle - besides, of course, basic modern day travel discomforts like waiting in long lines, being herded through security gates and having to touch elbows with strangers while sitting in uncomfortably cramped seats.

After the kind of travel atmosphere that’s plagued 2008, I certainly needed a reminder.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 at 3:40 pm and is filed under Air Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.