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Airline travel has become nearly unbearable.

Many of my patients are choosing not to fly, as they worry about becoming stressed and overwhelmed.

For those who do fly, the experience is often stressful, frustrating, and disempowering.

Finding ways to improve your locus of control can help.

Have you flown lately? If so, I am sorry. I have empathy because I have flown lately, and it was a mashup of a Kafka novella (rampant, illogical bureaucracy) and Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (travelers sitting around with nothing much happening). It all raises many questions:

How bad can airline travel get?

How much will you put up with to travel?

Who, actually, is responsible for this mess, if anyone?

Is there some realistic way to improve this catastrophe (also a play by Beckett, by the way)?

And most importantly: What is this doing to our mental health?

Let’s start with an assessment of how bad the situation currently is before we move on to how bad it could get. According to USAFacts, a website that tracks such things, nearly 25 percent of all domestic flights in the second quarter of 2025 did not arrive on time. A look at Delta’s website illuminates the reality of airport security delays. The company now encourages us to arrive two hours early for a domestic flight and three hours early for an international one. Things are heading in the wrong........

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