by Connie Timpson

It wasn’t a matter of scary people with explosives, drugs, or even overspending without reporting. It was a matter of apples. Red ones. Jet lagged, sporting airplane hair, and cranky about Air France’s awful

by Parker Emerson

We arrive at the United Airlines counter at Southern California's Ontario International Airport three hours before the scheduled 10:56 a.m. departure time to check our bags. There are six other people in line, but…

by Cross McCoy

There is nothing that can soothe the mind-grating experience of standing in a line, served through the system like slop through troughs, then ordered to remove your shoes. You must even place your phone…

by Won Lee

Almost missed my flight to Portland. Woke up at 730 in the morning, triple-checked Benjamin's flat for forgotten items, lugged/dragged my much-too-heavy suitcase down an interminable number of steps, exerting my fles

by Yvonne Osborne

He was slim and well-dressed with a nice haircut, not too short, not too long. He wore a black tailored jacket and well-made jeans. His black leather shoes showed no sign of the slush…

by James Robertovich

I had made sure my coins, masks, wallet, and all were in my backpack, leaving “nothing but air” in my pockets, as the TSA agent commanded. Soon my backpack came out of the scanner,…

by Crystal Byers

I’m not a frequent flyer. Sometimes I forget the rules. As I approached the security checkpoint at George Bush Intercontinental, I removed all items from my pockets and placed my carry-on items into the…

by Jehan Ramadan

A few years ago I was working at an airline lounge when a mother and her two grown daughters approached me at the front desk. Whoever said good things come in threes had never…

by Chris Brauer

I love traveling. The more I travel, the more I want to experience the world and meet new people. But I’m not good at traveling. While I like being there, I am terrible at…

by Alina Stefanescu

SCENARIO A young pregnant female stands in the security line at Birmingham International Airport. She works at a DC nonprofit but flies back to Alabama for ob-gyn appointments. The wedding ring is missing. RISK…

by Hanna Maxwell

Hour three in the Newark airport. I could see the skyline of New York from Terminal C. We’d landed after turbulence and clouds that looked as if you could sit in them. We knew…

by Jennifer Wagley

I enter relationships the same way I enter planes. I settle in quickly and then immediately begin searching for emergency exits, planning an escape route should one prove necessary. Three months in and the…

by Lisa Kay Adam

As our flight lifted over the city, he thought he could pick out which house was his friend's, the one with the swimming pool—among house after house with pools sprawling in the paisley pattern…

by Bernard Barnes

Airplane travel, I realize, is all about tension and release. It begins even before you leave the house. You pack your bags and agonize over what to bring, what not to bring, will this…

by Jennifer Ng

I never planned to carry the laptop. The 15” Macbook Pro was intended to be left on my desk at work—like a dying patient perched on a translucent stand and with cords snaking to…

by Whitney Mackman

I am a frequent flyer and frequently a problem flyer. Security has asked me to step into “special” screening lines so many times that I have just come to expect situations. But I never…

by Nathan C. Martin

I remember passing a Nalgene bottle—a popular outdoor accoutrement in the West—full of Red Bull and vodka around the car on the way to Salt Lake City International Airport. My 19-year-old girlfriend and I…

by Kevin Haworth

We will not cross paths with the bodies. We are due at Ben Gurion airport in just a few hours, and we are deep into the final busy-ness of moving out of our Tel…

by Stefani Cox

One look at the situation and I knew I could outsmart TSA. The body scanner stood in the middle of the room like the rude intruder at a party who everyone wants to pretend…

by Anita Breland

My first impressions of India are also nearly my last. I have arrived in Mumbai on a sultry January evening, after an eight-hour flight from wintry Zurich. En route, I daydreamed of temple processions,…

by Jeff Hawthorne

Passing through TSA security checkpoints has become like a Stanley Kubrick film, with partially clothed adults meeting randomly for moody conversation and dark rituals. People under the age of 18 really should have their

by Cemil Bostan

I booked a flight from Oporto, Portugal, to Weeze, Germany, on Ryanair. Two weeks before my flight I had made a trip to Spain and had bought some gifts for my friends in Germany.…

by Randy Malamud

It’s simulation day at Atlanta’s new Maynard H. Jackson Jr. International Terminal. Fifteen hundred people with nothing better to do have volunteered to come down and try it out two weeks before opening day.

by Asia Stephens-Argraves

First, grab your pairs of pants and shirts. Don’t forget your toothbrush or you’ll have to use you finger for the rest of the trip. Once you’re packed, it’s off to the airport. Walk…

by Andy Shaindlin

My foreign study experience as a college student was in 1985. I spent six months in Brussels, arriving in January. Brussels in January—and February, and March—is a gray, damp, chilled place. By the time…

by Cristina Garrigós

On September 11, 2001, we were flying on Lufthansa from Madrid to Washington via Frankfurt. The flight from Madrid to Frankfurt had been perfect. But as we were about to leave Frankfurt, the flight…

by Bobby Fox

After a trip that embodied Ukraine’s unofficial motto (“Ukraine is not for the meek”), it came as no surprise that departing from the country was, in a word, difficult. Two days before my departure,…

by Bobby Fox

When I finally disembarked off the third plane on my journey to Ukraine, I was greeted by a foreboding, single, small, grey, Soviet-era terminal. Inside, the stuffy, dingy building, I followed the herd to…

by Pearu Unga

I hate flying. My two-hour and ten-minute flight to Prague seemed to last for at least half a day. But then I had been awake all night and your brain tends to hit the…

by Donald Dunbar

Though my flight was at eight in the morning, I decided (?) it would be an excellent idea to stay up until six-ish smoking bowl after bowl with Vanessa, her boyfriend Paul, and some…

by Matthew Dexter

I walked through the Newark International Airport metal detector with an ounce of marijuana in my jockstrap and two pellets of mescaline in my sock. I had removed the protective cup to provide more…

by Alex Pruteanu

I flew to Washington DC from Fort Lauderdale one week after 9/11. The country was still gripped by fear or perceived fear or government-manufactured fear or...simple madness. People in the thousands were assaulting their

by James Schaberg

As we roll toward the runway in preparation for takeoff, I catch sight of two red foxes. The pair is skirting the taxiway in the tall brush, probably headed for the nearest hole joining…

by Carla Sarett

My father had not flown for a decade or so—perhaps even longer, certainly long enough so that he had no concept of the nightmarish array of security measures, police and bizarre check-points introduced since…

by Christopher Schaberg

It was warm coming down the concourse even in the late evening. The moon lit up the taxiway around the blinking lights and illuminated the planes. It was winter around the airport but the…

by Sabrina Nyka

2:59 a.m. and I am wide awake, one minute before the alarm clock goes off. I think to myself: it’s not right to be awake at this time for any reason, why would anything…

by Mallory

I am three days from getting on an airplane. After many months away from my husband and my family, I am finally going home. This is both very exciting and rather terrifying. I've been…

by Bart Plantenga

I always try my best to blend in when I’m flying because I’ve always been an easy mark for customs and immigration officials with authority abuse as handy replacement for their self esteem, which…

by Ramona Scarborough

I was on a diet...again. So when I got on the airplane in Portland to fly to Sacramento, I brought a salad. When I reached the security checkpoint, the guard said, soberly, "We'll have…

by Kristi DeMeester

It was only my second flight, and I hadn’t yet mastered the grace that inevitably comes to the seasoned traveler. The subtle removal of shoes, the flick of the wrist that empties pockets, hands…

by Beth McKim

In those days it was as if each of us had been given a daunting assignment: observing and reporting all suspicious people and their activities. This was especially true of those flying on commercial…

by Connie Porter

Reading The New York Times this past August, I was drawn to the headline, “With Hair Pat Downs, Complaints Of Racial Bias.” Two African-American women, Timery Shante Nance and Laura Adele, were both stopped…

by Harold Jaffe

Vodka A man swallowed a liter of top-shelf brand vodka rather than surrender it to airport personnel (who themselves would drink it after hours). New regulations designed to obstruct terrorism (which the US has…

by Diego Báez

Miami International is such a piece of shit. It’s like nothing ever ends: terminals devour runways, runways birth terminals, everything always under construction. There’s never been a greater delay and pain i

by Robert Ben Garant

One of the scariest things I've seen since 9/11 actually happened on the ground. At the airport in Cleveland. Waiting between flights, I wandered around the airport, killing time. I wandered into a downstairs…

by Andrew Maxwell

It is hard not to ponder the prominent ‘spoils of war’ displays that are arranged in shadowboxes at major security checkpoints. First I wonder who was flying where with a full sized medieval replica…

by Greg Keeler

Delta had just absorbed Northwest and I didn't know which gate to check in at when I was returning home from D.C. a couple of summers ago, so I went to Delta. The desk…