Look up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's...a plane!

For the past hour I have been hitting up all the usual travel websites, attempting to locate cheap airfare from Philadelphia to DFW. Planes confuse me; ticket prices fluctuate based on the day of the week, the time of year, the phase of the moon and I thought that Wednesday was the time to get inexpensive tickets but it is actually Tuesday OR IS IT? Nah, it's Thursday. OR IS IT? Fortunately, the travel websites make your life easier with options like flexible departure dates and result-sorting by the lowest price to the highest. Put in your destination and a vague idea of when you want to get there and it will find the best deals for you!

Unfortunately, when the best deals to be found are in the range of $350-$450 for a one-way ticket, that's a bit discouraging. Actually, it's a lot discouraging. It's even more discouraging when you realize that the airline companies are determined to take what ought to be a short three-hour flight and turn it into a twelve-hour nightmare.

Yes, you read that right. Some of these flights are twelve hours long. Well, eleven hours and forty-some minutes, but the fact remains that you can get there in three, so what is the plane doing for an extra eight hours and forty-some minutes?

I found out when I began to check the connections.

At first I had a reasonable expectation that my itinerary would look like this:


How foolish I was! I quickly learned that instead of ferrying us from Point A to Point B, my pilot would be dragging myself and all the other hapless travelers aboard on a grand adventure through the United States. We would be going from Point A to Point D to Point L to Point X to Point B for no logical reason, in the process burning an unreasonable amount of jet fuel and destroying every last vestige of our sanity.

Yes, that's three connections. Three. You hop on this plane, and it takes you to Washington, Charlotte, Orlando, and then, finally, if you have not bashed your skull in against the window out of sheer frustration at the stupidity of it all, you might arrive in Texas and your bags may or may not arrive with you.

Expedia didn't actually specify which Washington you go to, Washington DC or Washington-Washington, so my itinerary could look like this:


Or, even more ridiculous, like this:


Then there's the nine-hour flight that goes to Orlando and Denver!


I'm not kidding. I wish I was kidding.

Perhaps the airlines are run by a cabal of sadists, or perhaps it is all a nefarious conspiracy to cheat innocent men and women out of their frequent flyer miles. I don't know, but, guys, if you really want to mess with your customers I have a better idea. Why not sweep us away on a fanciful tour of Alaska while you're at it? Actually, why don't you add even more connecting flights? I don't think we're angry enough yet!

Observe: 17,299 miles of fun, wonder, and efficiency!


You're welcome.

I am going to go bang my head against something sharp now. Maybe airline logic will then make sense to me.