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The crisis in American air travel

Airports have lately been plagued by staffing shortages, security delays, and a string of worrying incidents.

I’m scheduled to take my 1-year-old on a three-hour flight just over a week from now. Probably a headache, under normal circumstances, but a bona fide nightmare amid the recent airport bedlam. I was thus relieved — overjoyed, really — to learn that the security line chaos is easing at many airports. But that doesn’t address the larger, longer-term safety and reliability challenges in American air travel.

Today, we’re looking at two questions: Why is US air travel so bad? And what can be done to improve it, short of taking Amtrak?

This story was first featured in the Today, Explained newsletter

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US airlines have gradually acculturated travelers to a pretty awful flight experience: smaller seats, middling snacks, fees for everything you can imagine. But even by the low standards of modern air travel, the aviation industry seems to be in particular crisis........

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