Why Is Flying So Tiring?

Why is it, I wonder, that flying on an airplane makes a person so tired? Here is what my wife and I did recently. First, we sat in our car for 45 minutes as we drove to the airport. Then we sat on the shuttle bus for five minutes. Then we stood in line for 15 minutes. Then we stood in another line for 20 minutes. Then we sat for an hour at the gate. Then we stood in line for 10 minutes. Then we got on the plane. Then we sat for three hours as the plane flew to Florida. Then we got off the plane. Then we stood at the baggage carousel for 10 minutes. Then we walked for two minutes to the rental car office. Then we drove for 30 minutes to our destination. And when we got there, we were exhausted.

As far as I can remember, we didn’t do any running. We didn’t do any push-ups. We didn’t do any cartwheels (not that we even can, which goes for the push-ups, too). We didn’t do any heavy lifting, although the suitcases weren’t exactly light, but they have wheels, so rolling them through the airport wasn’t as if we were, say, lugging a sofa up a stairwell. I’m pretty sure neither of us was called upon to pilot the plane. (That’s the kind of thing you would remember, right?) Also, I know we were not required to flap our arms or pedal with our legs to keep the aircraft aloft. In fact, we didn’t do anything strenuous. And yet, when we arrived at our vacation destination, we were beat. I wonder why that is?

I suspect our fatigue was mental rather than physical. During our entire journey, I was required to do a little driving, which calls for some degree of mental concentration, but the vast majority of the time someone else was at the helm. (Is “at the helm” an airline term? Probably not.)

For most of the trip, we should have been able to sit back and relax. But did we do that? No, of course not. And why did we not relax? That’s simple: every step of our journey was fraught with uncertainty.

Now, I’m not saying we were on a dangerous Lewis and Clark-type expedition, heading out into the uncharted wilderness with nothing but a case of Slim Jims and a keg of gunpowder. (Which would’ve been seized at the security gate by TSA agents anyway. The Slim Jims, I mean; they’re dangerous!)

It’s just that in order to travel successfully from Connecticut to Florida by air, many different things have to happen exactly right. Over the years, my wife and I have experienced just about everything that could go wrong in these situations. We’ve had cars that got a flat tire halfway to the airport. We’ve had airline computer systems crash so no one was able to check in or print boarding passes. We’ve has security lines so long you would’ve thought we were camping out overnight to buy World Series tickets. We’ve had the plane we were supposed to travel on not show up from O’Hare because of thunderstorms in Chicago. And most bizarre of all, we’ve had the plane show up on time, and after we boarded it, they couldn’t get one of the engines started again. So, after deplaning (is that even a word?) we sat around the airport for six hours waiting for the maintenance crew to locate a set of jumper cables.

The bottom line is: traveling by air is exhausting. I understand the weather in Florida was nice during our vacation, but I’m not sure, since I slept the whole time.