Mark Dolliver: So, It's Not Hell on Wings After All

Media coverage treats air travel as one of the great ordeals of modern life. For some frequent fliers, it probably is. A pair of new polls, though, find satisfaction with air travel is more the rule than the exception. In an Associated Press/Ipsos Public Affairs poll of adults who’ve taken at least one airline flight in the past 12 months, the vast majority voiced a positive view of air travel (see the chart). Findings were similar in a Gallup poll, where 72 percent of past-12-month fliers were “satisfied with the job the nation’s major airlines are doing.”