Few things seem to irritate us quite like air travel.  At times it is hard to think of air travel as luxury.  But it is.  Every day 8.3 million people benefit from being able to blast themselves across the sky.  We are capable of covering distances in the matter of hours that most of humanity could not even imagine crossing in a lifetime.

While you read this, there are likely 5,000 commercial flights in US air space.  Our national air traffic currently exceeds 24,000 flights a day.  The relative expense of air travel continues to go down .  More of us are able to travel and are choosing to travel by air because of the benefits of such quick transportation at relatively low cost.