Living where we live, we have flown out of PHL hundreds of times on our airline travel including SXM annual vacations for over more than 30 years. While I could fill this space with horror stories about USAir, AA and others, I must admit that this past 4 months that included 6 round trip flights to Sint Maarten on AA, things went fairly smoothly.

I think most of us are in agreement that air travel is no fun anymore. The pressure to do more with less in the corporate world is rarely demonstrated more clearly than in the airline industry. It's hard to put on a "happy" face in the current environment. Airline employees have to deal with passengers who refuse to follow restrictions regarding luggage and boarding procedures as well as airline and airport management that demand unreasonable concessions on their part. That makes for a long workday.

I may get blasted for this one since, trust me I have not forgotten the many times we got screwed, but looking back objectively it was often the result of circumstances rather than personnel that were the root cause of our misery.

Maybe I'm just getting old and a bit more mellow.............................or maybe it's late in the day and the Buffalo Trace Bourbon is speaking.