I was excited. My wife was returning from a week-long trip to the Philippines. I was supposed to pick her up on Tuesday. However, Monday started a long list of misfortunes.

For thousands of travelers, the summer of 2022 was a disaster: hundreds of cancelled flights, shortages of pilots, countless flight delays, a deficiency of ground crews and airport personnel, endlessly slow-moving security queues, and images of luggage piled sky-high, gave us plenty of reasons for all kinds of second thoughts about our upcoming trip to Europe. It would be our first major trip following the more than two-year lockdown. Researching airlines, including many we have flown in the past, we came upon Condor, a German leisure line based in Frankfurt, and the only major airline on the planet that did not cancel a single flight during the dreadful travel summer of 2022. Operating a fleet of over 50 aircraft, Condor also maintains their own maintenance facility, an additional bonus for sure.

In November 1975, I was Manager of Publicity for Continental Airlines, in our corporate HQ at LAX. As a lifelong aviation aficionado, and an even more proud American citizen (I was born in London!) I’ve always been intensely interested in American politics, and so knew that our president (whoever it is) today always flies aboard an impressive, specially equipped B-747. …