It doesn’t require an excess of sugarplums dancing in one’s head or even rising charges on the credit cards to realize we are in the throes of the holiday season. Along with the usual thoughts of chestnuts roasting or holiday cheer (which can, in excess, easily lead to throwing up sash or something like that), it’s also time to brace for the worst Grinch heart-shrinking ritual of them all: holiday air travel. For millions of Americans, it’s the time to book the flight to or from purgatory — or at least you may have a layover there. From college students headed home from break to brothers and sisters returning to their ancestral dwellings to the wiser among us who have reservations on a warm beach somewhere, the jet planes are certain to be stacked and packed. And here is the question we can all contemplate as we deal with balky self check-ins, endless security lines, rude fellow travelers and delays, delays, delays: Why must air travel be so awful?

Am I overstating the situation? I don’t think so.

Let’s face it, it’s already been a rough year for air travel. Record-breaking temperatures and bad weather combined with a post-COVID resurgence in travel already made the summer vacation season pretty terrible. Why should we expect any improvement? One recent survey found more than 60% of summer travelers experienced a delay or cancellation. Consumer complaints filed against airlines have risen markedly since 2019. The airlines continue to suffer a worker shortage. Air traffic controllers are overworked, too.

Here in Baltimore we can take pride in at least one aspect of air travel. If you find yourself on Concourse B of Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, please take a moment to visit the restroom. Seriously. The renovated bathrooms are really, really nice. And I don’t mention this to be smug and sarcastic. Rather, it bears mentioning because so much more care has been given the privacy-enhanced stalls to the men’s urinals with room for rolling baggage (outside the splash zone) that you are left to wonder, why aren’t the actual airplanes this nice?

You want a snapshot of what it’s going to be like to fly over the coming weeks? Your best orientation lesson can be found on YouTube, where there’s never any shortage of videos showing unruly passengers having meltdowns and eventually being escorted off planes. They are more than a bit scary. But how much of this is about entitlement and boorish behavior, and how much is about the inevitable outcome of stressing out human beings with delays, uncertainty, too-small seats with too-little legroom and extra charges for just about everything? Psychologists have long understood that overcrowding leads to conflict and, as demonstrated in some famous laboratory rat experiments, eventually to destructive, even murderous, behavior. Why should Spirit Airlines be any different from those rat pens?

It wasn’t always like this. Some of us can still recall when air travel was far more civilized, albeit more expensive and more regulated. Americans clearly preferred the cheaper fares that came with deregulation, but you have to wonder what kind of price we’ve been paying for them in recent years. Weirdly, despite the pressures of inflation, airfares have actually declined somewhat this year, both domestically and internationally. One imagines this puts all the more pressure on the airlines to cut costs where possible. When was the last time you looked around your plane and thought, “my goodness, how clean and sanitary everything seems.” The reality is that even flight attendants warn passengers that things can get a bit germy. The average Greyhound bus probably keeps a lower bacteria count.

Personally, my suggestion is that we adopt some kind of rating system so consumers can consider not just prices but an airline’s track record for any particular route. Not just the on-time stats, more like restaurant or theater reviews where fussy people consider the full experience from soup to nuts (assuming you paid for them). I’m sure people would appreciate the input. Meanwhile, the reviewers can explain the proper etiquette of who gets to use the shared arm rests. Clearly, that has mystified generations.

Peter Jensen is an editorial writer at The Sun; he can be reached at pejensen@baltsun.com.