Airport Waves

I have spent thousands of hours in airports in nearly every city in the USA and many foreign cities. Naturally the airport I spent the most time in was luckily Cincinnati which for a time was voted the 2nd best airport in the world.

Later in my career at Accenture, I happened upon one of the most valuable "lower stress" lessons when I began to arrive early - very early to airports. When I was flying back an forth to Canada - my flight would be at 9:50am - but I would get up at normal time 6am and drive to the airport and "set up shop".

Airport activity goes in waves. During the hubbing years with Comair the volume of traffic would peak and die suddenly. During those valleys the airport morphed into a different animal. The personnel would relax, early non stressful flyers would leisurely walk the corridors, the sound would become almost library like. It was these times I grew to like airports.

Travel doesn't need to be stressful.