Budget airlines like WOW Air and Spirit can save you a buttload of money when you fly with them, but it’s still going to cost you—in sanity. Here’s what you should know going in, as well as a few tips for making the trip more bearable.

Flying these days leaves much to be desired. Some airlines are trying to make up for the unpleasant, bare-bones experience with small perks. These amenities certainly aren’t as desirable as, say, more legroom, but you might as well take advantage of them on your next flight.

Missing a connecting flight is one of the most stressful and frustrating things that can happen to you when flying. If you want to avoid it, you need to give yourself ample time between flights, and do a little homework before you fly.

Last week a friend of mine tried to print his boarding pass for a return trip home from San Francisco and ran into trouble. No matter how many times he reloaded Delta’s site or tried checking in on his phone, he kept getting a message that he wouldn’t be able to print his boarding pass. At the time we attributed it to…

When you’re suffering through a long flight in cramped seats the last thing you probably want is to be dressed to the nines, but skipping out on those pajama pants and tank tops does have its advantages. You might even get a better seat.

While scouring large swaths of land for prey, predators like hawks and eagles will often take advantage of rising thermals to stay airborne and glide for extended periods with minimal effort. Humans have copied this approach which allows sailplanes to fly without a motor, but Microsoft is now teaching an AI how to…

Spreading my arms and taking to the skies like an eagle has always been my biggest fantasy. The closest I’ve ever come is piloting a two-seater Cessna, which was fun, but nowhere near as exhilarating as Jarno Cordia’s latest stunt involving a wingsuit and a pair of jet engines strapped to his ankles.

Some airports are just better for layovers than others, both in terms of lowering your airfare costs, and adding to your overall comfort and convenience. (And some airports should simply be avoided altogether, if possible.) When I had a couple hours to kill at Honolulu’s airport, for example, I was able to relax in…

Turbulence can range from annoying to downright frightening, and you don’t have to be an anxious flyer to get worked up by it. It’s hard to avoid turbulence when flying, but you can control how you handle it.

THE SITUATION: You’re on a plane and the plane has landed. NOW: Let me explain to you what NOT to do—and what to do instead.

Somewhere over the Hamptons, the pilot told me to take the controls. To my left, there was a joystick, roughly the same size and dimension as my favorite ‘90s arcade game, After Burner. I clutched it, pulled back, and felt the jet climb.

Life gets pretty exhausting if you’re always afraid of getting dirty. I try to remember this mantra when I fly because airplanes are so freaking filthy. Research from the University of Victoria suggests we’re 100 times more likely to catch a cold from air travel than “normal daily ground level experience.” Here’s how…

When it comes to flying, crew members do whatever it takes to make a flight comfortable, pleasant, and most importantly, safe for their passengers. Anything, or anyone, that stands in the way of them doing their job gets removed. Like this stuff, for example.

Like flying cars, jetpacks are the kind of technology that seems perpetually on the cusp of going mainstream. Though they’re both still incredibly expensive and incredibly dangerous, it’s easy to ignore those glaring issues when footage like this makes jetpacks look like the best toy one could ever own.

“Making flying suck less” has long been an obvious winning issue for any politician brave enough to stand up to the airline industry. In fact, an easy way to start is to make airports suck less.

Yowza. Watch this Sukhoi Su-27 make the lowest of low passes at an air base in Ukraine. Like, it flies so impossibly close to the ground that you can see a guy duck and essentially get blown over as the fighter jet flies above his head. The video shows the entire insane approach: the jet flies a few feet over the…

You know that queasy feeling you get in your stomach when the pilot of a large passenger plane has to make a rough landing in bad weather? Just try and imagine what this Royal Danish Air Force pilot was feeling while trying to land a Seahawk MH-60R helicopter on a boat while both were being tossed around in a North…