THEY used to say getting there is half the fun. Hardly anybody says that any more, as air travel with its frequent body scans and luggage searches, extra cost for seats with a few inches of additional leg room, and lack of meal or even snack services on most domestic flights has become more of an experience to be endured rather than an enjoyable time.

We recently returned from the U.S. mainland, and while we don’t have any particular complaints about our carrier, United Airlines, we were surprised by some of the things we encountered. Seats in economy class, for example, are scaled according to leg room. The airline will charge you extra for exit row seats, or any other seat with a bit of extra leg room. The result was many exit row seats were empty, with nobody sitting there to assist the crew in the event of an emergency.

While there continues to be a snack and meal service, gratis, on the long haul from Guam to Hawaii – about seven and a half hours – we were surprised to learn there is no free meal service on the slightly longer flight between Honolulu and Houston, Texas. During that flight, you’ll be offered a selection from their menu at additional cost. Keep your credit card handy as they do not take cash.

We also got on a domestic flight from Los Angeles featuring Direct TV. Neat, we thought, but not really worth the $6 or $7 they were charging. So we strapped on our headphones and looked for the free audio channels. We’re partial to classical music, but alas, there was none available. In fact, there was nothing to listen to on this flight except Direct TV; no free audio channels at all.

We were also reminded of the high cost of air travel to and from our island, which airline executives call a “captive market.” One Guam-born young man of our acquaintance, now living in San Antonio, would like to take his girlfriend to visit the island where he was born. So he plugged in Guam on his smartphone and got a round trip quote from San Antonio of just over $2,200. Try entering Manila, I suggested. Sure enough, the round trip to the Philippines, on the same airline, came in at $1,100 – less than half the cost for a trip that actually involves a stop on Guam.

Just get off here, and forget the Manila leg, we thought. But apparently that isn’t as easy as it sounds. We’ve written about this sort of anomaly before, and there doesn’t seem to be much we can do about it. Part of the price we pay for living here is the high cost of getting to anywhere else – at least in the U.S.

Yesterday’s Variety noted there have been more than 50 low-cost, no frills airline startups in Asia in recent years, serving just about every place around here except Guam and, oddly, much of mainland China. The Chinese guard their domestic services mostly for local airlines, but in our case, we’re just stuck. Too bad we don’t have a local airline.