It's all about tasks nowadays...
I am missing good old TAR with airport and navigation drama.
I agree with this wholeheartedly, I liked how in the older seasons teams were required to get their own airplane tickets for every leg they had to fly somewhere. Now production buys plane tickets for every team and it is super annoying. What ever happened to the suspense of your favorite team not making a flight. What happened to the days where teams had to look for the earliest possible flight to the next location. Now the show is about doing silly tasks at every location. I don't mind if the tasks are culturally relevant, but at least mix it with travel drama. Remember the TAR 5 Russia episode, a quarter of the episode was teams finding flights form Buenos Aires to St. Petersburg, and the last quarter of the episode focused on the caviar task heavily. Why can't we have episodes like that anymore that has the best of both worlds.
I don't know if it's the current state of air travel being more normalized, mitigating the hoop jumping, but I do know most travel workers and airport officials in this age won't tolerate the stuff that happened on TAR more than a decade ago like seat availability upsales, petty ticket agents, "secret" faster flights, frequent overbooking (this still occurs but less often nowadays), and our very memorable bickering matches. People and brands now are hypersensitive about their reputation on TV, especially with all the controversy surrounding airlines United*ahem*, so I feel like the new editing for the show avoiding pre-destination footage could be related. Last time I clearly remember this type of drama was during TAR22-23 between the Frankfurt Airport of Doom for Abbie & Ryan and the Beekmans, and Chester & Ephraim somehow being sold tickets on the wrong flight - that might have been the tipping point. I haven't seen anything like this since, and again, those seasons were also BARE MINIMAL with pre-destination footage.
I do want to see teams buying tickets THEMSELVES though where flights are always open season. If it's a city where airplanes are limited, then yes, feel free to get teams tickets so they won't be stuck for two days (e.g. the Accra, Ghana to Kiruna, Sweden flight in TAR17). But if it's like Paris-Charles de Gaulle from Asuncion, another relatively large int'l airport, that's where teams should be able to DIY their journey regardless of flight availability since connection flights are frequent. Take them to an internet cafe or travel agency like the good ol' times if the airport can't be shown. I know this show can squeeze in these moments because they've done it countless times before, 17 full seasons worth of pre-destination hype, before going rogue on it. And I hope they can remember this old-as-day mantra:
"Focus on the journey, not the destination"
