This month, a video of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. popped up on my feed. Wearing a blue dress shirt and tie, the bronzed, tin-voiced secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services began doing pull-ups. While videos of septuagenarians doing body-weight might be rare if not odd, performing exercises on film has sort of become Kennedy’s modus operandi. Watching this man, who was born in 1954, push and pull his body in aggressive ways is supposed to underscore his job as the man in charge of the country’s health. If he’s healthy, the country must be. But what made this particular video strange was that he was doing these pull-ups at Reagan airport in Washington, DC.
Behind Kennedy is a departures board. Even farther back are restroom and defibrillator signs. His video is papered with the sounds and sights of hapless travelers rolling their carry-ons through the terminal.
The stunt was part of a press conference in which Kennedy and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced that they would invest $1 billion in making airports a wellness space. That would include, the administration says, installing gym equipment, more children’s play areas, and healthier food options. More broadly, the investment follows proclamations from Duffy that he wants to bring more “civility” to the flying experience, and as a first step in that mission, he encouraged travelers to dress better.
This didn’t go over too well, and it’s not difficult to understand why: Airports are a bad place and exercises or dressing better will not fix their badness.
Airports are where people want efficiency. The best airports are ones where everything feels less painful — less waiting in lines, less delays, less fluorescent lighting, and everything in between. In fact, people spend money to make the entire process less miserable. They’ll shell out money for TSA PreCheck, a feature that shortens the security lines and let you keep shoes on (before TSA got rid of that policy this year). They’ll spend money for access to already-crowded lounges, just so they don’t have to kill time at the even-more depressing gates.
No one wants to go to the airport and work out. The only time a gym may come handy is in the event of a major delay or if the gym inadvertently becomes a more humane place to wait for your flight than the airport bar (lying down on a yoga mat in peace and quiet might be nice!). Healthier options at a liminal space like an airport are nice in theory, but one of the few joys is that food rules don’t apply. You can have alcohol in the morning, eat at a place that advertises itself as an abbreviated version of Chili’s, and even test your luck with sushi.
Adding gyms and healthy food to make air travel better isn’t directly making air travel better.
But perhaps the outrage is part of the point. Getting upset over a gym you’re never going to use, or a bad salad you’re never going to eat, or watching an old tan man struggle to do some jungle gym exercises, draws attention away from the things Duffy and his cohort won’t fix.
The thing about the airport is that no one wants to be at an airport longer than they have to be. David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
There’s still a shortage of FAA flight controllers, which have led to safety concerns and flight delays. In the event of flight delays, Duffy and Trump’s administration dissolved a Biden-era initiative for airlines to compensate passengers for lengthy delays. Additionally, airfare is more expensive compared to a year ago and those figures don’t include all the upcharges (e.g., sitting toward the front of the main cabin, checked baggage, etc.) that customers choose to make flights more bearable. Said airlines have also made seats smaller and smaller to increase profits.
The awful state of air travel is one of the few things that transcends political partisanship. Go to the airport right now, ask anyone waiting for their flight to board, and they will tell you ways it could improve. Bigger seats, better deals, less delays, more compensation for delays, not being treated like cattle — these are the things people want. Not 15 pull-ups and business casual.
