I was a frequent traveler growing up. My parents were divorced. I lived in New York and my father in California and I flew back and forth regularly, first as an unaccompanied minor and later without that supervision.

As a young child I remember wearing a tie when I flew. As a teenager I flew to Australia — on American Airlines, with a stop in Honolulu — on my own.

So I like to think of myself as developing a taste for travel, and an expertise, at a young age. And yet… I was so helpless in so many ways.

After I graduated college I moved to the Washington, DC area. By that time ‘home’ was California, and for my first trip back I certainly worked hard to find good airfare… a $300 fare, rather than the ~ $550 that nearly all airlines were quoting for all of their flights. But I didn’t really know how to do it, the travel that is.

I got the help of a co-worker, I drove to his house near the airport early in the morning and got him to give me a ride over to the airport. He picked me up at the end of the trip and brought me back to his house to pick up my car. I needed that level of handholding a mere 18 years ago.

I was quickly flying for work, but also for personal reasons, at least a couple of times a month. I figured out public transit, I figured out this thing called “parking.” And I thought I knew so much, I remember misconnecting in Los Angeles after my original flight through San Francisco was delayed and I got re-routed. The delays were weather-related but I managed to push for a comped hotel night from United “because they’re the ones that sent me into the LAX weather” (well technically it was United Express carrier Westair that did it) and because “I’m such a frequent flyer” (I was on the verge of earning elite status for the first time). Looking back, I feel like such a tool thinking that flying ‘almost’ 25,000 miles made me an important customer, but I did get the hotel night at the Sheraton LAX and I did get a breakfast voucher.

I’ve come a long way (I think) but there’s so much that I don’t know. And I try to know the difference.

Some of my readers may think that there are many things I don’t know much about, although I tend to think that disageeing with me isn’t the same thing as my not having knowledge or expertise. But there are real limits.

I’ve made a point of not appearing as a pundit to talk about the Malaysia Airlines crash. The most I’ve done is talked to a reporter about security procedures at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. I didn’t make it into the piece, probably because my experiences countered the narrative that security there was somehow lax or not as thorough as you get with the TSA in the U.S.

Here’s a secondary security screening queue to get into the gate area in the satellite terminal.

Last night I heard speculation that a pilot could have shown up for the flight at the last minute and taken the jumpseat and they wouldn’t have been on the manifest. The host then explained that “the jumpseat is usually in the cockpit.”

I think back to a time when I would have nodded along, thinking this was insightful.

Of course I’ve stayed mostly stayed out of this issue because I am concerned and care deeply but also because I lack the expertise to offer a qualified opinion, at least one of high enough quality to feel like I was contributing to understanding rather than obfuscating it.

For instance, I don’t know enough about Malaysian politics to know whether reports that the plane’s pilot was an adherent to the opposition leader whose sodomy acquittal was overturned shortly before the crash is likely a leak from the Prime Minister to discredit the opposition (guilt by association) or an effort to destabilize the party in power (their political disputes spiraling out of control).

At least I’ve come far enough to know that a passenger riding in the jumpseat would be on the manifest of a flight between Malaysia and China, and that the jumpseat is – indeed – in the cockpit.

Still, feeling helpless to understand – let alone explain – the circumstances of Malaysia Airlines MH370, I feel like I did as a brash and inexperienced business traveler in the mid-1990s.

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