A frequent flier shares his strategies for navigating air travel
Written by Mary Beth Skylis | January 8, 2026
Air travel is hard, even if you do it frequently. You have to navigate busy places, make it past security, and then cram yourself into an airplane like a sardine in a can — and that’s all before you ever make it to your destination.
After my family traveled to Barcelona, Spain, for my sister’s wedding last fall, I realized that the whole process is even more difficult for someone who, like my dad, has Parkinson’s disease.
I recently connected with Bryan Roberts, a member of the Michael J. Fox Foundation Patient Council and a person living with Parkinson’s disease. I wanted to gain a deeper understanding of what travel is like for him and how he manages it. Roberts mostly travels domestically from Hartford, Connecticut, to New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., and Providence, Rhode Island.
During our email exchange, he explained that “the biggest challenge I find in navigating travel with PD [Parkinson’s disease] is keeping my energy up and stress down, which can be especially challenging when engaging in air travel. Modern air travel in the United States consists of unexpected delays, angry passengers, and a ton of walking through large terminals. All these variables can conspire to make a trip challenging. In other words, the known combined with the unknown can be tricky.”
Read more at How to minimize stress while traveling with Parkinson’s disease
Sourced from Parkinson’s News Today
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