I've flown some 20 commercial flights in the last year and never faced any of the issues you've described. I find flying quite fun to this day. Perhaps this is highly regional.
A lot of the things I hate about flying are things that other people might well be fine with.
When someone tells me to arrive 3 hours before my scheduled departure time, to me it's disrespectful that they would waste so much of my time so unapologetically.
Other people might see it as no big thing, an enjoyable chance to sit and read, or do some people-watching, or a comforting safety margin.
When someone tells me to take off my shoes and belt and shuffle through a metal detector while they take my wallet and keys out of sight, under the constant threat of even more intrusive searches - to me that's extremely undignified. There's no other situation in my life where people can control what I wear, or presume to separate me from my keys and wallet.
Other people might feel reassured by the process, or see it as no different to going to a swimming pool.
When someone demands I walk a needlessly winding path through a maze of tawdry shops selling overpriced perfume, to arrive at an uncomfortable seat surrounded by garish billboards.... you get the picture.
Most of these is why I prefer travelling from B-tier smaller airports. Security queues are usually shorter, there's few to no shops on the other end and you can go from airport entrance to gate in less than 15 minutes if only bringing carry-on, which is not difficult to do with a bit of discipline. It also means you can arrive at the airport an hour - hour and a half before departure. Of course that isn't always an option but I'm lucky that my most common travel route is between a B-tier medium-sized European airport and a tiny airport that sees less than 2 commercial planes a day on average.
Similarly, here in New Zealand any flights with less than 90 seats do not require security screening. On some routes, our airline flies turboprops (ATR 72) and jets (A320) on the same route depending on the demand / time of day. As it's a short flight (~1 hr), the flight-time is similar with either option but by booking on the ATR you can avoid security screening entirely. Paired with generally small airports, this means I can arrive at the airport 20-30 mins before departure.
>When someone tells me to arrive 3 hours before my scheduled departure time, to me it's disrespectful that they would waste so much of my time so unapologetically.
Technically most airlines only require you to arrive 60-75 minutes before departure for check-in. The 3 hour advice is just advice that you're free to ignore, but is probably a bad idea to do so given how much money/time is on the line. The 60-75 minutes might still sound like a lot, but gates typically close 20 minutes prior to departure, and boarding starts 40-60 minutes prior to departure, so they're only really asking you "waste" 20-30 minutes.
>There's no other situation in my life where people can control what I wear, or presume to separate me from my keys and wallet.
courts/some government buildings do similar security checks, and in some countries they do such checks in even more public places (eg. subways/malls/cultural sites).
3 hours is insane. Where I am they ask for 1 hour before boarding for international flights or if you have checked bags. I have TSA pre-pass, I check in online, and only travel with one carry on bag. As such I generally go through security only a few minutes before boarding starts as, like you, I hate waiting.
+ making you empty your water bottle, and then on some airports there is no option to fill it afterwards (e.g. only hot water available in the toilets and no drinking fountain)
Some carriers are definitely worse than others. I’ve flown about the same as you but over 10 years, and I’ve had OP’s experience once. We were stuck on the runway for 6 hours, given food vouchers that nowhere in the airport would accept, and then 10 hours after we were supposed to take off they told us our flight was cancelled and they’d organise accommodation. Except there was a huge concert on in the the city that day, so there was nowhere nearby. They left us in the airport with a “sorry” and no food.
Thankfully, I lived in said city so we went home and came back the following day. One email to the airline gave us £800 in compensation, plus the cost of our food and Ubers back and forth. Our travel insurance paid out for most of the things we missed out on like the hotel night, events we had planned, prebooked meal, and even our airport parking (which we did technically use). We were done and dusted with it within 7 days.
