Consider yourself fortunate if most of your air travel is international. Going across an ocean or a major sea … is generally still not awful.

Practically every airline in the world is a meaner, coarser version of what it was a generation ago, but generally less mean and less coarse on long hauls.

To fly inside the U.S., however, is nearly always a dreadful experience. Dehumanizing, nerve-racking, a test of mind and body and spirit.

Today, I flew US Airways from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, on flight 1419, leaving at 10:05 a.m.

It was awful in what I believe was a perfectly normal, 2012, coast-to-coast U.S. air travel sort of way.

The main problems.

1. A packed plane. Not one open seat. A 3-3 configuration. More than a few passengers are carrying more weight than is good for them, and in a cramped cabin that means people spilling over into your seat. Can you already feel the crowd?

2. Way too much carry-on luggage. Boarding a flight like this takes twice as long as it should because everyone is trying to beat the “checked baggage” fee ($25 for the first bag, on my flight) by carrying on their luggage, also hoping to get out of the airport faster at the other end by blowing past baggage claim.

So, you see people attempting to jam bags way too big into overhead slots far too small. (Domestic airlines enforce dozens of ridiculous rules, but they almost never follow their own rules for bag-in-the-cabin size.)

A late-arriving passenger about three rows in front of me worked himself into a froth as he tried to force his too-big bag into the overhead bin. At one point, it seemed a fight might break out as the bin-crammer was manhandling someone else’s bag in a hopeless attempt to get a square peg into a round hole. A guy got up and seemed to say something like: “Keep your hands off my bag, buddy.”

At another point, I thought someone might be seriously hurt by a falling bag because the bag-rammer’s fruitless efforts (characterized by repeatedly slamming his bag into the back of the bin) at times seemed likely to push another heavy bag out the other end of the bin. A woman actually got up and hustled up the aisle to escape getting brained.  (After far too long, one of the flight attendants moved bags involving three bins to let the crammer get his over-large bag overhead.)

Generally, all the cabin crew did was make toothless announcements asking people to stow their bags and sit so we could leave on time. What they should have done was take over-large bags, check them and stow them below.

3. No entertainment. None. Not even an old-fashioned “screen that descends from the ceiling and we all see the same crummy movie” thing. No music. Nothing. And this was a six-hour flight.

4. After leaving the gate, we spent 80 minutes on the tarmac. Why? A thunderstorm was delaying takeoffs. We were No. 38 in line when we pulled away from the gate. I slept for an hour; I woke; we still had not taken off. Maybe this was not US Airways’ fault, but by this time my mood was so foul I was blaming everything on them.

5. The food/beverage thing. US Airways is among the many carriers that charge for everything, and that includes food of any sort. Not even peanuts are free. You pay for anything/everything beyond basic liquids. Which means the guy who will cough up $8 will have a mini meal, while those around him have nothing. It also means people carry on their own food, which can be odiferous.

6. If you get twitchy sitting in the middle of three seats, on a long flight, and I do, you will find limited numbers of aisle or window seats — because US Airways is holding many of them for an additional charge. As I recall, I paid an extra $30 to get an aisle.

7. The attitude of the crew is awful. In coach, it’s all about moving people like cattle. Hector them, tell them to sit down, get out of the way, and with almost no tact. If they could use cattle prods, they would.

Example.  The 100-plus of us in coach had the use of two lavatories in the rear of the Airbus. Two. I came out of one of them, halfway through the flight, and I saw one member of the crew, a guy about 6-3, 220, in the aisle gathering trash. Getting past him would be difficult. So trying to help, I retreated into the edge of the galley. A moment later, I was joined by another passenger who was waiting for an open lavatory. When the crew member who had been clogging the aisle got to the galley, instead of thanking us for allowing him to get up and down the aisle, he said: “You have to get out of the galley.”

8. The pathetic flogging of some sort of bonus air miles plan by a crew member about five hours into the flight. We could get 500 extra miles, or somesuch, with a potential reward of a free flight on US Airways (as if) somewhere down the line. This essentially was a l-o-n-g advertisement broadcast over the PA, which must have woken numerous people and annoyed a bunch of others.

It was awful. From start to finish. A company nickel-and-diming everyone, in an overcrowded plane with unfriendly crew.

US Airways apparently has a history of unhappy customers. When it was Allegheny Airways, the wiki item (above) says it was known as “Agony Air.” When it was briefly renamed USAir, it was known as “Useless Air” or “USScare.”

But they are not alone in horrible service and meter-is-running service. That is domestic air travel in the U.S. — aside from, perhaps, JetBlue or Virgin.

I fly American from LAX to NYT next week. I already am dreading it.