Been to a commercial airport lately to fly on a commercial airliner?

Try this.

Assume 120KTAS and a Piper of some kind (4 or more seats).
Assume max time in air per leg of 3 hrs and 30 minutes to fuel, potty,
refile, & go.
Note time of departure from house and time of arrival at destination.
Departure from local a/p where you rent/tie down/hanger to Tampa FL
(also assuming you are 300 Miles from Tampa).
Assume you would have to fly out of ATL or connect via ATL.

Which way will get you to the Tampa area and to your hotel in the
shortest time w/o heartburn/migraine, etc.?

Real Example:
From AKR (Akron Regional, where the blimp hanger is) to Tampa via a
C-182 fixed gear plane takes approximately 7 hours (including one
potty/fuel stop).

Assuming that you fly out of CAK (Akron Canton) and have to get there
at least 1 hour before departure (2 hours to ATL) [CLE - Cleveland is
1.5 hours ahead] and,
that you have to make a connection in ATL (1hr) and get nailed with one
of those random security pull-asides (1.5 hrs to tampa),
and have to rent a car at Tampa plus find/get your baggage (1-2 hrs).
So with the 45 minutes to the airport, and 45 minutes to get to your
end hotel, this has taken 8+ hours.

Now assuming you can fly direct, you get to remove 3 hours from the
trip.

What part of this doesn't make logical sense thanks to TSA & HSA?

Lastly, don't forget that you get to determine when you depart for
going home and won't have to pay any change of ticket fees, nor can
some party in/of your trip get bumped off of a flight.
Regards,
Steve.T
PP ASEL/Instrument