Friday, December 24, 2004

On the Joys of Flying

There’s nothing like flying over Lake Michigan to get me thinking about the status of my last will and testament.  I look out over that monster-sized lake and think what it must be like to crash into it.  I figure that if I don’t break my neck upon impact then a piece of sheared metal will rip me apart.  And if I were to somehow, magically, avoid these fates, then hypothermia would probably kill me--and that takes some time, right?  So then I see myself bobbing up and down in the cold, dark lake, ala Ishmael at the end of Moby Dick, awaiting the arrival of fresh water sharks who will, of course, feast on my leg.  What is it like, I wonder, to have a severed limb while the rest of one’s body is freezing to death?  It’s enough to make you want to walk to New York.

One reason for my sense of ever-escalating dread of flying is that I think there is a bit too much labor efficiency going on at the South Bend airport.  I find it disturbing that the person I first encounter at the ticket counter later reappears to board us and then that same person is spotted once again loading our luggage into the plane.  I realize the airlines want to squeeze every last working fiber out of its employees, but this cost-cutting leads me to believe that they might be doing this in other places as well.  I find it unsettling that the pilots on our teeny-weeny planes look way too young, too chipper, too eager to please.  On one flight the pilot was all smiles as he swept the snow off the stairs.  This kind act did not reassure me.  I want middle-aged, serious pilots with grey in their hair.  I want them in the cockpit turning dials, speaking in code, polishing their wings.  I want pilots who have flown combat missions over North Vietnam and have sailed into and out of the eye of hurricanes.  Most of all, I want them to know what to do when the engines kick out over Lake Michigan.  I do not want, in other words, pilots who are friendly and chatty and like to tell you over the horrible speaker system of the plane that if you look down you can see some great sight.  All that does is remind me how high up I am and how far the fall will be.

Weirdly, though, the worst airline experience I have ever had was simply waiting to board a flight at Midway.  But let me set the stage.  Picture a group of passengers who had been delayed for a couple of hours and then bussed to some god-forsaken spot on the runway in middle of a heat wave.  There we got to wait and sweat before we could board the cute little teeny-weeny plane.  To pass the time we got to watch a group of mechanics fix our plane.  Mechanics, I might add, who looked too young to buy a drink.  We also got to watch them periodically check a manual that they had left on the tarmac.  And because it was not only 95 degrees, but also quite windy, we got to watch the manual get blown around on the tarmac.  The guy next to me shouted that a page of the manual had been blown away.  By the time we were allowed to board the flight we lucky passengers had been reduced to emotional rubble.

Yet, in the holiday spirit I want to end on, yes, a positive note.  And doubly happily, it involves my son.  Simply put, flying with a one year old means that everyone, is really, really nice to you.  People invariably give you the “there but for the grace of God goes I” look as my boy is simultaneously howling, ripping everything to shreds, and tossing little chunks of cheese to the four corners of the plane.  And even in this tsunami of destruction I just can’t tell you how many helping hands my honey and I have had from stewardesses, check-in clerks, and even fellow suffering passengers whose fate it was to sit next to us.  On a recent flight when our little bundle of joy was hitting all 8 cylinders of destruction I thought we might be escorted out of the plane in mid-air.  But no, everyone just smiles and says thanks for flying with us.  Now I know my little boy is not the first baby to destroy a multi-million dollar airplane--he was positively genteel in comparison to this baby monster on the same flight--but his behavior got me thinking that the airlines should simply cordon off a section of the plane where parents and their kids could “hang out.” This would lower the stress level for all involved and get us back to what we do best when flying: thinking about the crash and its aftermath.

Broadcast by Jonathan Nashel on December 24, 2004
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