Senator Schumer and the Myth of Cheap Air Travel.

Senator Chuck Schumer is confused once again. This time, it seems he’s confusing “consumer rights” with “consumer products.”

Last month, Schumer heralded a questionable attachment to the FAA Re-Authorization Bill as the answer to the underlying causes of pilot fatigue and regional pilot levels of experience. He was wrong, but his press releases on the subject made for decent publicity for the senator.

Now Schumer weighs in on carry-on baggage and airlines, stating that the former is a passenger “right” that must be provided for free by the latter.

Hogwash.

The consumer “right” when it comes to airlines is to choose one over the other, which has everything to do with free enterprise and the marketplace which governs the “right,” or more accurately, the product.

Spirit Airlines as a private company has both the right and the obligation to price every component of their product. And consumers have every right to choose another airline without the baggage fee, if the fee is a deal-breaker for the passenger.

That’s free enterprise. And whether Schumer admits it or not, the fee proposed by Spirit Airlines is a direct result of the Airline Deregulation Act. The marketplace, according to congress, is supposed to determine airline ticket prices. That’s why congress disbanded the Civil Aeronautics Board which up until 1978 regulated airline ticket prices and routes.

My personal opinion? As with fare hikes, this may be a trial balloon on Spirit’s part: if no other airline joins Spirit and institutes their own charge for carry-on luggage, I’d expect that the fee will go the way of most fare hikes–that is, into the garbage. Nonetheless, air travel is not nor ever has been cheap to produce and airlines continue to lose money despite any fees or fares enacted.

That would be the marketplace doing what congress directed when they enacted the law, and Schumer knows that. But he can’t resist an opportunity to grandstand, no matter how insincere it is.

Fees are irritating and costly, but airline seats simply are costly, too, and have to be paid for. This is a lesson not lost on Europeans who have a fiercely competitive airline market–and a plethora of passenger fees that clearly go hand-in-hand with low fares. Check below for the schedule of “nickel-dime” fees, to use Schumer’s term, of one of the leading European discount carriers.

Meanwhile, when the basic market forces of production cost meet Schumer’s myth of cheap air travel, guess which one will win–or we will all lose the “right” of air travel to the cost of producing the luxury.

From the Ryanair website:

Ryan Air Table of Fees

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(UK Pounds/Euro or local currency equivalent)	Booked on www.ryanair.com		Booked via a Call Centre* or Airport
	UK Pounds	Euro	UK Pounds	Euro
Online Check-In (not charged on some promotional fares)	£5	€5	£10	€10
Mastercard Prepaid Debit Card As a special offer to the above card holders, Ryanair, for a limited period only, will not apply an administration fee	Free	Free	Free	Free
Administration Fee – Per passenger/ Per One Way Flight This fee relates to costs associated with Ryanair’s booking system and processing payments.	£5	€5	£5	€5
Priority Boarding Fee* – Per passenger/ Per One Way Flight	£4	€4	£5	€5
Airport Boarding Card Re-issue –	n/a	n/a	£40	€40
Infant Fee – Per Infant/Per One Way flight (must be under 2 years for both outbound and return flight)	£20	€20	£20	€20
Checked Baggage Fees* – (Each passenger is permitted to check-in up to 2 bags with a maximum weight of 15kg per bag)Different rates fees apply depending on the date of travel (peak rates apply for travel in July and August)1st Bag – 15kg allowance – per bag/ per One Way Flight	£15	€15	£35	€35
1st Bag – Peak Rate July/August	£20	€20	£40	€40
2nd Bag – 15kg allowance – per bag/ per One Way Flight	£35	€35	£70	€70
2nd Bag – Peak Rate July/August	£40	€40	£80	€80
Excess Baggage Fee – Per Kilo Fee can only be purchased at the airport ticket desk	Not Available Online	Not Available Online	£20	€20
Infant Equipment* (car/booster/travel cot) Fee charged per Item/ Per One Way Flight (1 pushchair carried free of charge). A maximum weight of 20kg per item	£10	€10	£20	€20
Sports Equipment* Fee charged per Item/ Per One Way Flight A maximum weight of 20kg per item	£40	€40	£50	€50
Musical Instrument* Fee charged per Item/ Per One Way Flight A maximum weight of 20kg per item	£40	€40	£50	€50
Flight Change Fees* – Per Passenger/ Per One Way Flight	£25	€25	£55	€55
Name Change Fee* – Per Passenger	£100	€100	£150	€150

*Up to 4 hours prior to your scheduled flight departure you can purchase online – checked bags, priority boarding, sports/infant equipment and musical instruments even if you have already checked in online for your flight.

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Flightcrew Zoo: Sky God & Switch Bitch

(First in an occasional series profiling classic flight crew members)

Those were the days.

The captain was a “sky god” in every sense of the term. Well liked-by crewmembers on both sides of the flight deck door, he’d advanced through the pilot ranks over twenty-some years to the top of the heap: senior captain on the widebody.

I was the “switch bitch,” or “plumber,” or any of the other unflattering sobriquets that designated the new-hire flight engineer. I loved it regardless, having landed on the DC-10 flight engineer’s panel fresh-faced and new after seven years as an Air Force pilot. Sure, I was “sitting sideways,” doing my apprenticeship on the flight engineer’s panel rather than at the pilot controls up front.

But that would come soon enough–a copilot’s seat on a narrow body jet was mine for the asking within months. I had chosen instead to do my probationary year at the DC-10 panel because there was less chance of anything happening that could lead to termination, which was always a possibility for a probationary pilot. Seemed like a good way to breeze through probation, sitting at the mostly automated DC-10 engineer’s panel. What could be easier?

It was a sub-zero day at O’Hare. I’d finished my walk-around inspection on the frozen ramp and then shed sweater, overcoat, scarf, hat and gloves and sat back down at the engineer’s panel, waiting for pushback after all 250 passengers had boarded.

Captain Skygod sat in the left seat, feet propped up on the instrument panel, idly thumbing through a golf magazine. The First Officer sat like a zombie, having done nothing, which was the beauty of that job as I later enjoyed myself  for a year or so.

One of our nine flight attendants interrupted our reverie.

“We have a bag problem in back,” she sighed. “Could use some help.”

Skygod didn’t even look up. “Why don’t you go back and see what you can do, son.”

The First Officer smirked at me over his shoulder, telegraphing he means you, which of course I already knew.

“Yessir.” I unstrapped, grabbed my hat and headed for the main cabin.

I squeezed past the boarding throng to the mid-cabin where an irate woman argued loudly with three flight attendants–a fight she seemed to not realize she could never win. It seems that the garment bag storage was full and so the flight attendants were insisting the woman’s overstuffed garment bag be checked in the cargo hold below. That was not acceptable to the red-faced, irate woman.

“Look,” I said, gently but  firmly pulling the garment bag out of her hands, “I’ll personally take this downstairs and place it in the cargo hold then bring you the claim check.”  The flight attendants nodded, hustling me off before the glaring woman could protest.  “Thanks,” one flight attendant whispered, clearing a path for me to the entry door.

In shirt sleeves still, I carried the bag out the jet bridge door and into the sub-zero freezing cold, down the steep stairs to the arctic ramp. I carefully placed the bag in a cargo container set to be loaded aboard, then return half-frozen with the baggage claim check to the mid cabin. I found the woman at her seat, still fuming.

“Here you are, ma’am,” I said, handing her the baggage claim check.

She snatched it from my hand, giving me a look that could bend a spoon and snapped, “You f*cking asshole.”

Fine.

Back to the jet bridge, out into the freezing cold; down the icy stairs to the frozen ramp. Find the baggage pallet–there’s the bag. Rip the baggage tag off of it; drag it to the gate next door–a Super-80 heading who-knows-where. Toss it into the cargo compartment. Race back upstairs half frozen.

I slipped back into my seat, shivering. Skygod was still flipping through his magazine. After a moment, he spoke.

“Did you get that baggage thing worked out?”

I turned the cockpit heat up a notch. “Uh, yessir. All worked out.”

He nodded, never looking up. “You do good work, son.” Nice guy that he was, I knew he’d give me a glowing recommendation on the probation report he’d fill out on me later.

I survived my probationary year and moved up to the copilot’s seat on a narrow body jet. The flying was more fun with a set of controls, but I missed the DC-10 days of motoring around the system without any real responsibilities–save the occasional “baggage situation.”

I flew many miles with Captain Skygod until we parted ways: he moved up from the domestic flying to the coveted trans-oceanic trips; I upgraded to the copilot position on the MD-80.

Then the only time I’d see him was in the airline employee lot as I was arriving at the buttcrack of dawn to fly a cruddy junior-guy trip and he was just returned from his Honolulu flight.

He’d stationed his RV which the crews nicknamed “The Whale” in the lot so he and most of his pilots and flight attendants could enjoy “happy hour” after flying all night. As the sun was rising, you could hear the whirring of his blender, laughter and tinkling glass from “The Whale” as the rest of the world began their work day.

Ever the gentleman, after the mai-tais had been free flowing for an hour or so he let the muu-muu clad flight attendants have first dibs on the lav. Eventually, he was busted for using a light pole to relieve himself and the airport police invited him to remove The Whale and never bring it back as a quid pro quo for not arresting him.

Captain Skygod retired from our airline at what used to be the mandatory age of 60, but went on to fly 747’s somewhere overseas. I lost track of him over the years and having been a captain myself for 19 years now, I doubt he’s still flying. But when I think of him and those days, I have to smile, and only wish we could get away with half the things we used to do back then.

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Altitude and the Neverlasting “Now.”

The sneaky seduction of altitude is this: the higher you fly, the faster you can go but the more difficult it is to perceive the speed.

At cruise altitude, the arch of the earth or the depths of the ocean are mere backdrop for passage. From a contemplative perch made of the lightest material possible in a thin-skinned cocoon inches from sub-freezing, anemically thin air, the perspective and distance makes the otherworldly, near-Mach speed seem like a lazy float in a cloud swing.

The monumental seems miniscule because the miles-high magic of perspective paints the infinite details with a brush broadened by altitude rendering the monolithic perceptible in a glance–an impossibility from the ground.

Once the Earth falls away, the crags and mottled rocks and bare washes recede into a more perfect rugged beauty most apparent in the wide angle vantage point of altitude, a newborn epic revelation.

And the lazy cloud swing breezes through effortless miles over a rolling tapestry of preternatural vistas from here to there, a “now” with a spectacular view,

a footless, rootless, colossal impossible God’s-eye-view of the fastest way to there, wherever that is today.

That’s difficult to imagine from the surface, particularly when the struggle to get into the air seems as insurmountable as the miles to go. Even once under way but still shackled with the twin albatrosses of gravity and crowding, “now” masquerades as forever.

Waiting–Keats’ “foster child of silence and slow time”– renders the present a shuffling laggard, and speed a distant mirage like tomorrow or yesterday. “There” and “then,” the double-play of anticipation, never seem more impossibly far away and “now” a more wearisome isolation from where we’re headed and who we’re going to see.

And yet that’s the closest we ever really are to each other, wandering life, vagabonds bound by the commonality of where we aren’t yet, but are headed for–which is always some particular there. The tedious details of the strangled moment are forgettable snapshots as they present themselves, but in truth they’re truly the imprint of the best, most fleeting treasures of our lives:

This is how we were then. Look how small the kids were! And how young we were. Like the magical clarity borne of altitude, the distance of time paints a whole new picture. And the pictures side by side reveal the awful truth: time is a thief.

Let’s face it: compared to the breathtaking perspective of the sky view, the grounded here and now seems like a sideshow–even when it really is the other way around. Maybe it’s the tedium of now, the obligations, the faults and close up detail of “now” that falls away when you leave the Earth relegates the “here and now” to the status of ugly stepchild to “there” and “then” of destination.

Like the ruddy details of a landscape vanishing into the miles-high montage below a jet flight, the ticking seconds hide in the tearing off of calendar pages. But like the imperfections of wilderness, they are nonetheless the essence of our lives, the reality that makes life what it is rather than the illusion of how it appears from a distance of time or place.

That masks the real culprit–relentless time–and lets him go about his silent ruination of everything precious now under the guise of everything yet to come.

You pay me to hide that from you, and I do my best.

Though time and distance seems non-existent in the speed and altitude of flight, that’s because I’m handling those culprits, sweating them for us all. Time is fuel. Speed is distance. And neither is flexible or endless, because time is not our friend.

We have an appointment with gravity and energy that is ticking our way, hiding behind broadest view of time and distance and the breathless, breathtaking journey between them.

There’s a big plan for our little journey,

and in bringing it to a successful close, it’s easy to forget that what’s for me a workday process is for all of us a passage nonetheless. I try to keep in mind that the seduction of altitude is but ample cover for the thief of time tiptoeing silently by in the seconds barely evident in the calendar’s march. At least I won’t let him steal away unnoticed.

The sneaky seduction of altitude and its supernatural view is also its greatest secret, if you pause long enough to take it apart like an old watch:

The outer face tells an elegant story, but means nothing without the myriad interlocking details that make it tick. A sleek jet at shotgun speed is a beautiful sight rocketing overhead.

But nonetheless, it’s our mundane day-to-day litany of close-up imperfection and routine but precious interlocking lives that is the miracle. A fleeting miracle, despite the stunning trickery of high altitude sightseeing that hides the all-important ticking details in favor of something down the road beyond the reality of now.

And it’s not a fair trade-off, because as Bella Abzug promised, maybe we weren’t at the Last Supper, but we’re certainly going to be at the next one.

On the way, I plan to drag my feet as long as possible in each fleeting but precious mile-high and down-to-earth heartbeat of the neverlasting now.

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Jet Flight And The Curious Lightness of Hope.

Sure, the destination is the same for every passenger on board. Yet the passage is anything but, except for that moment of stillness before instant of flight.

It’s that empty pause after the final turn from the taxiway onto the runway, after a quick glance upwind to be sure no one’s on final approach. Satisfied, goose both throttles, engine instruments spring to life; feel the shove, pull ’em back. Make a wide swing, pressure on the inboard brakes slews the nose around and at the sweet spot, deft pressure on the outboard brakes stops the nose dead on the wide white stripe leading miles ahead, into the air and far away. Feel the slosh as ten tons of fuel in the wings protest the precise stop after the graceful arc, rocking the jet in ever-diminishing waves.

Silence. Stillness. The moment of “should we?” well past, but the instant of “we are” yet ahead. Savor the verge of such nearly bursting potential, that heartbeat before the sound and fury and no turning back.

That frozen moment masquerades in another pregnant pause near a boarding gate, but often at the drop-off curb. It’s okay for me to look, being invisible–not a person, but a component of a travel ensemble: just the uniform on somebody crewing the machinery of here-to-there, no more significant than the stripe on the aircraft fuselage or the logo at the gate. From the outside, at least, air travel is a process as much as a passage. And there’s safety in the anonymity of that, at least from the inside.

But now and then in the chorus of good-byes there’s one that’s more than cursory. With a touch that lingers, sad eyes echo pained looks back and forth like a shout in a canyon. There’s nothing simple in this parting, it’s easy to see, yet so hard to look at.

Because who hasn’t been there? Who hasn’t had to endure the moment of leaving and the torturous suspense of not yet being gone? That awful stretch with neither past nor future, only an agonizing now where hope just flat lines. In those murderous moments the mundane elements of time and place freeze; the sun, the clear sky, a warm or cold day and what he or she wore and said and that last look, thin as a nose print on glass and gone in a moment but still, memorializing in stone the physical aspects of a momentous passage, at least for you.

And so for them, I remind myself. We’re flying people, not just passengers and cargo and a buttload of fuel, most of which we’ll methodically incinerate in the getting there. And the crossroads gathering everyone here and now from the forgettable quick trip to the heart-wrenching good-bye and everything in between is this hanging moment that ends with flash and fire.

Always loved the feel of making that happen: stand the throttles up; a hundred-thirty-some feet behind, a pair of hydro-mechanical fuel controls respond to my touch with a gush of volatile jet fuel into burner cans ringing the turbine sections on both engines. In an instant, instruments on the forward panel spring off their pegs and wind up as does the jet noise and we roll.

Jet fuel ignites at around 400 degrees Fahrenheit, and under compression and lightning-like heavy-Joule ignitors, the hot section of the jet turbine flirts with 1,000 degrees and howls a gale of hot exhaust behind us, slinging the aluminum, hydraulic fluid, miles of cables and electrical components never mind the bone and blood and heartache and joy to the speed required to lift the whole unlikely assemblage into the air.

One last scan, riding the pointy end of a southbound train that ain’t never going to stop, pull back just enough, and hold. The huge tail fin bites the air and up goes the nose.

Then the earth just falls away and sky replaces the complications of buildings and roads and homes and offices with the simplicity of white clouds and a dome of cobalt above, darkening at the top, with just a miniature sketch of the tiny world below going about its seemingly–at least from miles above–tiny little business.

Maybe now in cruise, I tell myself, the pain of parting can give way to the hopefulness of reunion. Or a new beginning. Or an ending. But all of that is on hold for however long we are off the ground. I never forget that.

Busy people sometimes call flight time “the black hole” because they can’t send or receive calls from an office or some other worldly hell. But I prefer to see our flight as more like an oasis high above the desert of requirements and demands and contests and complications of the petty ant pile miles below.

It’s the moment to catch your breath between here and there and whatever those polar opposites mean to whomever is struggling, suspended between them. The flight itself is the interlude, the moment of suspense, time with nothing to be done but endure.

And the secret irony is, it’s a deceptively treacherous peace and stillness considering that it takes place at as close to the speed of sound as we can fly in a sky without enough oxygen to keep you alive for more than a heartbeat or two, and at a temperature that would freeze you solid before you fell the seven miles to the dirt below, riding the fire that calms itself down to about 700 degrees when I throttle it back, but still.

That’s the curious lightness of hope. It’s born of leaving, baptized in the thousand degree fire of launching and climbing, speeding away, zooming ahead. Aloft, between, enroute, underway and no longer still but moving between a certain here and an uncertain there. Flying makes it so–above the mortal ground, ignoring the gravity of up and down, moving at impossible speeds in any place other than the way high above, which is where we are. For now.

Yeah, I know: all this will have to be worked out in the end. We’re going to “get there” and when we do, the energy of 70 tons at bullet speed will have to be dealt with: the thousands of foot-pounds of kinetic energy will need to be dissipated, the miles between us and the ground negotiated and the whole matter brought safely to a stop and mated to a gate so you can deplane and return to your mortal existence. I’ll take care of all that.

But yours is the hard part I don’t envy you one bit: reconciling your passage with new place where you’ve arrived. It’s really what matters–we didn’t just burn tons of fuel for nothing.

Maybe you’re starting anew. Maybe you’re returning. Either way, the complications of time and place and the real world we just zoomed over getting you here resurrect themselves and stare and wait for you to arrive. And now you have, so good luck.

Because my part’s done. In barely an hour, faceless as I am, I’ll be back in the air, back to my world of high altitude, high speed, high temperature from here to there but only for the moment. Just remember, anonymous or no, who cared about you in the coming and going, and everything that the passage meant to you.

And who’ll be here whenever you’re ready to go again, ready to ride the fire and the island of hope to a new place.

Just say the word, and we’ll go. Because as I said, we’re flying people, all of us; we just are. And that’s what really matters.

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Airline Passengers: Are YOU “That Guy?”

You know “that guy,” the one passenger, man or woman, who is annoying bordering on obnoxious–but is the only one who doesn’t recognize what a pain they are.

There’s always “that guy” at some point in the day’s thousand or so miles in the air. Typically, 350 to 450 passengers over the multiple flight legs board and deplane and in between, one or more reveal themselves as “that guy.”

Who’s he? Let me introduce you.

First, there’s the mangled lingo guy. Going to make conversation in the argot of the crew, right? What “runs” are you doing? That’s my favorite, although don’t forget the close cousin, what’s your route?

Both tired questions conjure the image of Ralph Kramden for me. Except that the average bus driver never aimed a 75 ton pile of pig iron ripping along at 200 miles per hour at a concrete slab he couldn’t see until a matter of second before the wheels finally touched the ground, nor navigated the same beast 7 miles up at 500 miles per hour.

There’s Ralphie’s “Main Street to 4th” run, and there’s my flight sequence, which is usually 3 legs somewhere to somewhere, then a hotel.

I don’t have a “run” or a “route,” because after 24 years, I really don’t care about most destinations anyway. Rather, like most flight crew members who’ve been around a while, I’m all about whatever flight sequence–2 or 3 days–requires the least amount of time away from home.

Destination? Who cares, although I do try to fly south in the winter, vice versa in the summer (all birds do that, right?) to lessen the weather hassles in and out of the airport. But as far as the “glam” spots? Puerto Vallarta, Cabo, Miami, New York? Who cares? I’d rather be at home with my family.

Part of that is the “been there, done that” effect of hundreds of “runs” (JUST KIDDING–it’s “trips”), part of it is the weariness of the suitcase life, being on the road and NOT having your place, your stuff and most importantly–your time. Because it’s not your time, it’s a work schedule.

Once in Puerto Vallarta, the hotel ran out of standard rooms and put me (“El Capitan,” they said) in the Presidential Suite. Two problems with that:

1. I spent the night sleeping with one eye open, just knowing a band of drug cartel banditos would eventually kick the door in, kidnap me mistakenly (“No, I’m just a lowly crewmember, not a gazillionaire who could afford this outrageous luxury and by the way–check out the grand piano in the living room!”) and then mail home my chopped-off ear with a ransom note, although Darling Bride would probably request a larger appendage as confirmation and the airline would deny even knowing me. Not good rest there.

2. The luxury suite just reminds me that I’m NOT on vacation, I’m not here with my family enjoying beach time or happy hour or the scarf-till-you-barf “Can I Get Immodium With That” buffet. I have to get up early and get my butt back into the polyester and get to work. Just stick me in a broom closet for my lavish nine and a half hours at sea level.

Besides that, I usually don’t even check where I’m going until the night prior and up until then, I’m probably trying to trade my trip for any open trip requiring a captain that has less time away and less work involved. So we really don’t have “runs” or “routes” anyway, and I’ll trade any trip for Tulsa-Omaha if it gets me home quicker and less painfully.

The next “that guy?” He’s “Mr. I Have Frequent Flyer Status.” He–or she, often–differs from the real frequent flyer who is characterized by the efficiency with which he boards, stows his things, sits down, says “please” and “thank you” and doesn’t make a nuisance of himself.

I'm a "Triple-Axel" elite!

By contrast, those who are impressed by their mileage category or the goofy distinctions airlines dreamed up to make them feel important (“I’m a premium/zirconium/gold circle/fat cat/lead pipe/triple Axel status holder . . .”) run headlong into those who are simply trying to do a good job for everyone, despite the marketing opiate of mileage status.

"Ain't I got status!"

This person is likely to remark to me at some point, “Bet I have more time in ‘these babies’ than you do.” Doubtful, unless you’re in the air more than 900 hours a year and even then, actually flying “these babies” requires more than napping in back in a filthy seat between snoring mothers with squalling lap kids–but better you than me.

Finally, the least obnoxious but often the most disturbing:

We know why you fly: it's cheaper than Greyhound and Amtrak has a dress code.

Unlike the “Status Dork,” these folks don’t mean to be annoying and often, don’t have the experience to not be that way. Never mind the little things like asking if there’s a toaster or microwave in the galley (“Sure–right by fridge and the sink”) or using the lav in only socks or less (“Ewww, but thanks for mopping the floor!”), it’s the stopping dead in the middle of a moving terminal throng, or never knowing their own travel details:

“Is this my gate?” “Give me a hint: where are you going? And god forbid, what’s your flight number?”

It’s just the unfamiliarity with the environment–like me in the dentist’s office or the American Girl Store–

That's NOT me--I took the picture.

it’s the circumstances that make normal people (the “beast” playing with dolls) do silly-looking things they wouldn’t otherwise do, especially if they knew how it made them look. Get the picture?

So if you don’t fly often, it’s not your fault, BUT GET A CLUE:

Dress appropriately. This ain’t a garage sale or a day at the beach. In my Air Force flying, we were told to–and I did–consider the effects of fire on your flying garb. And so we wore Nomex fire-retardent flight suits and even gloves though often it was pretty hot in the cockpit, with cotton underneath, mindful of the melting-onto-bare-flesh effect of artificial fibers when jet fuel burns.

Okay, you don’t need to be that paranoid, but is the T-shirt, cut-offs and flip flops thing going to work for you on your way home from O’Hare in January, never mind if you make an unexpected stop?

Besides, every type of clothing doesn’t look good on every type of body, so just because you’re traveling to an unfamiliar destination doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily look good in whatever they wear there.

When you get home with your Bolivian halter top or bead-laced hair, in the context of a normal day–you’re going to ask yourself “why the hell did anyone think this looked good?” Trust me: we’re asking that as you walk through the airport and onto the plane.

Nix the wife beater shirt, the ripped garage-cleaning wardrobe, the beach wear. Just dress decently and act that way, too. Know where you’re going and on which flight. Say please and thank you where appropriate, and try not to be too impressed with your mileage status or how many hours you have “in these babies.” Things will work out better that way.

And you won’t be “that guy.”

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Click here to listen to my interview along with the P.R. Director of Air Tran Airlines and the regular panel of Airplane Geeks discussing pending airline legislation, The Passenger Bill of Rights, the replacement of Air Force One, and many passenger-related airline issues.

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Inflight Insanity: My Top 5 List

Twenty-four years and counting as an airline pilot–the past 19 as captain–have taught me to never say or think “now I’ve seen it all.” Because just when you think you have, something like #1 below happens.

I still expect to have many more years of flying ahead. But I can say that over these flying years so far I’ve seen a lot of almost unbelievably bizarre things that I wouldn’t have thought could ever happen in the airline world had I not seen them myself–even though often, I wished I hadn’t. Here, then, is my list of the top five weirdness, at least so far, and the valuable lessons in each.

5. A short, stocky taciturn man connecting onto our flight south after clearing Customs from Shang Hai boarded our plane early. He headed to the last row, sat down, dropped his tray table and pulled a strange device from his carry-on bag. This calculator-sized gizmo had blinking lights, a few loose wires, and an LCD display that flashed an ever-changing series of numbers. He then draped his jacket over his head and most of the tray table, tenting himself in seemingly intense concentration on the strange device’s number display.

Of course, that freaked out the flight attendants supervising boarding. They called me on the flight deck and reported the whole oddball situation. Sigh. Why couldn’t he be on someone else’s flight? I called operations and requested a Passenger Service agent to investigate what certainly was abnormal passenger behavior.

The guy spoke only Chinese and tried to ignore any requests to deplane. Eventually, law enforcement officers were summoned to ask him a few questions. As he was led off the plane by Passenger Service agents, glaring at everyone and muttering in some Mandarin dialect, I made sure to stand behind the waiting police officers just in case he went Ninja-crazy with some obscure martial arts move from deepest China, ripping out your heart with one hand and showing it to you as you collapse.

Found out at our next stop that investigators–and translators–determined that the man’s strange device was a “random number generator”that he liked to stare at because it “calmed him down” since he was afraid of flying. Lesson here: don’t act like a weirdo-zombie with a strange device during boarding. It freaks out the crew.

4. In flight, I kept hearing a male voice outside the cockpit door. We had an all-female cabin crew on that flight, so I knew it wasn’t one of their voices I heard. I had made the standard P.A. reminding passengers that congregating near the galleys was not allowed. I also heard a muffled female voice sounding urgent in between words from the male voice. The seatbelt sign was on, so no passengers should have been up anyway.

Sigh. Can’t everyone just stay seated when the seatbelt sign is on? Of course not. I called back to the forward flight attendant, asking what was going on. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you,” she answered, then asked me to make another seatbelt P.A.. That worked–the male voice vanished.

Later, the #1 flight attendant came up to explain why the man was standing outside of the cockpit door and mostly in her galley. “He had just come out of the forward lav and was doing calisthenics of some sort. I asked him what he was doing and he said he’d been feeling gassy, went into the lav to pass gas but couldn’t, so he was trying to work out a big fart.”

Lesson #4: share your gas with your fellow passengers near your seat–not up front. We’re busy flying the plane and breathing is key.

3. During boarding in Puerto Vallarta, a woman with a grating New Jersey accent poked her head into the flight deck and demanded “can you guarantee that there are no peanuts on this plane?”  I thought about it and realized I really can’t guarantee that. We don’t have any peanuts in the catering, but who knows if other passengers may have some with them as a snack? Peanuts are not a prohibited item. “No,” I answered slowly, pretty sure I was correct, “I really can’t guarantee that.”

“Well,” she snapped back, “my son has a severe peanut allergy and if there’s so much as one peanut on this plane, he’ll go into convulsions. So you’d better be sure.” Then she huffed off to the back of the plane where her husband and son were seated.

My first officer looked at me with a raised eyebrow and a sly grin that said what are you going to do, captain?

Sigh.

Sigh. I called Operations on one of the VHF radios and requested a phone patch with the 24-Hour Physician On Duty at Headquarters. After hearing the woman’s story, he made the corporate recommendation: deplane the family. That would be my choice as pilot-in-command as well, because I don’t really want to do an emergency descent and landing on some crude runway in a foreign country with questionable medical help anyway.

I called to the back of the plane and asked the flight attendants to pass along the directive to deplane to the peanut-sensitive family. Within the twenty seconds it would take to stride the 130 feet from the back to of the jet to the front, we suddenly had an irate man with a grating New Jersey accent standing between the First Officer and me.

“We’re not getting off,” he announced, “so you just go about your business.”

I put on my game face. “Well sir, the decision has been made at corporate headquarters. It’s out of my hands–you’ll need to gather your belongings and deplane. We can’t risk your son going into convulsions in flight as your wife warned us.”

“Ignore her,” he said with a wave of his hand. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. And we’re not deplaning.” He stomped off.

Sigh. I called Puerto Vallarta Operations and explained that we would need law enforcement to escort some passengers from the flight. “Si, senor,” came the cheery reply,” we will send you some help.”

Good enough. I went back to gazing at the palm-studded landscape, the sunny breeze, the ocean in the distance . . . the dumptruck full of soldiers with semi-automatic rifles pulling up in front of of the aircraft.

Huh? “Looks like the cavalry is here,” my First Officer remarked idly.

I called the Flight Attendants in the back of the plane. “Could you send Mr. Congeniality up front one more time?”

Shortly, the Jersey guy reappeared, looking annoyed. “You can’t make us get off. I know my rights.”

“Well, if you look out there,” I pointed to the twenty-some soldiers fidgeting in the hot sun, now line abreast with their weapons unslung in front of the camouflaged dumptruck. “Those folks there are going to help you off the plane if you don’t go on your own.”

He stomped off with mild cursing; shortly the whole family deplaned with Mr. Congeniality muttering threats about “rights” and “lawsuits.” The soldiers looked disappointed as they climbed back into the truck. No guerilla assault today.

Lesson #3: get your story straight before you board. And try to avoid phraseology like, “you can’t make me.”

2. Flying with my favorite flight attendant of all time as #1 flight attendant. We’re inbound to DFW from somewhere up north, and about an hour from landing, The Gorgeous One calls me on the flight deck.

“Just so you know,” she tells me, “we have a guy in First Class saying he needs oxygen, he’s having trouble breathing, and he’s already had three heart attacks.”

Sigh. So close to home, and yet so far away; imagine the paperwork in this. But no one ever dies in flight, I tell myself–they’re just incapacitated. Much less paperwork that way.

The Most Beautiful Flight Attendant of All Time finds a nurse on board who takes the guy’s vital signs while I query the navigation data base for the closest airport with at least a 5,000 foot runway: Tulsa.

The First Officer starts the divert procedures without me having to say anything. The nurse reports that the guy is having chest pains, too. The corporate Doctor-on-Call concurs: land the plane, get the guy some help. I tell Darling Bride we’ll be on the deck in fifteen minutes. Sorry hon–your day just got longer, but I know you want to get him on the ground before he needs the jumper cables.

Like clockwork, we secure the necessary clearances and point the nose towards Tulsa. Medical help on the ground is standing by, ready to whisk Mr. Cardio off the plane and to a medical center. Good deal? Nope.

The passenger doesn’t want to land in Tulsa. Maybe the thought of dying in Oklahoma–living there would be awful enough–is too much for him to contemplate. Whatever–he’s now livid. That’s not helping his heart rate any.

We land safely and taxi right to a gate were an ambulance waits.

Medics strap him to a gurney and wheel him off the plane, protesting all the way, yelling about the pilot’s (that’s me) incompetence. Well, there’s certainly that, plus the thousands of dollars the divert cost, never mind the inconvenience to the hundred or so other passengers with normally operating central circulatory pumps who would likely miss their connections in DFW as a result of the immediate action to save his life. And to save me the paperwork, but regardless: buh-BYE.

Lesson #4: no good deed goes unpunished. Nonetheless, if you’re going to have cardiac problems, we’re going to try to save your life. So have your heart attack quietly if your downline connection is that important.

And the Number One bizarro experience, at least most recently:

1. We’d pre-boarded a thirty-something individual who had mobility issues. A travel aide whose sole purpose was to attend to this passenger’s needs also boarded. Once they were comfortably settled and we were about to start general boarding, a mechanic announced that a necessary system check would cause a delay. So we stopped boarding, figuring the passengers would prefer the more spacious terminal for their delay. But the pre-boarded folks remained in the cabin.

After about twenty minutes, the passenger sent the travel aide into the terminal to fetch some junk food.

I saw the travel aide leave the jet bridge because I was at the gate counter on the phone with dispatch, coordinating a new flight release.

Then I noticed on the computer screen I was viewing that the crew list had changed: the number one flight attendant position was vacant.

Huh? I’d only been off the plane for a matter of minutes.

My First Officer filled me in when I returned to the cockpit: as soon as the travel aide left, the individual decided a trip to the lav was an urgent necessity. Which couldn’t happen without the travel aide.

So the number one flight attendant, being somewhat of a saint with perhaps a touch of insanity, agreed to help, holding a styrofoam coffee cup for the still seated passenger.

THREE TIMES. And apparently, on the last “cupful,” through some anomaly of aim, trajectory or hydraulics, our flight attendant ended up hosed down.

And so we ended up with a replacement flight attendant.  There’s no “sigh” with this one–just “ewwwwww,” plus see also lesson #4: “no good deed goes unpunished.”

And here’s lesson #5: just when you think you’ve seen it all–watch out. I just don’t say those words any more, and now you know why.

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“This Is Captain Minimum Speaking . . .”

I made it through college by adhering to the premise that if the minimum wasn’t good enough, it would be the minimum, would it?

That at least let me survive four years of fascism and “military rigor” as it’s more pleasantly termed, in “college.”

Actually, the “minimum” theory conspired to keep me there: my GPA was just high enough to stay enrolled (I was on the Dean’s “other” list) but too low to transfer. So as my fellow bottom dwellers termed it over 150 years of minimal academic performance, I was “flunked in.” Nonetheless, the college degree and class ring were of the same material as everyone else’s. I think.

Beyond that, I believe the minimalist approach actually worked in my favor when it came to the intense competition for Air Force flight training. We had hundreds of cadets who wanted to go, but only four of us were selected. I have a feeling that the hard academic work by my peers at the premier engineering school that VMI is forced the Air Force’s hand: they knew what to do with engineers and needed them badly. So they snapped them up and put them to work in serious stuff like aerospace and civil engineering. Boring.

Me, on the other hand, and one of my best friends who was also selected, both of us having a degree in English therefore had no real potential in the serious stuff of the Air Force. I envision the Air Force personnel managers throwing up there hands and saying, “What the heck–they have no useful skills; send them to Flight Training.”

Good deal. In flight school, I once again employed the “minimum” principle with just a slight modification: probably we could say I established an economy of effort just short of being killed in the process. There was little danger of death in the study of English lit, but starting that year there has been a regular litany of flying colleagues who don’t live through the day’s work.  But even with that additional caveat, I still managed with minimal effort to be in the exclusive flight trio known as The Shit Brothers for the next year.

The Wolfpack’s “Shit Bros.:” Animal (now an AA 777 Captain), me (Landshark), Father-O (Fedex A-300 Captain)

We didn’t overdo the whole “studying” thing to the detriment of our health or recreation, certainly. In fact, in retrospect I would have to say that we emulated the finest trio in the history of teamwork: lots of laughs, some of them painful, but still.

So of course there were those who were amazed not only at our successful completion of the program, but also that we didn’t kill ourselves in the process (some did, every year).

We stayed minimally clear of that razor’s edge–especially flying in formation–and defied the odds which were clearly against us. Nonetheless, our wings were the same material as everyone else’s. I think.

So in gratitude for the trust plus the millions of dollars the Air Force spent on us, and for their letting us fly their multi-million dollar jets around solo and supersonic like we knew what we were doing even though we barely did, we swore we’d serve the United States Air Force to the death, or to retirement, whichever came first.

That lasted about five years. Then, the call of the airlines became too great to ignore: of the original 17 Wolfpack pilots, all but 3 ended up in airline cockpits. And it’s a different world.

Different, because now the minimum is you–the passenger. My world revolves around the minimum when it comes to you.

What’s the minimum visibility I can tolerate and still land you safely where you want to go? How much fuel must I hold in reserve to escape the holding pattern and even the weather at our destination, to keep you safe?

How much clearance can I get between us and the weather? What’s the minimum stopping distance on that rainslicked runway we’re heading towards at 200 miles per hour?

How quickly and safely can my crew get back out to the airport after a 14-hour day with minimum rest time (the industry standard: 8 hours behind the door of a hotel room) and more challenges ahead?

How long will this de-icing last for us, given my own judgment of the snowfall rate and quantity? Sure, someone else will give you an answer to all of these questions–but whose responsibility is it? Who really needs to know and better find out the correct answer without relying on anyone who isn’t also putting their ass on the line.

Yup, that’s the minimum these days: how do I keep you safe? Why shouldn’t we take off now? What do I need as a safety margin at our destination–or we don’t land and instead divert?

I know you have a schedule to meet, that you have a destination with appointments and people waiting. I really don’t care though, when it comes to the minimums of safety and common sense. That’s what you pay for and that’s what you’ll get: a safe trip. Maybe missed meetings or disappointed families or lost opportunities or vacations or whatever. But the important thing is you will arrive.

That’s the new minimum, because I will never accept anything other than that, and certainly nothing less. And when you’re on board and upset over delays and diversions, let me remind you: if the minimum wasn’t good enough, it wouldn’t be the minimum, would it?

Really, I’ll bet you wouldn’t have it any other way.

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High altitude oriental salad.

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Airline Pilot: Day 2 In The Life.

[Did you miss Day One of this saga? If so, here it is if you’d like to catch up.]

The phone blasts you awake at an ungodly hour. “Huh? What?”

“Crew Tracking. Your inbound aircraft is late, so your pick-up at the hotel will be an hour later.”

Damn–you realize you’re in a hotel. Not at home. “Uh, okay. You gonna call the first officer?” No sense letting him get any more sleep than you, right? Besides, he’d be down for crew van pick-up an hour early.

“Sure, Captain.” Click. Hate wake up calls–that’s why you never request one. Two alarms, plus the cell phone. And slowly, it dawns on you what’s just happened: Crew Tracking woke you up early to tell you to sleep later.

Of course, you can’t go back to sleep. Wrong time zone, too awake. Coffee? Foraging for coffee. Darn, it’s the one-cup jobber: won’t stay warm, but take it or leave it.

Strike One: now you’re going to have to risk the coffee bath in the crew van bumping to the airport. It can’t be helped–you need your morning medication. Meanwhile, time for your bloodbath: shave.

You know a widebody captain who just retired (initials Dan H.) but swore he always took not only the hotel free stuff like soap and shampoo, but also the extra roll of toilet paper and when he was running low at home, a couple light bulbs, too. Of course, you took a beer glass from the LaGarbage hotel bar every trip because they were charging $9 per draft. Ought to get something for that price, right? And you are probably the reason why now they allow carry-outs only in a plastic cup. Shrug . . . you have a complete set of their glasses anyway.

Stick your head in the shower, wash away the cobwebs. What the . . . okay, that’s Strike Two:

It’s like you’re in a submarine that’s been hit and is going down.

Anyway, blot that drain clog out of your mind’s eye–the submarine image is better. Grab your stuff, take the key, too, in case you need to come back up for something you’ve forgotten.

Get downstairs for pick up, if your time zone math is correct. If not, and you’re an hour or two early (don’t laugh–you’ve done it), then you’ll need your key to go back upstairs, acting nonchalant (yeah, I just came down to look around . . . uh, with my bags).

It’s quiet in the van because half of the crews are from the opposite coast and so are not yet quite awake; some from the early coast are already on their phones. You and your bunch are on Central time, midway between time zones and everyone, regardless, is heading to the four points of the compass.

It’s a funny career field, isn’t it? First thing everyone does after coming to work is scatter across the country. Maybe that’s why there’s a feeling of comraderie among crews, even from other airlines. We’re all in this nomadic drifting life together, passing each other along the way.

You hate the single point security, at least for the passengers. You’re at work, and you’ve done this so many times it’s pretty well a mindless annoyance. And there are crew lines. You hate the monolithic hassle of giant security operations like DEN and PIT for the families and the elderly who are almost overwhelmed. The special crew line? Well, should we get to the gate and preflight, then wait for the passengers, or vice versa?

There’s no time for anything after the security lines, just go to work. Not making eye contact with passengers, which will normally lead to questions you can’t answer anyway ( more details? click here). There’s an exception, though–there’s always time to help the very young, and the very old.

And of course, the families shepherding both through the airport. Their travel is most important, being their first or maybe even their last flight, and they need and deserve your help just as you would hope your family would get help in a similar situation. Find your way to the gate and  here’s the payoff for you.

The jet, fueled, waiting. That goes back to the core, to the Air Force days: pointy rockets lined up on a quiet ramp, waiting to split the morning sky with the sound of  jet engines. Let’s get to work.

Preflight done, boarding, pushback; take-off.

Do that again two more times. Food? No time–cram in a quick meal eaten out of your lap.

... and keep the cracker crumbs off the radar, okay?

Same sequence, step by methodical and disciplined step, two more times through three more time zones. By the last leg, you’re pretty well worn out. But there’s no slack, no easing up: the third leg has to be just as precise as the first.

Enjoy the desert moonrise, watch the fuel flow, and a constant eye on the route and the weather. The finish line’s only a couple hours away. Never mind the time changes and hotel sleep and missed meals, bring everyone home safely. Park the jet; captain’s the last one off. Now you can relax, the rest is just a sleepwalk to the hotel. And here’s why it’s all worthwhile.

Walk around them. Head for yet another hotel, try to get some rest. The whole thing starts over again tomorrow morning.

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Stay tuned for Part 3: Going Home.

Coming soon . . .

Flight Time In Dog Years

This flight flung me back to the dog pound. Just trying to get into the cockpit, and boom: flashback to the day I divorced my dog.

There was no one left in the boarding area when I tromped down the jetbridge about ten minutes prior to scheduled departure. I’d been up in Flight Operations printing a new flight plan after a major route change to avoid the severe weather over Tennessee and Kentucky I knew we’d read about in the next morning’s headlines.

Hadn’t met the Number Four flight attendant yet, but she was planted squarely in the doorway. No “Hello, my name is,” nor opportunity for me to do the same. Rather, hands on hips, looking at me like it was my fault, she said, “The woman in 4-F wants to know if her dog got on.”

She got a couple seconds of grace time as I struggled to not say something smartassed. Like most flight attendants, she was a pro at handling people, and handled me too: “He’s in there pushing buttons,” she said, jerking a thumb at my First Officer, “so he’s busy.” But before she could ask me if I’d go down to the ramp and poke my head into the forward cargo compartment and page 4-F’s dog, I slipped past her, saying, “Yeah, ten minutes prior to pushback I have a few buttons to push too.”

That’s when the flashback smacked me in the face: the look in her eyes, having been sidestepped, was the look in my dog’s eyes as he drove away. Not really disappointed, because she wasn’t that invested in 4-F’s dog. Rather, it was a problem solving-thing, a rearrangement, the details that would get us all under way peacefully, dog or no.

Same with Gus, my ex-dog. He lived his life with that look, the notion spelled out in his eyes that like my flight attendant colleague, was all about getting on with it. Maybe because he was a pound-mutt, a Retriever-Chow mix, stoic as his Mongolian ancestors which tempered the Retriever friskiness: he was the perfect dog. Time spent in the pound gave him an ex-con’s wariness, as if a skepticism about how “the time” was going to go overruled assurances and even a prescribed sentence.

Gus, the beer drinking, baseball watching perfect dog.

But on a jet? I know every airline charges substantial fee to bring a dog on board. Since the all-important 4-F dog wasn’t in the cabin, I assumed it was probably too large and so had incurred an even larger shipping fee below decks in the cargo hold.

Clearly, this was about somebody wanting something important from their dog, not vice versa, because I’ve seen dogs crammed into the cargo hold in kennels.  Not a cool way to travel.

This trip was about the dog’s owner and so more than the welfare of the dog, the question of whether he was on board had everything to do with what the owner wanted.

That was the reason for divorcing my dog: I wanted what was best for him, not me.

Our time together started out simple: a neighbor kid fed and watered Gus when I was flying; at home, we had baseball nights alone. For a while there, I indulged his expensive taste in beer: he turned his nose up at anything but RedDog once he’d tried it. An Amstel Light for me, a couple ounces of RedDog for Gus. It got to be too much, having to buy a separate–and more expensive–beer for the dog: it was like having company all the time.

Take it or leave it, pal.

We drove everywhere in my old Blazer, the back seats down so he could walk around and fall down a lot–he never grasped centrifugal force–singing bawdy dog lyrics to old Beatles CD’s (“I wanna mount your leg . . . and when I hump you I feel happy, inside . . .”) which was all well and good while it lasted.

Then came the girlfriend. I’d had “girlfriends,” but this was and still is the one. We got married. Built a house. Had a child. And Gus got edged out bit by bit: time and baseball and beer drinking (he NEVER had to go to the bathroom and looked at me like “you whimp” when I had to by the fifth inning) gave way to a re-engineered household and lifestyle, joyous for us; for Gus, not so much. He was an outdoor dog–had to literally drag him inside in bad weather–and too rough for the new house; too big around a newborn.

But then I knew my old baseball and Beatles pal still needed–and deserved–time and attention. He was near ten by then and I knew he wasn’t, in the twilight of his dog years, going to get it from me.

I put an ad in the paper. Rejected several families after the “interview:” nope, not sending Goose into a worse situation.

Then an old broken down sedan pulled up, huffed a mighty sigh and died. The driver’s door swung open and a disheveled man stood. A scruffy looking boy climbed out of the back seat.

Through thick Spanglish, the story unfolded. His German Shepard, best friend for all of his five years, had died. They saw the ad; hoped maybe they could find the right dog; no money for adoption. They had a yard and a vacant lot, all fenced. Gus could run, would get the attention he needed.

And that was that. He drove off, not even looking back, all about the “now,” as dogs seem to be. Tomorrow doesn’t exist, yesterday doesn’t matter any more. Bye.

The flight interphone cracked to life in my headset. “Ground to cockpit,” came the Crew Chief’s voice on the ramp below. “You guys ready up there?”

And I wondered to myself: is that what you do if you’re a dog’s best friend? Keep him with you at all costs? Or send him off–or below in a cage–and continue on “there” or wherever no matter what? The cargo hold? A beater sedan?

“No,” I answered, unstrapping. My First Officer gave me a “what the hell?” look as I stepped out of the cockpit. The agent, too, looked startled. “Be right back.”

Out through the jetbridge, down the stairs to the ramp. The guidemen with their wands and day-glo vests eyed me quizzically. I ducked under the fuselage, over to the forward cargo door a ground crew woman was about to close. “Wait.”

I leaned into the chest high cargo door, letting my eyes adjust to the dim light. There.

Medium sized kennel; medium sized dog. So far so good. “Hey buddy, you okay?” I ignored the ground crew woman’s stare burning a hole in my back. Five minutes till push, I knew she was thinking, we’ve got to get moving.

Brown eyes stared back. Some kind of beagle; nice looking dog. Same Gus eyes, too: not sure where I am, or where I’m headed, but let’s get on with it. Maybe even a little bit sardonic, like Gus sitting quietly as I take the mandatory fifth inning plumbing break: you wuss.

I turned to the ramper waiting to close the door. “Okay.” Back under the fuselage, up the jetbridge stairs. I brushed past the still befuddled  gate agent and strapped back into my seat. The dog’s about the now, the getting there, hopefully to a better place. Maybe a double yard with room to run; a little boy who’ll fill up his world again.

“Okay to shut the cabin door?” the agent asked, “Everything good up here?”

Good? Well, probably not beer and baseball, or at least not RedDog. But a better world, so the trip would be okay.

“Yeah,” I answered, flipping on all six fuel boost pumps overhead and arming the engine igniters. “Let’s get on with it.”

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*

Halfway From Yesterday.

The world from cruise altitude seen from the flight deck is a lie: looking straight ahead, it seems as if you’re suspended motionless miles high, floating. Neither here nor there, it seems, and there’s the illusion–in reality, you’re crossing the dirt seven miles below approaching the speed of a shotgun blast.

That’s the world between here and there and really, I think it’s less obvious if you don’t spend as much time there as I do. Sure, we’re all in the same jet, but you’re between wherever–and whomever–you just left, and who and whatever it is you’re going to see. The flight just gets you between the two points.

Not me. The flight is the point, and there’s much for me to do as a result: I have a radar beam projecting 300 miles off the nose, then bouncing back to show me what’s ahead. I can plan a turn to avoid the troubled sky bearing down on a city, promising us a bumpy ride and those on the ground a nasty afternoon. Rush hour’s going to suck down there, I think to myself, dipping a wingtip gently so you’d almost not even notice in the back, but easing us south of the coming storm nonetheless. The space between your “here and there” is my crystal ball, knowing and seeing from miles above what those on the ground can’t and what would be the point? The weather’s coming anyway. Ground life has no wingtips, no motion. Roots.

We find stuff for you to do while you’re aloft in the rootless space from here to there that means little to you besides being the quickest way in between. Even the seats in the cabin all face forward, as if reinforcing that we’re all going “this way.” And the time enroute is divided by events planned mostly for that purpose: flight attendants and a serving cart will appear in the aisle and go from front to back.

Why? Because front to back, that’s how you can see “the show” or the event that’s breaking up the time because really, the event is ceremonial: two fingers of a beverage and a couple ounces of a snack, just enough to put food on your breath and create the illusion of having eaten. The cart moving back to front?

That would actually make more sense, less distracting but then, that is the point: like my ten-year-old on a car drive, there needs to be islands of distraction like the DVD player, iPod, cell phone and a stop at Sonic (Cherry Limeade!) somewhere along the way between here and there.

Which is fine when you’re ten, but I learned a valuable point from an elderly couple seated with us at dinner on our cruise. “We don’t plan ahead,” Florence told me, speaking also for her octogenarian husband Stanley, “If we are well enough and able, we just go and do.” That’s because, I realized, in the here and there of life, they are closer to the far end. The time between is all they have.

But the secret, like the illusion of flight, is that the time in between is all any of us has. Some, more than others. Some less, yet no one, ten or eighty, can really see as far ahead as I do  enroute with the magic of radar. But in a lifetime, no one gets the miles-high God’s-eye view of whatever is bearing down on a city, ready to make rush hour a nightmare for those between here and there, work and home, between work week and weekend.

And so the calendar becomes the itinerary, with weekends and vacations the waypoints in between. Weekdays are life seated in rows, the illusion of snacking on a tray table facing forward, confirming our heading ever towards the “somewhere else,” farther away from wherever we were, as fast as we can get there.

That’s the illusion of “in between,” like the view from the flight deck: floating motionless high above it all, as if “now” were a place and not an instant, rocketing forward toward Flo and Stan’s perspective like a shotgun blast. Why the hurry to get there? Moreover, what about whatever time there is in between?

Florence’s philosophy makes perfect sense on a cruise ship: it was all about the time in between embarking and getting there. Actually, “there” wasn’t really the object anyway; just a fun waypoint or two, island distractions, and in fact a bridge officer once told me there were a fleet of cruise ship like ours motoring in circles so as to be underway, even though we were practically at our next port of call. The main event was the sailing, the formal nights, the lavish food, the entertainment, the beverages, alone time together.

The journey between ports was what mattered. I’m sure the captain using the bridge  radar could even see the next island, but wanting to provide us the smoothest and longest sea experience the cruise brochure had promised, prolonged the rootless time afloat nonetheless.

The calendar is the map between yesterday and tomorrow. The speed of passage between the two is really an illusion, because no one really knows how far ahead the calendar stretches. Like Flo, I need to go and do when and while I can. Just looking at the calendar, and considering weekends and holidays and vacations, I have to admit there’s more ocean than islands.

We’ve made air travel into an endurance contest between here and there. Ditto the calendar, with barely enough space to breath, no leg room, scant time or availability of decent food and water, and the need for some distraction so as not to notice the hours waiting to “get there.”

Maybe it’s inevitable. Maybe it will always be for you about the far end of the trip. I’ll get you there, I’ll look ahead and make it smooth, and do all I can navigationally to make it as fast as possible in between.

Me? Like Flo, I’m going to try to make life more about the Cherry Limeade with Darling Bride and our sweet ten-year-old. Never mind the highway, which ain’t really going anywhere. Never mind the calendar, too, which puts us halfway from yesterday and most of the way to tomorrow. Instead, I’m going to inhabit the momentary roots of now while I can. If we spend our time wisely, maybe we can miss rush hour all together and just cruise.

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