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Happy Landings

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Today is the anniversary of Amelia Earhart’s 1935 flight from Honolulu to San Francisco.

She’s not famous for this one, though it was a long solo ordeal that could have ended badly. Earhart is best known for the trip from which she didn’t return, inaccurately memorialized in my favorite song about a real event – Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight.

That last flight, still a mystery, is exceptionally song worthy. It’s hard to imagine a better chorus than this:

There’s a beautiful, beautiful field,
far away in a land that is fair.
Happy landings to you, Amelia Earhart.
Farewell, first lady of the air.

I thought it would be fun to listen to the song on this, the anniversary of a flight where she actually DID have a happy, though tired, landing. The Aberdeen, South Dakota American-News published this as part of its account:

“I had a lot of sandwiches with me but I didn’t eat any of them. I did eat a hard-boiled egg, which was quite a luxury, and drank some tomato juice. I feel just filthy and I want a bath.”
Miss Earhart said commercial flights between the islands and California were “entirely feasible.”
“They are inevitable,” she said, “and we’ll be flying everywhere in a short time.”

She was right, of course.

Describe your most arduous airplane journey.

77 thoughts on “Happy Landings”

  1. Good morning to all. I don’t have a single bad airplane journey that stands out. I don’t care much for being stuck in the tight seating on airplanes so any flight that is more than an hour is not much fun for me.
    Once I traveled across the Atlantic to Europe in a tight window seat with a woman who had a small child with her sitting next to me. I knew about the problems of traveling with small children and I tried to give the women and child as much room as possible which left me with very little room in my cramped window seat.

    Also, I had to suffer through a long trip on a Dutch air line that had the seats very closely spaced giving also no leg space. I traveled on a Bulgarian plane that had all kinds of leg space which was good but the plane looked very old and I was not sure that it would stay up in the air.

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  2. Before I was a parent I volunteered with an adoption agency. I was given an amazing opportunity-a free trip to Korea. The only requirement was that I escort back babies who were coming to their adoptive families. I was with a woman who had escorted for 12 years so we skipped the orientation.We rode to the airport with the 6 babies we were escorting (Did anyone tell me I’d be in charge of 3 babies?) and their weeping foster mothers. We were told to make sure the babies didn’t cry in the airport. Remember these 6-9 month olds spent 24 hours a day with the weeping foster parents. They had no interest in the white strangers who took them. The trip was ONLY 22 hours. We stopped in Seattle and volunteers took the crying, evil children from us. Sadly enough they returned my trio to me for the last leg to the Twin Cities.Although I love the magic of adoption I would have given those crying babies to axe murderers just to get them off my hands. Luckily cooler heads prevailed and the babies went to their new families and I took my exhausted self home. The next day’s trip to the ER confirmed that I had pneumonia and it wasn’t just the babies , or the plane , that made me feel like Miss Earhart when she landed.

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    1. A plane full of crying babies is no fun for anyone. I made a similar trip to China with a friend who had adopted a baby there. We were two taking care of one baby, I can’t imagine what it would be like for one person to take care of three even if you were healthy.

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    2. I was on one of those planes bringing home my youngest niece – we were lucky enough to have a baby who did not cry (Niece just ate and slept…and occasionally flirted with the Chinese man one row behind us across the aisle). There was another baby who cried the whole flight – the flight attendants even took turns walking with the poor infant. They were used to the Seoul to Minneapolis flights being baby flights, I think (we had a layover in Tokyo instead of Seattle – can I say I’ve been in Japan if I only spent a couple hours in the airport?). I have also been on the receiving end of one of those flights when my brother’s eldest arrived – that was back when you could go to the gate to meet a flight. The babies coming off the plane were like magic, and rock stars and all sorts of other things. The excitement of being there knowing my nephew was on that flight (and watching my brother, a normally taciturn guy, so excited he could hardly speak) was palpable. The volunteer escorts did look a little bedraggled, so we did our best to show our appreciation and then let the poor women go find a hot bath and a bed. 🙂

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  3. Nominee # 1
    One beautiful fall day, a la US Air 20 years ago
    Raleigh to Charlotte 5:30 to 6:15 a.m.
    Three hour wait
    Charlotte to Pittsburgh 9 to 10:30
    Seven hour wait
    Pittsburgh to Minneapolis diverted to Detroit
    5:30 to 6:00
    Five hour wait
    11 to Midnight
    There were no baggage handlers so drove to home Two Harbors
    Three days later got mysterious phone message my luggage was at the Duluth airport
    Went down after three hours police found it in lost and found. It had been sitting in the middle of the baggage are for a couple days. Best guess, hired carrier did not want to go to Two Harbors and walked in and dropped it off there.
    US Air took no responsibility

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  4. air travel is arduous most of the time. i used to travel quite a bit but I enjoyed it. the day there and day back was part of the equation. I flew to kansas city in a blizzard once with a plane load of Jewish furniture salesman only to arrive and find out no one else could get into the airport because we were one of the few planes flying that day. before take off we went out on the runway twice only to return because of zero visibility with 60 mph wind and blowing snow. deiced the wings twice and made a run for it, always figured the pilot had a hot date in kc.
    flew into hong kong two hours in front of a hurricane with 150 mph winds in 90 degrees weather.that was a weird vibe on the plane.
    one flight the plane did a nose dive from 40000 feet to 10000 feet with all the dinner trays hitting the floor and a delayed explanation that a access panel blew off the plane and we were only lowering altitude to ensure safe cabin pressure, the Passamaquoddy (spellchecker picked that word for me) the passengers thought we were going to die,
    had a group of high school baseball players shanghaied in orlando when a flight got canceled with easter weekend at hand needing a flight with 60 empty seats to get us home without splitting the group up. went through 3 cell phone batteries with a wonderful customer service lady on that one.
    hours on the runway in hot sweaty planes, nights in airports on uncomfortable chairs with a briefcase for a pillow, puddle jumping on little planes with air turbulence that makes it feel like you are really flying
    a hard boiled egg would feel about right many of these trips . all challenges to be dealt with but compared to the old drive to fargo on the pre freeway roads from minneapolis when I was a kid
    they all seemed within reason. airplanes, bus trips, train rides, excellent opportunities for memorable life experiences, a real pain when trying to slide seamlessly through your appointment calandar.
    yep a hard boiled egg is about right.

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    1. Those were some very bad flights, Steve. I was told by a guy sitting by me on a plane about a flight that went extremely bad and came out okay. He said all of the engines on a passenger plane failed and the pilot manged to glid the plane in for a safe landing. The pilot had to be very careful turning the plane to avoid going into a drive. He told the passengers to sit very still because even a slight shifting of wieght could be a problem.

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  5. This is more about what happened on the ground after a crazy flight. I think it took me 12 hours to get from Duluth to my apartment in the Shadyside neighborhood of Pittsburgh:
    Worked in Pittsburgh for about a year just after college graduation, and came back to Duluth for a friend’s senior art exhibit weekend at UMD in January. Returning to Pgh, we stopped in Green Bay twice and circled Chicago for an hour, since there was bad winter weather all along the east coast. Waited at ORD and then we got one last opening to take off and land in Pgh. Pittsburgh was snowed in, Sunday evening, airport was full — I mean FULL — of stranded businessmen (mostly men, still, in the late 70s) who were all cranky, insistent, and without boots. No cell phones, and all you could hear was “I HAVE to be in New York/Boston/D.C.! I have an important meeting! etc., etc.” Well, this snow wasn’t much in my eyes, so I just watched to see how it would all unfold. There were no cabs running, only big buses that came in to haul people to hotels downtown. We waited and waited. Finally our turn for a bus came, and one guy jumped up on the first step, turned and shouted dramatically, “Women and children FIRST!” I took that as my cue and was lucky to get a seat. They crammed so many people and suitcases on that bus! We slowly, slowly lumbered into downtown about midnight, and of course it was a ghost town. No cars. No people. And about 5 inches of snow, which paralyzes cities that are not in Minnesota. Not being able to afford the hotel, I was concerned I was going to have to start walking. Then I flagged down a cab. I told him I needed to get over near Carnegie-Mellon University, and he said, no way, these roads are terrible. In a flash of bravado, I said, “I just got in from Duluth and grew up in Minnesota. Would you let ME drive?” Well, that was just the thing to toughen him up, no college girl was going to get the best of him! And we skidded and slid and went 10 mph all the way to my apt.

    Pittsburgh is in a river valley formed by 3 rivers. At that time, they had no or very little snow removal equipment for the city. Because of the valley, a lot of freezing and thawing occurred during the winter. And steep streets — Pittsburgh beats Duluth hands down. And that’s saying something.

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      1. Thanks, Mr. B. Long day at work today, so I can truly say, “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all day!”

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  6. While there are plenty of negative things about flying there can also be some positive experiences. On a trip home from Europe I sat beside a young Romanian woman. She was leaving Romania to get married and live in the US. I learned about the dificulties of leaving one’s native country to live in a new world. She was very tired from staying up late to say good bye to her family and friends, but wanted to talk.

    She told me about the Romanian orphanages that had been in the news. She had been helping in one of them and there were people in Romania that were trying to change the bad practices in those orphanages that had developed under the dictatorial rulers from the time when Romania was behid the Iron Curtain. Finally she was able to get some sleep toward the end of the flight. I will never forget meeting her and hearing her story.

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    1. I worked with a doctor (actually two doctors – a husband and wife team) who were from Romania. Dr. Juliana was really wonderful. She was a great lady – very kind and thoughtful, always wanting the best for our patients who had been mostly rejected by the rest of our society. She had the most lovely speaking voice and accent. I was delighted to have worked with her.

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  7. A disclaimer: in 14 years of heavy flying, 97% of the fights what they should be, efficient and boring. Had only one slightly scary one.
    Nominee #2: Flew to Orlando on Sun Country. Went back to the airport three days later. Sun Desk Check had sign, go to gate. Went there. Three hours later, long after flight was supposed to to take off, whole passenger list was sitting at empty gate. Finally airport guy came and said the airline was bankrupt and closed and walked away, tried to that is. He explained he was getting people to divert us to other airlines. Took four hours to process us all. I flew out at 9 at night with 35 minute transfer in Atlanta which I barely made. Got into Cities at just before midnight. Baggage was lost. Never found, no one responsible for it

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  8. I used to fly a lot. I haven’t done so for a long time for a number of reasons.

    I remember vividly the worst flight I was on, but I cannot tell you where I was going or where I was coming from. All I remember is that I HAD to get on that flight, and I had a sinus infection. The cabin pressure thing on top of the infection was excrutiating. I do remember there was also some sort of men’s sporting team seated in my area. I thought the best thing was to try and sleep (epic fail that). The guys were trying to do a crossword puzzle (maybe the Times?) and it was clear they had not done a lot of them.

    I am not sure whether it reflects well or ill on my character that I did not pipe up with the answers. I suspect that I had to struggle to not yell them out does not speak well of me.

    I used to board a plane with my cat in her carrier under the seat in front of me (people were always surprised after the flight to find a cat had been on board-she always figured the Apocalypse was upon her, and so she just hunkered down quietly and prepared to meet her Doom) and my little Singer featherweight in the overhead baggage compartment, some bit of needlework complete with scissors in my lap. Those days are gone.

    Never flown with a child, those of you who have, I salute you!

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    1. Apart from my problems with cramped seating on planes, I also have trouble getting sleep on long night flights. It doesn’t help when there is someone talking loudly all night long as happen on one of my flights. Jet lag when taking long flights is another problem that I have.

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  9. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    My story is more of conditions of people on the airplane rather than of the flight. 12 or 13 years ago Lou and travelled to Cancun for a winter pick-me-up on a Sun Country Charter flight. On the way down we noticed that it was very overfilled and that the seats were too close together. However, it was uneventful and routine. On the trip back home it was a larger plane, but it was even more crowded. Lou and I are both tall which caused us to notice that these seats were placed even closer together. Lou could not comfortably or uncomfortably even collapse his legs into the space given, so his legs took some of my space. Then he got sick with, um–unpleasant digestive symptoms.

    Meanwhile sitting next to me was the lovely, intensely conflictual, somewhat overweight, mad and actively fighting lesbian couple who alternately refused to speak to each other or yelled. They tried to get me to mediate the dispute or pass messages to one another. When I would not do that, they started fighting LOUDLY. It was difficult to stay neutral because we crammed into the seats so tightly and I was jammed up next to one of them due to Lou’s legs in my space. The woman next to me would turn her back on her partner, only to look directly into the side of my face, sobbing, breathing heavily and being angry.

    I had hot air on both sides of me. I thought the flight might never end.

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    1. Hee, hee.
      I had a sort of similar one. 7 hours flight to Anchorage, I had the middle seat on a full plane between a 60-something couple who were not able to get first class seats. They insisted they had been told that their center seat would be left empty, which was my assigned seat. Flight attendants got security who told them to get off or shut up. Unfortunately they chose to stay. A delightful 7 hours.

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  10. Morning all. In my business and w/ a child adopted from China, I’ve had several trips that folks would call arduous. Very very back of a very very full plane to Singapore, back when there was still smoking on airplanes. The layover in Senegal where you’re not allowed to get off the plane but then they come through and spray some kind of insecticide (they do give you a wet washcloth before they do this). Of course, when we came home from China, baby was sick and fussy, so I stood most of the 11 hours from Hong Kong up over one of the engines to mitigate her noise.

    BUT… early in my travel career, I read “Hawaii” by James Michener and was struck by the truly awful travel conditions early explorers and travelers. Six weeks with you and your new spouse and all your belongings in a space smaller than my bathroom. With seasickness. It was a revelation and made me realize that none of my arduous plane flights are an issue!

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      1. i traveled with a guy to europe who got seats in the non smoking area of the plane because even though he smoked 3 packs a day, he didnt want to sit in it. he would get and and go back every 1/2 hour of so, suck one down standing in the aisle and go back to the seat. it had never occured to me that was an option. i had always sat in the smoking area prior to that. those were the days.

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  11. I agree, Jim, it can make all the difference in the world who your fellow passengers are. On a flight from the Twin Cities to Tucson once, I sat next to an architect from Minneapolis. An affable fellow and we talked throughout the flight. We discovered, among other things, that we had a common acquaintance. By the time we arrived in Tuscon, I knew more about him than I know about some people I’ve known for years, including his wife’s birthdate!

    Returning from my last visit to Denmark, on the flight from Copenhagen to Chicago, I sat next to a Danish woman who was going to visit her son who lived in Hawaii. She spoke little English and needed to spend the night in Chicago before catching her flight to Honolulu the following day. I’m not sure how she would have managed to find a hotel had I not been there to help her. O’Hare can be a big scary place late at night and even more intimidating if you don’t speak the language.

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  12. 9 hours from Cairo to JFK and the baby one row up and half a row across never (and I mean -never-) stopped screaming. The poor mom was trying to cope with 5 kids all by herself while her husband (and I use the term loosely…he was more “baggage”) slept through the whole flight in the row behind her.

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  13. Nothing will ever top this week of flying for me:
    Flew to Anchorage on seven hour flight and Northworst bumped my up to first class.
    Night in Anchorage. 90 minute meeting over lunch, rest of the day mine.
    Next morning flew to Barrow with stop in Fairbanks, which are always fun fights because everyone knows each other from all the flights they do back and forth. Sort of a big sober party. But fog in Barrow. Told to come back in five hours. Asst. Supt. was on the plane. He rented a car, took me out for a fun drive down toward Denali. Got into Barrow Fine. Worked the day, flew to Wainwright. Worked the day, flew to Atqasuk. worked the day, flew to Point Lay. Worked the day flew to Point Hope. Flew back to Barrow to rest for a day. Flew to Nuiqsut. Worked the day, flew to Kaktovik.Worked the day, flew to Deadhorse (Prudhoe Bay). Next day, flew to Faribanks, Anchorage and Cities in one day.
    It was great.

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      1. Training in all the schools. Amazing experience. I have told before about the mad Russian pilot who flew us over the half-dozen polar bears sleeping in a ball on the beach on Barter Island.

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  14. Was also coming back from Phoenix one time. We had a lead flight attendant that was Latino and didn’t have complete mastery of English. As we started to cross the Rockies, she came over the intercom and said in her thick accent, “The plane is experience some trouble…please return to your seats and fasten your seat belts.” We all kind of looked around and whispered, “Did she actually say the plane was in ~trouble~???” She came back on and repeated the message just to make sure we were clear. Yup, she said “trouble” all right. We quickly found out that what she -meant- was ‘turbulence.’

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    1. Turbulence is always better than trouble. I had a flight from Madrid turn back after about an hour because they couldn’t get the landing gear doors closed – with the drag of the open doors, we wouldn’t have had enough fuel to get to New York. My worst was the flight from Denver to Minneapolis where they weren’t sure the landing gear was locked. Two hours of circling to get rid of fuel, the whole “get ready for a crash” prep (women were instructed to take off nylons because of their flamability) – that was horrible. The landing gear was locked, so we eventually landed without incident but seeing all the emergency vehicles lined up along the tarmac just in case was quite unnerving.

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  15. I once attended a Rorschach workshop in San Francisco with a colleague who was originally from Sand Diego. The plan was to fly to San Diego after the workshop to see her family. Our flight was delayed for hours due to fog, and we were scraped out on a very late flight. The catch was we had to land in LA and get bused to San Diego since the San Diego airport apparently closes after 11 at night and no flights are allowed. I thought that was pretty strange. The bus trip was surreal and we arrived in sand Diego at about 4 am. I have also accompanied a very young patient to Denver for psychiatric hospitalization, flying from Bismarck to MPLS to Denver on a very early flight full of dressed-up business types. The 5 year old in question was very behaviorally disordered and cussed like a sailor and people thought I was her mother. It was embarrassing.

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  16. These days just getting through security at the airport is arduous! This is especially true if, like Jesse Ventura and me, you have had a joint replaced. Add to that jousting with fellow passengers for space in the overhead storage compartments for your carry-on luggage and you’re exhausted by the time you squeeze your butt into the narrow seat with no legroom. Don’t get me started on indifferent flight attendants, rude and obnoxious fellow travelers, not to mention the pathetic food offerings – if any – during your flight. Air travel has lost all allure to me.

    Charter flights are in a class by themselves. In my experience, charter flights, especially from a cold winter location to a warmer one, are full of revelers, many of whom are drunk by the time you get to your destination. Halfway through the flights they emerge from the bathrooms sporting shorts, colorful shirts and sandals; now they’re ready to kick it up a notch. Depending on how drunk they get, these flights can be a fun party with everyone singing and having a good time, or they can be a disgusting ordeal when someone barfs all over you; I’ve experienced both.

    I’ve done a fair amount of traveling and remember when flying was a pleasure. Seats were more roomy, food was better, you weren’t packed like sardines in a can and you didn’t have to go through all that security rigamarole. I remember the flight from Copenhagen to Moscow in 1964. The plane was full from Copenhagen to Stockholm, but we were only six passengers on that same plane from Stockholm to Moscow; not a very popular vacation destination in those days!

    Like tim, I’ve sat on the tarmac for hours in hot planes, very uncomfortable and annoying. The last time this happened, the cause of the delay was the departure of Joe Biden in Air Force Two after a fund raising stop in Minneapolis, causing me to miss my connecting flight to Copenhagen in Chicago; that was no fun. It’s also no fun seeing a single piece of luggage sitting on the tarmac as the plane pulls away from the gate only to discover, when you arrive in Mexico for your one week vacation, that that piece of luggage was yours.

    I am grateful though, that so far, I’ve avoided being in a plane that crashed or burst into flames on the tarmac. I’ve had three friends who were unfortunate enough to lose their lives in accidents like that.

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  17. Like most frequent business passengers, I worked to ignore my fellow passengers and be in my own world of work, reading, or writing. Had a couple delightful seatmates had many I never spoke too, in part because I was usually with other business flyers.
    Had three young women on different flights very near me start doing fingernail polish, to which I am very allergic. Actually attendants come running the minute they smell it to deal with it. One refused to put it away until she was done. She was removed from the plane. But I am then very ill and have to get as far away as I can. Once took a later flight. Airline people were very helpful to me all three times.
    Crying babies, I have few and they did not bother me, but the children flying between divorced parents were sometimes terrible. All seemed old pros at it, and a a few had discovered the power they had to misbehave.
    Once in the bulkhead row only two seats on that side had a companion dog next to me. I like my pets, am never fond of other people’s in public places. Fine in their homes, not fond of them in public. This poor dog was trying to decide if he was off duty and could try to be my friend or was on duty and had to protect his young lady. Turned out it was his first flight. I was not trying to be his friend, knew better than that. After awhile the girl and the attendants and I were all laughing at him. A golden cross of some sort. He would start to put his head on my knee and sit back stare at me. He would lie at her feet, curled around to protect her, then start to crawl towards me. Then sit back up. The girl was not sure how she was supposed to deal with it, to let him make friends or not. After three hours, we were friends.

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      2. Just reread your question. Never thought about this: all three times it happened we were on the ground, still loading the plane. I never had it happen in flight. Rather odd, that.

        Once I had a window seat. The two women next to me both took out nail polish before I noticed. When the smell hit, I told them to close them and that I had to get out of my seat. They were not willing to rush. The attendant was there instantly without my calling. She grabbed their nail polish jars and took them to the front of the plane and out the door. As I got out the two young women were chewing me out. I went out the door. An attendant took me to the gate area. They got me on a later flight, Chicago to Mpls, and had me overhead stuff waiting for me at the gate.

        It seems obvious to me not to use nail polish on a plane and is I guess to most people because it only happened those three times.

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      3. Whew. I was wondering how they removed someone from the plane while in flight – if they had, I would guess the rest of the passengers would behave extremely well for the rest of the flight.

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    2. We were one row behind the bulkhead. She was told to close the bottle. She said that she was going to finish her nails, she was not going to meet her boyfriend with half-done nails. The attendant went out the door. I got over my seatmates and ran to the back of the plane to get away from it. Do not underestimate how allergic I am to nail polish. When I looked back, two women from security were escorting her off. So, I can only assume they ordered and she complied. Not doing what an attendant says was a big issue right then from some news story, I think about a famous person.

      I told the attendant that I thought I needed to get off the plane. Someone from the flight deck came back and told me that they had a 15 minute delay and that I could step out on the gangway thing (what’s the name for those things? Jetway?). I stood with a woman from security by an open door, you know, where stairs go down. The air was jet fuel fumes, but it helped. I was too sick to ask details about the woman taken off I got a seat way at the back, (full flight) right next to the bathroom, vomiting, severe headaches, and light-headedness to the point of once passing out are my reactions.

      Later the person form the flight deck came back and checked on me and said that if you read the fine print that your are not allowed to open the bottles on the plane. He said they had an issue every so often about it. I got extra flyer miles. I got a room that night right by the airport to avoid driving.

      My wife gets her nails done and then stays away awhile. A friend takes her. Fortunately the solvents dissipate from the polish quickly. Nail polish is a perfect mix of things bad for me, certain alcohols and toluene. I just did a search about this and they say manufacturers are under pressure to go to water-base.

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  19. Today’s question is oddly timed for me because I was channel-surfing after midnight and stopped on a new program called “1,000 Ways to Die” (no, it’s not another reality series!). I was simultaneously attracted & repelled, but my curiosity won out. I am now ONLY repelled. These were true stories of bizarre ways in which people have died, one of which was on a plane. A frisky couple decided to join the “Mile High Club” of folks who’d had sex in the tiny bathroom while in flight. Perhaps you see this coming? Er…….

    These two were trying their best to get off in really cramped quarters when the plane hit
    sudden, severe turbulence. They were too engrossed to notice the seat belt light go on.
    As the plane lurched down violently, the couple crashed into the ceiling. The woman’s skull was crushed and the man’s neck snapped in two. The recreation showed the airline attendant
    opening the bathroom door and two half-clothed bodies spilling out.

    I wish you hadn’t asked!

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    3. That one’s an urban legend – see “Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub” a few days ago – this started as a phony article on spoof.com with the couple merely being injured. 1000 Ways To Die, according to its Wikipedia page, reenacts unusual deaths without regard to whether the stories are true or fictional.

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      2. As Steve said last Saturday…”One of the weaknesses of storytellers is that they are irresistibly drawn to good stories whose single failing is that they are not true. But we tell them anyway, because good stories are so appealing.”

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  20. OMG – the stories here! Remind me to not fly anywhere ever again!

    I’ve not flown that much, and have apparently been very lucky when I have. Only thing I can remember was returning from Colorado with 6-month-old baby, getting bumped from an overbooked flight. It was just baby and me; I was exhausted, waited in long line to get rebooked, but only had to wait a couple more hours, and got a free ticket out of it. They didn’t even lose my luggage.

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    1. Please don’t take any of my plane stories as reasons not to fly… just the opposite. No matter the flight, when you get off the airplane you have been transported to another part of the world! And if you’re lucky, you’ve been transported to a magical part of the world!

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      1. I agree, for all its pains, air travel is magical, to just a couple hours later drop down in a distant place. Most magical into different weather/climate.

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    2. I would stay away from flying if there was any other way to go long distances quickly. There are a lot of places I still would like to see that I probably couldn’t visit if couldn’t fly. I might try some long train rides. I supose long boat trips are another option, ptobably not one I would choose.

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  21. You are all such world travelers! I have only one experience and it can’t compare to any that you’ve related.

    I went to southwestern Utah – Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon – one early spring with a friend. We flew in to and out of Las Vegas. It was a nice trip and the flight there wasn’t too bad for someone like me who has flown very little. The return trip was the issue. We sat in the back of the plane, right next to the bathrooms. The roar and shaking of the engines was terrifying to me. I started to calm down when we got into the air, but there was turbulence for the whole flight. Just as I thought we must be getting close, there was an announcement. We were over Iowa and would be landing at Rochester, MN. President George W. Bush (1st term, I think) had made a surprise visit to the Twin Cities and no flights were allowed in the air space over MSP. We landed at Rochester and sat there, on the plane, for hours. They wouldn’t let us deplane. It was frustrating, not to mention uncomfortable. We were in ROCHESTER. I felt like WALKING home by the time we finally took off. Then I had to go through all the roaring and shaking again. We flew low (never got to altitude again) over an area of southern Minnesota with which I’m very familiar for the rest of the return flight. I saw Faribault, Northfield, the river and the airport before we landed.

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    1. Looking down to see something familiar is a habit of mine. I live right in the flight path for MSP and quite often we fly over my house. Since Mount Oliver is close by, I can usually spot that first and then see my little roof as we go over. It’s always reassuring to me.

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  22. I feel so…boring. But in a good way. Never been on a lousy flight – though a couple have been long. We almost lost my dad in the trams at the Denver airport a few years back, though. I was traveling with Daughter (who was then a toddler) and my parents. We more more worried about losing the little one, who was stuck to me like glue, and should have been more worried (though we were watching for him, too) about losing my partially blind, memory addled father (he was in the early stages of dementia, though early enough we weren’t always aware of how much it affected him unless he was someplace new). Three of us got off, and Dad was still on the tram with the doors closing…he would have been hooshed off to a totally different terminal had someone in the tram not noticed that we were waving our arms and Dad seemed more than a little perplexed and hit the button to re-open the doors fast. After that, Dad went first through every door the rest of the trip. We were like a family of ducks, me in the front with Daughter, Dad and Mom taking up the rear.

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  23. On our first flight to Montreal, our daughter, age 13, got bumped up to first class on the Air Canada flight from MPLS to Montreal. She had been seated in a pretty cruddy seat without a window, and they moved peple with bad seats up to first class if they could. She had a great time eating all the fine food and talking to all the far more interesting people there than at the rear of the plane near the bathrooms.

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    1. I am so gallant that three times when I was traveling with my wife, because I had the preferred flyer status or whatever they called it for all the miles I flew, I got bumped up. I gave her the first class seats. She said she did not miss me at all. I only twice when flying alone got bumped up.

      If I were paying me to work on my project, I would fire me for the time wasted on here the last two days. Sooooooooooooo . . . .

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  24. Flying with a child in a wheelchair either goes really well or really poorly. I like it when my son noticed that we could impact the experience. He said, “Do you know that if I wear my cute Christmas sweater and a Santa hat we get to sit in the bigger seats with all the free juice?” He also noticed that this ploy worked better flying out of Mpls/St Paul than flying back in.

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  25. Sorry to be so late . . . I’ve been tied up with medical stuff. My flights have been routine and dull, or at least I can’t recall anything worse than a landing that hopped a little. But one time I went to Canada’s Northwest Territories to fish from a “fly-in” lodge (a camp on a lake only accessible by float plane). I had been warned that the guy who ran this camp was a bit of an outlaw who was forever cutting corners and letting his equipment go.

    Float planes are really fun. You rush along the lake, gathering speed, until the pilot can pop one ski free of the water. Then he pulls back and puts the plane in the sky. It is often a dicey matter as to whether the plane is so burdened that it won’t attain enough speed to take off.

    When we flew into this lodge, I was silently shocked at the condition of the airplane (flown by a big, cocky kid). The radio was out and I think I counted six pieces of equipment that weren’t functioning. But the kid was sure of himself, and he got the plane up with no drama.

    Two weeks later I was shattered to read that the party flying into that same lodge (with the same plane and same young pilot) had a different fate. The wind was high that day, and the lake was whitecapping. The passengers had a disagreement with the pilot. He was sure he could fly in that weather. Some passengers didn’t want to fly. In the end, they all got in and made a rush down the lake. The plane took a bad hit from a wave and went down into the lake. Two of the passengers drowned, buckled into their seats. I have asked myself what would have happened if I had been in that group a week after my stay in that lodge. And I know. I’m so eager to please and avoid confrontation that I would have meekly buckled up and probably would have died.

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  26. This is what I’m saying! (In response to Steve’s…)

    Seriously, though, I used to love flying, exactly that magical element. And sometimes people can be so kind. When I was a mere pup (21), coming back to Iowa from my first summer in San Francisco, I was making my way around the airport and realized I HAD LOST MY TICKET. I was panicky, in tears, but somenow remember some woman with the airline helping me replace it. I flew home as scheduled.

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  28. I’ve done my share of flying… enough to feel at ease most of the time. My worst experience was a short hopper flight (I don’t recall the destination) on board a 16-seater. We hit some pretty strong turbulence & going through it in a small aircraft makes it all feel more intense, but we were all coping pretty well. I was seated in the last row and had to deal with the flight attendant whose face screamed “We’re all going to die!!” She had a death grip on the bulkhead, panic in her eyes and no patience for any of us passengers… nothing even close to reassuring about her behavior! I made a comment to the pilot about her as I left the plane and got a knowing nod of agreement.

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