Upon reflection, I believe my problem with airplanes began in January 1970, on a one-way trip to that bad place called Vietnam. I left fr
om Oakland, and by the time we had a short layover in Japan, I was ready to escape the situation. I lost count of the shots of Sake I sucked up, and if a couple of my fellow passengers hadn’t helped me back to the plane, my life would have changed dramatically.On the last leg to Vietnam I decided I didn’t like airplanes. I didn’t like the turbulence we hit at times, or hearing war stories from the guy next to me who was on his second tour and tried to talk like John Wayne in the Green Berets. I temporarily lifted my self-imposed ban on airplanes when it came time to return back to the “world.” I only remember shivering from the air conditioning and asking for an extra blanket on that trip. Many moons slipped by before I got back up in the sky. When I did fly again it was out of necessity. Far away funerals, and serious stuff like that. I forget the year (sometime in the mid-1990s) when I had to fly to Southern California from here in Humboldt and transfer to another plane in LA that would take me to Texas. While at LAX, there was a snafu in the air traffic controller’s computers all along the West coast and everything ground to a halt.
I was stuck in the very crowded airport. Everyone walked around looking like zombies and talking to themselves. Of course, they were talking on cell phones, of which I had little or no experience then. I didn’t fully understand what went wrong and my phobia of crowded places pushed me close to the brink. By the time I finally boarded the flight, if someone had said “Boo,” my hair would have turned white and I’d have suffered the “big one.” There was air turbulence all the way and I was a shade of green as I staggered out of the plane upon arrival. I drove a U-Haul back from Texas with my son and his stuff, thinking how nice it was to travel on the ground.
Nearly a decade slipped by before I was back in the sky. This time it was a pleasure trip. My wife, two friends and I went to Hawaii in April of 2008. By the time we arrived I was ready to kiss the ground and sacrifice something to assure a safe trip back. Our first flight was cancelled because ATA Airlines (our ride) went bankrupt. Just like that.
So we scrambled around and found a flight on American Airlines that departed four days later. Minutes before departure someone announced that our flight was canceled along with 900 (I think they were MD-80s) others for safety reasons! Right then, I took the medication I got from my doctor to relax me on the flight. We finally got another flight to Kauai. I spent the next two weeks wondering if I could get knock-out drops from a local doctor for the return trip.
I just don’t trust airplanes. I’ve visited web sites that explain all the niceties of flight and how safe it is. Knowing the mechanical reasons for flight doesn’t sooth me. I just have to recall how a flock of birds brought down an airplane on the Hudson River last year and know that mechanical expertise only goes so far in assuring a safe flight. And what about the pilots? How about those two jaybirds who flew past their intended destination for over an hour before figuring out something wasn’t kosher? They said they were studying flight regulations or something, and lost track of time. Last week, I read about another pilot who was fired for being drunk on the job. There’s an ongoing controversy about pilots not getting enough sleep between flights.
If people were meant to fly God would have given us wings! And maybe a tail rudder and flaps. It’s not cheap to fly, and you’re never sure if you’ll spend the night in a stinking airport with thousands of other sweaty and desperate people longing for their beds at home. The future is here with new body scans that leave nothing to the imagination, in hopes of catching a terrorist or two.
I don’t know if that old slogan, “Fly the Friendly Skies” is still used, but if it is, it needs to be updated to “Fly the Secure Skies,” or something equally descriptive. I would suggest “Fly at your own risk,” or something snappy like that, but I doubt if it would improve business for the struggling airlines.
As It Stands, I hope everyone in the airplane industry continues to make a living despite people like me.
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