Why I Fly

"Jayhawk Jake" (jayhawkjake) 04/21/2016 at 22:01 • Filed to: PLANELOPNIK, FAST NOT LOUD

4

10

It’s 4:05 PM on a beautiful Thursday afternoon in Wichita, KS. I’m sitting in seat 23A on an Embraer ERJ-145 watching YouTube videos while I wait for us to push back from the gate to head south to Houston, TX. We were supposed to leave at 3:05. We boarded at 3:30.

Read the whole article on !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , or continue here

‘The maintenance crew should be here in 10 minutes’, our rather Texan sounding pilot said, again, just as he did 30 minutes ago, ’30 minutes tops and we’ll be on our way’. Something on the plane is broken, and the pilot insists it’s unimportant. He tells us, and I quote, “It’s not a safety issue, but the federal government needs us to dot the tees and cross the eyes”. Yeah, this guy is definitely a Texan. He probably hates Obamacare.

At this point I’m cursing my decision to fly on United again. The last time I did the same thing happened and the flight got cancelled after 5 hours of delays. I message a group of friends on Facebook lamenting my woes.

“This is fucking bullshit” is, as I recall, what I said. I think it was rather eloquent. “This is why you should drive” replies fellow Fast Not Loud contributor Jay Lauer. I don’t think he’s ever flown.

Why didn’t I drive, you might ask? After all, I have stated my love for cars here in the past. I even bought a brand new Mustang not more than two months ago, and have expressed on this very blog how good of a highway cruiser it is. Surely driving is the better way to travel?

It isn’t. While I am certainly a self-proclaimed car enthusiast I’ve been an aviation enthusiast far longer. I love airplanes, I love air travel, and I’ll take airline travel at its worst over a long drive every time.

At 4:45 we push back from the gate and taxi to the runway. Only an hour and forty minutes late, not too bad. I look out the window as we line up on the center of the runway, admiring the rather elegant looking Cessna Citation X sitting on the executive ramp. I hear the distinct sound of the Embraer’s Rolls Royce engines spooling up followed by the smooth shove back into the seat of acceleration. Within 30 seconds we pitch back and seemingly leap into the air. A minute later and we are a few thousand feet over Wichita. I watch as the flaps retract, pondering if they’re composite or aluminum construction. There’s very few rivets, so I decide it’s probably carbon fiber. I try to see my house, and recognize a park near it.

This is actually Philadelphia.

Within minutes of the engines spooling up we are banking to the right, flying close enough to a cloud that I feel I can almost reach out and touch it. The upbeat tempo of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! provides a fitting soundtrack to our departure through my headphones. At this moment I realize I am grinning, I am at peace.

Flying affords us an opportunity to literally get above it all. I am no longer thinking about what that liquid I stepped in at security was. I am no longer cursing at the airline for once again being so god damn incompetent. I am no longer thinking about work…okay, time out for a second: that part’s not really true, but that’s only because I design parts of airplanes for a living so when I’m flying it’s hard not to think about how the plane I’m on differs from the ones I design. Anywho…I’m no longer thinking about the frustrations of work, of meeting deadlines or saying the right thing to advance my career. In this moment all I am thinking is ‘wow, Kansas is actually pretty beautiful from up here’.

I look down from the window and see the highway I could have driven rushing by at a few hundred miles per hour. I put down the seatback tray table to rest my laptop on so I can type this very article. I think about all the stop signs I’m avoiding, all the idiots on the road sitting in traffic outside Oklahoma City, which is already visible on the horizon. We may have left late, but we are already only an hour away from Houston. In a mere 90 minutes we will have traveled 700 miles across 3 states. In just about 4 hours total, including that pesky delay, I will have gone from sitting on the couch with my cat watching a middle aged woman win a brand new Chevrolet Nova on an old episode of Let’s Make a Deal to sitting down for dinner with my Mom and Dad whom I haven’t seen since thanksgiving.

Every time I fly I find myself in awe of what modern air travel has afforded us. Personally, I’ve been given the ability to quickly cross the country and visit family members scattered coast to coast and I’ve flown halfway around the world and seen incredible sights in Israel. For people like my brother, air travel has allowed his business to thrive as he travels all around North America making deals. For some, air travel has literally saved their lives by flying them to hospitals far away to get treatment they so desperately need. For many others, air travel has given them a chance to say goodbye to fathers, mothers, grandparents…a chance they might not have had if their only option was to drive.

Without aviation, I never would have seen this

I will always like cars and I will always love driving them, but they’ll never hold a candle to airplanes. Airplanes have forever transformed the way we humans interact with our world. They have erased borders, brought together cultures previously separated by thousands of miles of oceans, saved countless lives, and inspired generations of innovation. Eddie Rickenbacker, a great flying Ace from WWI, once said “Aviation is proof that, given the will, mankind has the capacity to achieve the impossible”.

Ace Pilot Eddie Rickenbacker next to his plane in WWI

or thousands of years, humans thought the sky was the limit, but over the last 100 years the sky has become our home. To me, the sky is everything.

For more articles, please visit !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!

garagemonkee > Jayhawk Jake 04/21/2016 at 22:08

1

As I am employed by a company that makes parts for many major aerospace manufacturers, Embraer included, I thank you for flying.

smobgirl > Jayhawk Jake 04/21/2016 at 22:38

0

I love airplanes, but I hate commercial air travel. I’ll drive every time...unless I can take a train. I loooooove trains. Even crappy late Amtraks with broken bathrooms. I love them like you love crappy late regional airlines with broken coffee pots (or whatever the excuse was on my last delayed flight). And the auto train? Holy mother of god help me now.

Unfortunately I travel for work so commercial flights it is (dear Frontier, I hate you, from the bottom of my heart).

BoulderZ > Jayhawk Jake 04/21/2016 at 23:18

0

I used to travel a ton for work, up to 75% for a couple of years. I really enjoyed it. I love flying. Even commercial. Even when it’s bad. For the lowest price in all of human history, I can sit in a chair in the sky (to steal Louis C.K.’s phrase) and go anywhere in the world. Sure, the little bits of inconvenience that come with that at times are something we all (businesses, agencies, and consumers) need to work on, but even as it stands it is an amazing time to be a human. Can’t wait for my next flight!

Danger > Jayhawk Jake 04/22/2016 at 00:06

0

I thought you were just going to type “Because I live in Wichita.” haha. Nice piece.

XJDano > Jayhawk Jake 04/22/2016 at 00:14

0

I also love flying, although I’ve only been in the sky a handful of times.

wafflesnfalafel > BoulderZ 04/22/2016 at 00:30

1

Louis CK’s bit is fabulous...

wafflesnfalafel > Jayhawk Jake 04/22/2016 at 00:33

0

How are those Embraers? I’ve never had the opportunity... Kinda like a short MD-80/90?

Jayhawk Jake > wafflesnfalafel 04/22/2016 at 00:36

0

They’re fine. Citations are better

ttyymmnn > Jayhawk Jake 04/22/2016 at 09:11

0

In a mere 90 minutes we will have traveled 700 miles across 3 states. In just about 4 hours total, including that pesky delay, I will have gone from sitting on the couch with my cat watching a middle aged woman win a brand new Chevrolet Nova on an old episode of Let’s Make a Deal to sitting down for dinner with my Mom and Dad whom I haven’t seen since thanksgiving.

This is exactly why a 90-minute maintenance hold at the gate is not important. And not only are you folding space as you sit in an airplane, you are riding inside a machine that is more rigidly maintained than any vehicle you will ever own, driven by a professional who is more highly trained than any driver you will ever ride with, and you are moving in a space more heavily controlled than any roadway you will ever drive on, and (hopefully) every other airplane in your space is the equal of yours in terms of reliability and airmanship. Really, you’re probably only safer at home on your sofa, and then there’s probably a better chance somebody will drive a car into your living room, or a tree will crash down on your house.

I’ve never understood the people who get so upset when something goes wrong with their travel plans. I get it—you’re inconvenienced. But let’s remember that you are about to be hurtling through unbreathable air nestled (crammed?) into an aluminum tube that keeps you warm and breathing, while traveling at 500 mph. 500 mph! And if you walk from the aft of the plane forward, you’re now going 501 mph ! Astonishing! I wish more people were like yourself, and just took a moment out of their self importance to understand the marvel that they are taking part in, and spare a thought for the thousands of people who are making it possible, even if that machine does get bogged down from time to time.

Jayhawk Jake > ttyymmnn 04/22/2016 at 09:24

1

I’ve had instances where my flight got delayed for HOURS and even had to rebook to the next day. That’s terrible. But even the nearly 2 hour delay today for a 90 minute flight still resulted in saving at least 4 hours of travel time. Plus I was able to watch youtube videos while waiting, write this article, read something for school, and start a school assignment. It was relatively productive: while driving I could have made a few phone calls or listened to an audiobook, at best.