Fear of Flying

Last week Joan Lowy, writing for the Associated Press, reported that some airlines are pressuring pilots to fly their planes at uncomfortably low fuel levels.

In March a pilot told NASA he landed his regional jet with less fuel than required by FAA regulations. He also complained that his airline was "ranking" captains according to their ability to complete their flights with the least amount.

In February a Boeing 747 captain, running low on fuel after meeting strong headwinds crossing the Atlantic en route to JFK International Airport in New York, was denied permission to stop for refueling by his airline operations manager who told him there was an adequate supply on board the jet. He arrived at JFK with so little that, had there been any delay, he said he would have had to declare a fuel emergency -- a term which informs air traffic controllers that a plane needs immediate priority to land.

How distressing it is that I should read this article just when I had overcome my fear of flying.

Actually, it's not planes I fear now; to echo the aforementioned whistle blowers, it's the companies that fly them.

There was, however, an awkward fifteen-year period in my life, originating -- to the best of my recollection -- in 1982, coincidentally the year of my youngest child's birth (is there any significance to that?), and extending to 1997, during which I exhibited an irrational, puerile, and eccentric fear of flying.

Fortunately, this wasn't the John Madden strain of air phobia, which renders the victim incapable of setting foot on an airplane and requires daunting drive-time in luxuriously-appointed motor carriages (or prosaic Ford Tauruses). But it was toxic enough to infect my brain with all manner of horrific fantasies as my flight days drew inexorably closer; to compel me to forgo more than a few pleasurable excursions which, if I were to get to my destination and return within a reasonable time frame, required air transport; and, during the course of my flights, to torment myself and my traveling companions with any number of egregious displays of mental and physical discomfort including, but not limited to, gritting and grinding my teeth, squeezing the armrests of my seat in a patriotic swell (red palms, white knuckles, blue veins), and repeatedly studying the hands of my watch in a desperate attempt to increase their painfully slow pace, which only confirmed my oft-tested hypothesis that if there is any place time does not fly, it is on board an airplane.

I believe my fate was sealed by two harrowing incidents I experienced in the late seventies or early eighties -- life-changing for me though hardly more than routine for less sensitive flyers. Landing at Newark Airport on board a long, skinny, (and ancient) cigar-shaped prop jet -- every model of which, I have no doubt, was retired not long after this flight -- the plane was caught in a vicious crosswind and began to roll so precariously that I felt certain one of the wings was going to scrape the pavement and send us into a deadly cartwheel -- an aeronautical improbability, I was later informed, which I didn't believe then and and don't believe now. And on a flight to Atlanta, the fog was so thick the pilot had to make two passes before he could bring the plane down onto a runway I never saw until the wheels hit the ground.

From that day forward, when I could muster enough courage to climb aboard, it was in lockstep with an imagination soaring beyond the 30,000 feet to which this elaborate steel cylinder -- itself a miraculous triumph of human ingenuity and modern technology -- was effortlessly transporting me, an imagination feverishly conjuring up every conceivable disaster that could befall me.

As I accelerate down the runway, conflicting thoughts swirl through my brain. How is this two-hundred-ton behemoth ever going to defy the forces of gravity? And isn't the moment of take-off the most dangerous? Then I tell myself that this whole exercise is merely a matter of physics. When this complex machine attains its critical speed, which it will in just a few seconds, reduced air pressure above the wingspan will generate enough lift to suck it off the ground as if into a vacuum, at which point the pilot will apply increased power to thrust it faster and higher -- assuming, of course, all turbines are firing away. Engineers will protest that this is a gross simplification; nevertheless, it comforts me.

My sense of hearing is sharpened to a frightening acuity; any change in the monotonous droning of the engines or any discordant clank, whistle or groan, signals to me the onset of a massive equipment failure. And these sinister sounds recur with unrelenting frequency.

For one who requires four-hundred power correctional lenses, objects seen at a distance come into focus with remarkable clarity. As I gaze out the window, I see one, two, three other planes in our neighborhood, each approaching rapidly, one surely destined to cross our path in a calamitous midair collision.

I realize planes change direction by rolling and banking. But, really, why is it necessary for these airborne cowboys to make such steep turns, throwing me into paroxysms of anxiety with the notion that they just might roll over a little too far and send us all to oblivion and causing me to lean slightly in the opposite direction in a futile effort to counterbalance two hundred tons with my one-hundred-fifty pound frame?

And then, of course, there is turbulence. Like an invisible blanket, it descends -- or ascends -- upon us without warning. While I marvel at a glorious blue canopy hanging over the world with not a nasty gray cloud in sight, suddenly the plane starts to shake and shudder. "Uh oh," I mutter to myself, trying to remain calm and composed. "That must be something very powerful if it can make the wings on this heavyweight flap like a bird's." Because I read somewhere that reducing speed moderates the effects of turbulence, I whisper to the captain to ease off the throttle, entreaties, of course, which are never heeded. "These are just bumps in the road, bumps in the road, annoying reminders that we are in the air," I reassure myself, as we bounce across the Mississippi River. "Besides, it couldn't possibly be this rough all the way to San Francisco." And, perish the thought, could one of these downdrafts mutate into a lethal wind shear strong enough to mash this winged intruder into the dust?

Possessed by this phobia, I dreaded putting my two younger children on the planes they were flying every two or three months from their mother's home in Charleston, S.C., to mine in Lynchburg, particularly on the small commuter that took off one Sunday evening into a violent thunderstorm.

And I would read about the latest plane crash (granted, they were few and far between) with sadness and sympathy, but also with a perverse sense of suppressed satisfaction, secure in the knowledge that the odds of another one occurring any time soon (with me or mine aboard) had just gotten longer.

My distaste for flying made it all the more surprising that I would approach my wife some ten years ago with the proposition that we go on a safari to Kenya -- shooting pictures, of course, not animals. After all, getting there (and back) consists of two demanding transcontinental flights: eight hours from Dulles to Amsterdam and then, after a two-day interlude for sightseeing and decompression, eight more to Nairobi.

It isn't exactly those sixteen hours in the air that ultimately dispatches the thunderclouds of apprehension that darken my every take-off -- especially since I remember a foggy landing in Amsterdam eerily reminiscent of the one I have described above -- but they do lay the groundwork, so to speak, for a transition from a state of denying that I can be anything but miserable on board an airplane to accepting that, since I can't change the conditions of air travel, a certain degree of tolerance is in order.

That epiphany comes to me the morning of our third day in Nairobi -- the previous two of which we spent feeding domesticated giraffes at a nearby farm, touring the stately home of the African writer Isak Dinesen, lunching on the veranda of the famous Norfolk Hotel, and navigating the pedestrian-lined, bicycle-clogged streets of the city -- when we are bused to the local airport. Looking out on the airfield, I am amazed to see a relic of aviation history, a bulbous DC-3, dominating a congregation of smaller private planes. "It must be some sort of museum piece," I comment to my wife. "I want to take a closer look."

Well, we do get a closer look -- close enough to see the words "Kenya Airlines" plastered all over the hull. Indeed, the plane is in service, and will be our carrier for a ninety-minute flight to our first tented campsite in the Masai Mara Wildlife Reserve.

Even to a reluctant flier like me, the DC-3 is a beautiful bird. With the grace of an exquisite sculpture, its long, wide wings sweep rearward and upward from its undercarriage, each supporting a large  engine cowl with oversized propeller blades. Its fuselage perches proudly on two sturdy struts, its tail dragging the ground, its nose pointing skyward, ready to leap into the air, a triangular configuration of aerodynamic perfection, now obsolete.

We enter from the rear and trudge steadily uphill until we locate our assigned seats among the twenty-eight available. In the jacket of the seat in front of us is a placard -- not a diagram of the plane's emergency exits, but its biography: birthed during World War II, it served our country well under another name, C-47, and later some long-forgotten airline (perhaps Piedmont?) until it was mothballed and stripped for parts. Ten years ago it was rescued by Kenya Air, resurrected and reassembled, and charged with the task of transporting eager tourists into the African bush.

Frankly I feel quite safe aboard this scarred veteran. After all, because of its revolutionary impact on passenger air travel, some have been so bold to call it the greatest plane in history. Like a ship at sea, it floats through the air, sensitive to every undercurrent and change in air pressure. One senses that even with a sudden loss of power its disproportionate wing span would facilitate a buoyant glide to a safe landing -- even on the short, narrow, primitive asphalt strip which awaits us and pulls us down like a magnet, one of many that dot the grassy landscape.

Four or five days later my wife and I clamber aboard a single-engine commuter plane which has barely enough cabin space to accommodate the six other passengers destined, like us, for Lake Victoria, a one-hour flight. I am shoehorned in directly behind the pilot, a ruddy, fifty-something Minnesotan, whose friendly demeanor quickly becalms my worrisome fantasies. What tragic misjudgment, errant behavior, or physical infirmity ( like blindness) has banished him from the lucrative career track of commercial captaincy to this god-forsaken place? Perhaps, I hope, it's merely his love of adventure -- or his bizarre escape from some doomed love affair.

Aside from some pockets of turbulence that funnel up from the Rift Valley, the flight is uneventful, that is, until we reach the shore of Lake Victoria and the gravelly strip upon which we are supposed to touch down. As we make our approach, I can plainly see a beehive of colorfully-attired natives swarming about the landing area -- anticipating the arrival of this week's strange flying machine. Suddenly, the pilot levels off his descent, crosses over the runway, pulls back on the throttle, and lifts the plane skyward.

"What's wrong?" I gulp, as my heart leaps into my throat. "It's nothing to worry about," replies the pilot. "I have to buzz the runway before I land in order to scare off all the animals and children." "Sure," I say, painting a false smile of confidence across my bleached visage. "Perfectly understandable."

And thus it transpires that, after these two airborne African adventures, my fear of flying magically evaporates into the purple Kenyan sunset. I board my two long flights home with an absence of trepidation and a surfeit of nonchalance, attitudes I have been able to sustain to this day -- with regard to the actual act of flying, that is.

My fears, it seems, have been transferred to the incorrigible corporations that fly those planes.

My love-hate relationship with the airlines is heavily weighted towards the latter side of the equation. Who could fail to be irritated, if not outraged, by their arcane pricing policies, their schizophrenic conception of customer service -- one minute cloyingly accommodating, the next, totally obtuse -- and by their general cavalier disposition which like a politician's reeks of a disconnect between promise and execution?

Some of my ire is no doubt aggravated by the sad truth that flying out of a small city like Lynchburg poses significant problems for them and me. How many times have I read or been told how unprofitable it is for commuter airlines to fly the routes between Lynchburg and Charlotte and Lynchburg and Atlanta? Yet their solutions only exacerbate the problem: unconscionably high fares and fewer flights, which only compel travelers to drive to and fly from places like Richmond and Raleigh.

On the other hand, I acknowledge that both commuter and trunk carriers must make money to survive -- which most of them seem to have had a difficult time doing in recent years, even before the onslaught of soaring fuel prices. Competition to major airlines like Delta and U.S. Airways from budget carriers like Southwest and Jet Blue and the necessity of filling their seats, have kept fares relatively low -- a boon to consumers -- yet continued lack of profitability is a precursor to an insolvency which would be hugely disruptive and require government intervention. These airlines must lower their costs where they face competition, and, where they do not, price themselves to be profitable, regardless of customer outcry.

Sympathy for the airlines' predicament does not make the travails of air travel any more palatable. Any person who has flown with any regularity has undoubtedly suffered through any number of frustrating, blood-boiling, stomach-turning misadventures, all of which make for entertaining cocktail conversation, yet like a masochist seeking more pain he keeps going back, simply because he has no other choice.

Readers of this blog may remember a trip my wife and I took to Egypt two and a half years ago, some details of which were related in the piece "The Solar Boat" and need not be repeated here. The February morn of our departure is a carbon copy of the six others we have awakened to: the sky pale blue, streaked with yellow patches; the air a cool crisp sixty degrees; the sun, distant and indistinct, a welcome warming influence. Watching CNN International in our room at the Mena House Hotel -- from which we have a grand view of the Great Pyramids -- I happen to catch the stateside weather report, and it's not pretty. A potent low-pressure system (that is, snowstorm) has already dumped six to twelve inches of snow on areas of the East Coast extending from North Carolina to Washington, D.C., and has set its sights on New York City and JFK International Airport, where our Egypt Air flight is scheduled to land that same afternoon. "This plane should never take off," I warn my wife, in a burst of pessimistic prescience.

Ten tedious hours later -- during which I consume about three hundred pages of Trollope's Barchester Towers -- I am distracted from my reading by the small overhead screen at the front of the cabin, upon which has been intermittently displayed for its passengers' edification the plane's route, speed, and time of flight, all marking its steady progress towards its destination -- until that pregnant moment, when, with great dismay, I see it suddenly veer off to the northwest. For the next two hours I am mesmerized by a series of course corrections, as our plane, like a homeless itinerant, desperately seeks a place of refuge, each maneuver accompanied by a brief desultory announcement emanating from the cockpit in the Egypt Air captain's clipped British accent.

First: "JFK Airport is closed due to a snowstorm, and we are diverting to Montreal, Canada." Twenty minutes later: "JFK has reopened, so we are reversing our course to land there." Twenty minutes later: total silence as we watch the plane circle aimlessly in the vicinity of New York City. Twenty minutes later: continued silence as the plane appears to change direction and head south. Finally, twenty minutes later the captain speaks: "JFK is closed again, and we have been rerouted to Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C."

After a passing reflection that by now we are surely running low on fuel, I am struck by the glorious inspiration that Dulles is only three hours from home. Obviously every JFK flight, including mine, has been canceled, and we would have a better chance of winning the lottery than getting on one tomorrow. Hence a graceful exit here at Dulles presents a fortuitous opportunity to avoid an inauspicious return to JFK. But as we taxi to a halt on the runway the preparatory sounds of evacuation are ominously absent.

After twelve hours, the last two of which have been spent in limbo, every other passenger is as anxious as I am to get off that airplane. But, alas, it is not to be. Egypt Air has no terminal at Dulles, and is either not permitted or has refused to pay whatever fees may be incurred to disembark its passengers. Indeed, peering out the window into the dead of night, what do I espy but half a dozen more dimly-lit aircraft, bound for JFK or some other shuttered airport but parked like this one in an indefinite holding pattern.

So tantalizingly close are we to the sweet taste of freedom -- and yet so far away. While some forbearing passengers -- like my wife -- remain remarkably self-possessed, I join an agitated cadre of vociferous mutineers, who like stubborn children who won't take "no" for an answer are determined to impose their will on their resolute parents. We warn the flight attendants standing in our way of legal repercussions if they do not permit us to exit. We castigate them for grossly inhumane treatment. We pose as bogus NSTB experts, informing them that these pilots cannot fly this plane without a rest period. We insist on our rights as United States citizens. We try to contact our Congressmen. We argue, cajole, and threaten, resorting to every conceivable tactic except outright violence--but all to no avail. The crew stands firm.

After two hours of verbal sparring, we are instructed to return to our seats and strap ourselves in, for the inevitable is upon us: return to JFK. This one-hour flight consumes two, when a plane landing ahead of us nearly skids off the slippery runway, information we do not need to know nor want to know until we are safely on the ground -- sixteen exasperating hours after we departed Cairo. I feel like an Egyptian mummy.

As weary and disgusted as we are at this point, more heartbreak lies ahead: one hour to clear customs, another hour to wait for our luggage which has been delayed by weather-related personnel and/or equipment problems. My wife's bag is one of the first to emerge from the depths of an underground beltway while I pace about with bated breath, my anxiety level rising with each passing bag, convinced now that mine must have been tossed overboard to save some of the precious fuel our protracted peregrinations had been burning away, until, finally, one hour later, when I had almost given up hope, it surfaces, the last one.

We look around; then we look at each other because there is no one else in sight. Our traveling companions have all deserted us, having been foresighted or lucky enough to secure overnight accommodations, which for us to attempt at 1:00 AM on this cold, damp, wintry night of canceled flights and stranded fliers seems an exercise in futility. And to what end? I have already calculated the odds of our getting out of here on a plane tomorrow.

Faced with the gloomy prospect of sleeping in an airport chair or on the floor, we locate a twenty-four hour car rental agency, flag a cab to take us there, bless the agent for his car and one-way rental, get directions to New Jersey, and start driving. While my wife drifts off to sleep, my adrenaline kicks in, propelling me forward like a mountain climber determined to reach his goal for no other reason than the simple satisfaction of having bested the nasty obstacles nature has strewn in his path. When we behold our native seven hills at 10:00 AM the next morning, I have been awake for thirty-two straight hours.

It wasn't the first all nighter I ever pulled -- nor the last. Eighteen months later, my wife and I -- gluttons for punishment -- roll the dice on another international flight, this one to Italy.

Of course, our itinerary involves a transfer in Charlotte, where we touch down at 9:00 AM, leaving us plenty of time to make our two-hour 11:00 AM flight to Newark, from which our Rome departure is scheduled for 3:00 PM. Our frequent-flying traveling companions -- who are hosting us at their charming villa in the picturesque town of Civitas, not far from Orvieto -- must know something we do not, and have wisely chosen to route themselves through Philadelphia. As we head off to our separate gates, a tiny needle of doubt pricks my consciousness. "Give me your phone number," I say to my friend, "in case one of us has a problem." After all, we are to rendezvous in Rome ten hours later, rent a car, and drive together to his home. "Don't worry, Marc. You have plenty of time to make your connection," he calls, his voice fading away as he disappears into the bowels of the airport.

Yes, we have time -- provided our Charlotte flight leaves within the margin of error: ninety minutes. As my wife and I sit nervously at the gate and watch the merciless ticking of the clocks that seem to bewitch us from every wall and stanchion, we are subjected to a litany of alarming and repetitive updates: another delay on the flight to Newark, due to high winds, which are reeking havoc up and down the East Coast. I nudge my wife and point to a blinking overhead screen: in spite of all that atmospheric disturbance, every flight but ours is operating nearly on schedule.

As a formerly fearful flier who religiously monitors weather reports at least seven days prior to take-off, I appreciate the necessity of grounding a plane in bad weather. But this excuse of "high winds" sounds as puffed-up as a cumulus cloud. How is it that some aberrant tornado has settled in over Newark and nowhere else, since our friends' flight into nearby Philadelphia, one of extreme interest to us, does not seem to have been affected by these deleterious conditions? Don't planes land every day in 30 to 40 mph winds? Just how high are these winds that are battering our patience to smithereens and blowing our vacation way off course?

Is it possible someone is lying to us?

When we finally depart Charlotte at 1:00 PM, having braced myself for a rough two hours in the air, why am I not surprised that this is the smoothest flight I have ever been on, and that, when we touch down, no hint of cloud nor whiff of breeze mars the crystal-clear friendly sky?

We have no hope of making our Rome connection. To add insult to injury, as we scurry along an elevated glass-enclosed corridor chasing a miracle, my attention is drawn to a panoramic view of the busy airfield. And there, right below us, taxiing out on the runway, is a majestic 767, its bold insignia, Alitalia, silently shouting a mocking farewell to its two castaways who, in a trance-like paralysis, can only stand, watch, and wave: bye-bye, baby.

Alitalia rebooks us on an overnight British Airways flight to London Heathrow -- the British version of Purgatory, where we endure an inter-terminal bus transfer and an agonizing wait to re-pass through security -- and from there onto Rome, where we will eventually arrive twelve hours later than originally scheduled. But first I must locate our bags.

Trying to get a straight answer, I feel like a distraught credit card customer, spinning on the merry-go-round of technology, bouncing from one electronic gatekeeper to another in search of that elusive human voice. British Airways directs me to U.S. Airways, our carrier from Charlotte, whose officials, pleading ignorance, direct me back to Alitalia. As classically attractive as they are, the two female Alitalia agents might as well have been speaking Italian when they attempt to sell me on the second most incomprehensible whopper of the day: our bags made it on the flight to Rome.

"What!" I exclaim in utter disbelief, outraged not only at the absurdity of such a statement but also in its sheer audacity. "If those bags got on that plane," I reply, struggling for temperance, "someone threw them on board from ten thousand feet while we were landing." And, by the way, aren't there regulations that prevent bags from traveling without ticketed passengers?

After thirty more excruciating minutes of whispered telephone conversations, mysterious disappearances and reappearances, and high-level conferences, we are officiously informed that our bags have been located -- twenty yards away down a flight of stairs behind the counter where we have been entrenched all this time. I feel like a piece of "transit baggage" myself as I sort through fifty other pieces, reclaim our own, and manhandle them through Newark Airport back to British Airways.

Looking back on these dreadful experiences, I am driven to a grievous conclusion. My wife and I dutifully followed all the rules. We purchased our tickets well in advance, essentially loaning our money interest-free to Egypt and Alitalia. We arrived at our points of departure in plenty of time to be processed and clear security. We kept our carry-on baggage with us at all times lest a stranger snatch it for some dastardly deed. We boarded in an orderly fashion when our zone was called. We placed our carry-ons in an overhead compartment or under the seat in front of us as objects can shift in flight. We identified the emergency exits. We securely fastened our seat belts. We made sure our seat backs were in an upright and locked position and our tray tables stored in the seat in front of us. We turned off all personal electronic devices until the captain advised us they were safe to use. We stayed in our seats until the plane came to a complete stop at the gate and the captain turned off the seat belt signs.

Yet when something went terribly wrong, we were abandoned and left adrift in the impersonal, labyrinthine hallways of the sprawling, contemporary airport. We were reduced in the final analysis to nothing more than minor inconveniences to those in whom we had placed our trust; perhaps that is all we had ever been or ever will be.

Nowadays getting off the ground is quite a relief.