BY DANI TIETZ
dani@sjodaily.com
I love traveling on an airplane.
I’ve only traveled this way about a dozen times in my 40 years, but each time I get into the pressurized tube that will fly tens-of-thousands of feet above the Earth, I am overcome with the immense magic of what is about to happen.
When I was little, my father was part of the Illiana Skydivers Club. There are just a few times in those 18 years that I was allowed to accompany the skydivers to 10,000 feet in the twin engine aircraft so that they could open the door and jump out.
It was a smelly trip with 10 fully grown men literally sitting between each other’s legs as the aircraft climbed through the summer heat. I was stuffed behind the pilot’s seat on the floor where the only seatbelt was located. They demanded that I use the seatbelt, too.
It wasn’t until I was well-into my 30s and aware of how people on the ground interact that I boarded my first major aircraft. I remember getting on with nerves, wondering if the passengers, including myself, would become another statistic.
But we landed safely, and have landed safely in subsequent trips, which is how I am able to write this. In fact, I am awaiting an 11 p.m. mountain-time to board a red-eye flight home from Phoenix.
My daughter is laying on a large orange chair, a man has been emphatically talking on the phone since we sat down, and the majority of the people are on a device of some sort.
Within an hour, the Delta hostess will begin boarding mothers with small children and active or retired military members. And then I, a passenger in the basic boarding zone, will climb into my middle seat and prepare for the overnight flight.
Even though the lights will be dim, the magic of what is about to happen remains the same. And all rules about how humans respect each other on the ground will be transformed within the air.
Nearly 200 passengers, in a giant tube, sitting in seats that are small with only a little leg room, will be polite, kind and caring towards each other. In a civilized way, we will board the plane — and exit it, too — passengers will happily step aside so that a man can get his bag into the overhead bin or so that a woman with a tiny dog can find her window seat.
Some people will just wear their headphones and close their eyes while others will pick up the latest issue of SkyMile magazine and silently read. There won’t be much noise, except maybe a child or two, but all of the passengers will beam with patience because they know that this trip is exhausting for those parents — but they just wanted to show their child a good time.
It won’t matter who is white or black, who grew up poor or who drove a Mercedes to the airport, who voted and who they support. For a few hours people will say please and thank you to the flight attendant who just greeted them with a smile and a warm welcome.
We will all be uncomfortable, we will all be tired, we will all feel like herded cattle, but for a few hours, the world as I imagine it to be every morning when I wake up becomes true.
But that’s not the best of it.
Here’s the best part: we have no idea who the pilot is, but we trust them, quite literally with our lives. We don’t know if they have just told off the fast food workers who were closing their restaurant for the night, if they played with their daughter earlier in the day, or if they got A’s or C’s in flight school. We don’t always know if they are male or female until we hear their voices, we don’t know what their favorite drink is or if they forgot to pack a toothbrush. All we know is that they are there.
And not only do we choose to trust them, but we also hope that they succeed at what they are doing. Every. Single. Time.
I am about to board a flight from Phoenix to Detroit to Indianapolis. And I pretty much can’t wait.
