The Friendly?... Skies

I was reading a post from one of my very favorite bloggers the other day and decided to post this. A thank you for the idea and a loud blog shout-out to Jessica at Booshy. She was telling a story about her sucky flight and it occurred to me that I too have been on some crappy flights.

One such flight was when The lovely wife, the son,and I were heading home to Anchorage from Kansas after a nice visit with our peeps.

Picture, if you will,passengers crying...yeah with tears and stuff. I would have bet you a paycheck that it was Skippy's (made up pilots name) first unassisted landing attempt. I remember telling Lovely that if he didn't land soon that I was going to do it for him. (note: I'm not a pilot) Finally though, after many many approaches and aborted landings... our pilot Skippy, the forces of gravity, and our almost certain lack of enough fuel to try even one more time got us safely on the ground. We were in Phoenix enroute to Anchorage. If not for the whole 3000+ miles to go thing, I swear I would have rented a car to finish the trip. It sucked.

Almost as bad as our trip from Honolulu to Dallas.
Our pilot informed us on takeoff that we would have 2 and a half hours of smooth flying. Let's see 8+ hours to get to Hawaii, and only 2 and a half to get back? I thought, Wow this is either one really fast jet or were fucked in a couple of hours.

Yep, fucked. Flight attendants had the first round of drinks served in about 15 minutes. Then a meal,and a second round of drinks. After about 2 hours I noticed them strapping themselves in their tiny flight attendant seats, If you're ever on a plane and you see that happening, ask the lady sitting next to you for all of her remaining Xanax. Trust me you will be glad you did. 6 hours of slamming around inside an aluminum tube at 35000 ft. and don't even think you are going to the shithouse, unless you brought a helmet in your carry-on bag. Truly sucked. In fact that flight turned me off Hawaii. Next time I will be on a ship thank you.

I remember another flight that I was on that was sort of freaky but cool so it doesn't entirely fit with the whole shitty flight theme. Anyway, myself and 5 other guys were going fishing in Seldovia, Alaska. We and our baggage were weighed before the air taxi people split us into 2 groups of 3. We were going to be in a tiny little plane so the pilot had to make 2 trips from Homer to Seldovia. Not a huge deal it's like a 10 minute flight. On our approach to land in Seldovia our pilot encouraged us to hang on as he would be stopping abruptly on touchdown, on a gravel pad known as the air strip... Wow, abruptly hardly explains that landing. Later I learned that it takes a lot more space to land a small plane than it does to take off. Who'da thunk it?

Ok last one...One Christmas I had sent Lovely wife, and son to Kansas for the holidays. I had to work so I wouldn't be joining them but secretly I planned to surprise them with a visit on Christmas Eve. I know, I'm cool like that. As my plane took off from Anchorage, I and pretty much everyone else on the flight noticed the pungent odor of a lot of smoke in the cabin. Hey this doesn't seem quite right. There was some fairly serious grumbling going on from my fellow passengers as well as some whispered prayers and probably some "Sorry I was such a crappy husband/wife I didn't love her/him it was purely physical"..blah blah blah confessions. Now if I have said it once I have said it a million times...don't start confessing stuff till the pilot tells you to. I think there is some kind of addendum they can throw out there to go along with the preflight "how to fasten a seatbelt" lecture.

Anyway we are all sort of wondering if they will be able to identify our bodies after being in the gulf of Alaska for a few days when Timmy(made up name) comes hopping down the center aisle with a screwdriver. I couldn't help myself, I started giggling. This kid who looked a lot like a 2nd year cubscout, thinks he is going to save us from our fiery plunge into the freezing cold ocean... with a screwdriver. You gotta know it was funny.

Soon the pilot informed us that we were indeed not on fire but we had blown a tire on takeoff and the tire was smoldering in it's little tire compartment under the plane. Not gonna die, perfectly ok to land minus one tire, aaaannnnnnd sorry for the heart attack. Thank you for choosing Delta and the weather in Salt Lake City is blah, blah, blah... I wonder if some of the passengers then spent the rest of the holiday season perusing the yellow pages for divorce lawyers.

Hey I would totally like to hear about your crappy flights too. Tell me in a giant comment or a tiny one, whatever you're comfortable with. See you next time!