A personal reminiscence about why flying still means something to me.
Today I wrote an article called Flying Basics - Airport Security. To be honest, researching this article started to make me think of the negative aspects of flying. I've never had a problem with airport security, but it's the beginning of the process of being crowded and herded along the way. That feeling of being treated like a cow in a herd is what people find so disenchanting about much modern commercial air travel. I was left wondering, do I still enjoy flying?
The first time I was supposed to fly was when I was about three and my dad was going to take me on a trip in a small plane that he and my grandfather both loved to fly. Its call letters were GCL, and when I was little I used to hear about the Guckel a lot.
Sad to say, I apparently cried my head off and refused to go! Too bad. I can still remember being in the plane, but I don't remember the crying part. Sounds like something the adults made up later.
I was about 14 when I actually stayed on board for my first ride - a long, long one to Japan. So much novelty and excitement, of course I loved it.
Then over the years I had many long and short trips within Canada, and each time there was that anticipation, that feeling of freedom and promise with each take-off. I flew in the biggest jets and the smallest bush planes, in a couple of helicopters too. And it was never the machines I cared about. It has always been the feeling of possibility. Being airborne, defying gravity, departing - those things have always enthralled me.
I have to say, I feel lucky that the thrill has lasted so long. There have been times when the magic went away and I felt like nothing more than a crumb of meat crammed into a sausage tube. I've had moments of claustrophobia and sheer unpleasantness. I know what air rage feels like and how it is to be willing to pay ten thousand dollars for five cubic feet more of personal space. (I didn't pay it, but I would have, in the moment).
Then I remember a photograph of an old man and his slightly older wife all dressed up and standing proudly at the top of the stairs about to board a TCA (Trans-Canada Airlines) flight in the black and white days of the early 1960s. They were my great-grandparents, who came to Canada before World War I. My great-grandmother had never been back home to England, and my great-grandfather was only there briefly en route to France in WWI. Over fifty years of being away meant that they never saw their parents alive again. They were separated from their brothers and sisters, family and friends for half a century.
When I think of them getting on that TCA jet, and having the privilege of crossing the Atlantic once more before they died, the thrill of aviation comes back to me. It has nothing to do with being six miles up in the air and moving hundreds of miles an hour. What it's about is creating possibilities, and it's still as great as ever.
