Up, Up and Away...

Do you like to fly or are you one of the people that start panting in fear when you so much as look at a travel brochure?  You all have heard the statistics about flying; how you are more apt to get into a car accident on the way to the airport than to be involved in a airline mishap.  According to "Anxieties.com" (yes, there is a website called Anxieties.com...I would have referred to the website in earlier blogs but I was too anxious to do so) in order for airline travel to equal the mortality rate of driving, a sold out 727 jet would have to crash every day of the year, with no survivors, to equal the number of deaths in a year on our roads.  What a happy thought!

So we have established that flying is much safer than driving.  Yes, I know that if your airplane crashes into the side of a mountain chances are you won't be going grocery shopping the next day.  Every now and then you hear or read something that makes you question the statistics, or even the pilots flying these machines.  We recently came back from a trip to Washington, DC and over the speaker system he said "ladies and gentlemen, we have begun our decent into the Hartford area".  I looked at my wife and said "the Hartford AREA?  What's he going to do, pick a random spot and try to land?"  These are the things that people can point to when they are shaking in their boots before a trip.  Luckily I am here to help.  But not right now.

I was in the airport looking out the window at a plane that had just landed and taxied in to its parking spot.  Then a mechanism called a Jet Bridge, totally on its own, wheels its way to the plane door, attaches itself, then sucks the passengers out of the plane.  Don't tell me that's not how it's done, I saw it with my own eyes.  You wonder why passengers coming into the airport from the plane all look the way they do?  It has nothing to do with the flight; it has EVERYTHING to do with how they are forced to disembark!  Just another reason to dislike flying.

Have you ever heard the old joke about the cut-rate airline (of which there are none anymore...bought a ticket lately)?  The shortened version of the joke: a flight attendant comes over the loud speaker and says "we have just lost all of our engines and will have to crash in the ocean.  Those of you who can swim please  line up on the left side of the plane and prepare to jump.  And those of you who cannot?  Thank you for flying Cut Rate Airlines".  I was on a plane a while back and the pilot announced "we have lost one of our engines but not to worry.  We still have 3 engines left which is more than enough to get us to our destination.  But it will take us 1/2 hour longer to get there."  He then announced "ladies and gentlemen we have lost another engine but no problem, two engines are more than enough to get us to the airport.  But it will take about an hour longer than normal."  A few minutes later the pilot said "well, we have just lost the third engine, however the planes are designed to fly with only one engine.  But now we will be 2 hours late."  I turned to my wife and said "I hope we don't lose the last engine, we'll be up here all day!" Yea, I know, lame!

So get out there and take off into the wild blue yonder,  now that you see there is no reason to be afraid of flying.  Actually that is not totally true, as there is one part of flying everyone fears even before you go to the airport, and it involves your wallet.  The airlines have devised an invisible Jet Bridge that attaches to your credit card and sucks out the money...be afraid, be very afraid!