My flights aren't like Dick Trail's

My good friend and fellow columnist Dick Trail flies and I fly but boy, do we fly differently. I’m not a pilot and he is so he almost always flies private with him piloting the plane most of the time and I always fly commercial. Obviously, our experiences are going to be different and sometimes drastically so.

For example, if Dick is going to fly from McCook to Fayetteville, Ark., he would get in his plane and fly the straight line distance which is around 500 miles although I couldn’t find how far it was exactly. The flight would last around 2 hours give or take a few minutes. Dick can correct me if I’m wrong here with the numbers but the numbers are used to identify something that has never made sense to me when I fly commercial.

There are no commercial flights from McCook to Fayetteville so I have to fly to Denver, Colo., first, either from McCook or North Platte and as you know from previous columns, I choose North Platte now because of problems with Boutique at the Denver site. Using United’s jet service, the distance is 242 miles and the flight lasts only 35 minutes. This is the only simple thing about getting to Fayetteville via air from McCook. I always fly Delta and Delta has no direct flights from Denver to Fayetteville, so I have to fly to Atlanta first. That means I fly over Fayetteville to almost the east coast, where I change planes and fly back into Fayetteville. The flying distance from Denver to Atlanta is 1212 miles. The flying distance from Atlanta to Fayetteville is 577 miles. So by the time I land in Fayetteville which I’ve already flown over once, I’ve traveled 2031 miles or four times the number of miles that Dick would have flown in a private plane. I don’t know why Delta has a direct flight to Fayetteville from Atlanta and not one from Denver, they just do. So instead of spending a couple of hours in the air from Denver to Fayetteville, it’s an all-day excursion for me simply because I choose to fly first class. United has a direct flight from Denver to Fayetteville but they don’t have a first class section on that flight so I’ve never flown it.

This makes no sense to my youngest son, Will. When he flies, he always chooses the shortest distance between two points and his vision is on the destination while mine is on the journey. I taught my boys the difference between the destination and the journey when they were growing up but it obviously didn’t take. Another one of Will’s flying habits is to put headphones on as soon as he boards the plane because he doesn’t like to talk to strangers. I’m just the opposite.

On my flight to McCook from Fayetteville Wednesday, I had the privilege of sitting by a charming lady from Washington, D.C. She asked me what I was doing in Fayetteville and I told her I was there to celebrate both my boys’ birthday.

That evidently struck a chord with her because she remarked that she didn’t know too many fathers who would do that for their sons and that started our conversation that went on relatively nonstop all the way to Atlanta.

I found out that she was a former flight attendant for Pan Am Airlines and literally traveled the world in her job.

Unfortunately, the Pan Am plane that was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland caused her husband to plead with her to retire because the skies had gotten too dangerous so she did. We found many interesting things to talk about and the flight which was an hour and twenty minutes long seemed much shorter because of our conversation.

On the other hand, my flight from Atlanta to Denver seemed much longer than the two hours and twenty minutes it actually was because my seatmate was like my son. She put headphones on, never took them off and never exchanged a word with me through the entire flight.

So, I always have different experiences based on the strangers I’m thrown together with while flying where Dick is either flying alone or flying with people he knows. I don’t know which one is better but I know which one I enjoy and that’s meeting new people and making new friends while flying from one point to another.

I think what my regular readers are waiting to hear are the mishaps I had during my trip and, except for cutting my hand on wire hangers that my clothes were on, I didn’t have any.

The Delta flight attendant gave me a towel to wipe up the blood and then a bandage to protect the wound, and checked on me regularly until we landed in Fayetteville so it wasn’t really much of an inconvenience. Kudos go out to her for her dedication and caring! Other than that, this trip went off without a hitch.

And, as always, even though I enjoyed spending time with my boys and celebrating their birthdays with them, it’s always good to get back home!