I have a friend who recently told me he'd "rather ride across this great nation on the back of a donkey than fly over it." I couldn't help but think this guy's really got a fetish against flying. With today's modern airliner, it's definitely the safest mode of transportation we know of...and most especially it's safer than riding a donkey. I've never known an airplane to "kick you when you're down."
I told this story to a group of other friends and to my surprise, more of them disliked flying that I had imagined. Several of they said they did it to save time but that didn't mean they actually "liked" it. My daughter-in-law falls in this category. She said she has to "hold on to something or somebody" when the plane is either taking off or landing. She says she's fine while the plane is flying in mid-air. Of course, this makes sense. Flying in mid-air is the safest part of the flight unless you collide with something while up there (such as a flying donkey).
This got me to thinking. If these people are uncomfortable with flying in the modern aircraft of the present, then I shudder to think what they would have thought of flying some thirty or forty years ago.
In the sixties and seventies, Owensboro had a couple of major airlines that serviced their airport. I don't mean "commuter" jets but full sized prop planes with names like Eastern, Ozark and Delta emblazoned on their sides. Eastern and Delta offered limited service meaning that their planes only came in every other day or so, basically as connectors to other airports but Ozark was different. It was the smallest of the airlines operating there but they offered three or four flights daily. They were mostly used to connect to larger airports but they also had some of their own flights that went directly to St. Louis, Chicago, Little Rock, etc. (I'll bet the Little Rock flight stayed full - like why would anyone go there?). Most of their flights, however, were "hoppers" to Louisville, Paducah, sometimes Nashville and even Evansville (that'd be like taking a bus from Central City to Powderly).
These were aged planes that had seen better days. I'm sure in their "glory days" they flew to exotic locations but as regional hoppers their maintenance was "abyssimal" at best. They had electric starters (where the co-pilot didn't have to spin the propellor by hand) but that was about it.
I remember when a group of us from my National Guard unit had to report to the airport one morning to begin our trip to Ft. Lewis, Washington for basic training. This was quite a trip as it called for us to board an Ozark in Owensboro, fly it to Louisville, hop onto a Delta there, fly it to Chicago O'hare for a four hour layover, get aboard a United or TWA (I forget which) and fly it non-stop to Seattle.
From Seattle (the airport is actually in Tacoma) we would ride a bus for three hours to Ft. Lewis. The entire trip took about 14 hours and upon arrival, the drill sergeants graciously assisted us in getting off the bus (but that's another story). The fact was we were "plum-tuckered out" after that flight.
When we arrived at the airport in Owensboro, the Ozark landed around 8:00 in the morning (it was supposed to get there around 6:30 but they apparently had a strong headwind coming from Paducah where the flight originated). This was to be my first ride on an airplane and I was anxious for the experience. While most of the other passengers slept in the lobby chairs, I watched the runway closely looking for the "big bird" that would whisk me away from Kentucky. It was sort of cloudy that morning but rain wasn't in the forecast. Still there were a lot of clouds so I didn't see the plane until it got pretty close to the end of the runway. The scene that unfolded before my eyes probably looked familiar to some of the World War II vets that greeted B-29's returning from bombing raids.
The plane that dropped through the clouds with it's landing gear down (I'm not even sure it was retractable), seemed to be flying slightly "sideways" and it smoked a lot more than I thought it should. Just as it was about to touch down, the pilot managed to get it to sort of turn left and she straightened herself out, bounced about three times and came taxiing in. She came rolling to a flat concrete area just outside (actually about wing's length) the terminal. A guy in dingy coveralls, chomping on an unlit cigar butt, rolled a contraption out to the door that looks like the gray "steps" they use at Lowe's and Home Depot to retrieve stuff up high and out of reach. The door of the plane swung open and the guy in the coveralls shoved the rolling steps against the plane. He actually had to stand at it's base and hold it in place as passengers de-boarded.
About seven or eight passengers got off the plane and we had about ten or twelve line up to get on. As we were lined up outside, the guy with the cigar told us that if we had to go to the bathroom we had best do it in the terminal as there weren't any provisions on the plane for this. He said we'd be airborne about an hour which was about twenty minutes less than the time it took to drive to Louisville.
We later found out that it didn't really take that long to make the flight...it took about thirty minutes or less. The rest of the time we were circling the Louisville Airport because Ozark wasn't considered one of the major airlines and the other "big boys" had priority landing rights.
When we finally boarded the plane, they assigned us seats by how we looked. I guess they felt they needed to balance the plane so fatter people sat opposite one another and it appeared half of them was in the front and the other half in the back. This particular plane had three seats on one side of the plane and two on the other. The "two seated" side had mostly large men on it as they tried to balance out the married couples and smaller women on the "three seated" side. I was on the three seated side with two of my buddies. One of them attempted to hook up his seat belt. These belts weren't like the "snap" kind they have today. These were totally adjustable. You simply raised up on the latch with your left thumb, slid the other half into the latch and tightened it down. There wasn't any "click."
When my friend attempted this, something happened and he pulled the belt out of it's floor bracket. They made him move to another seat. I had a window seat (the window was a circle about 4" in diameter and was directly over the wing). After everyone was seated, the flight attendant decided she needed to take a final bathroom break so they held the plane up while she did this. There was no divider between the pilots and us...it was like they were one of us except they got the front seats. Of course, since I had never flown before, I assumed all this was normal.
A few minutes later our flight attendant (they were called "stewardesses" in those days) returned and pulled the door shut. The pilot and co-pilot began "flicking" some switches, talking in some strange lingo and soon one of the engines began to spin. A few minutes later the second engine fired. I couldn't help but notice that the window I was looking out of had a "sooty-oily" film on it and wondered if this was normal. The engine on my side of the plane seemed to smoke a lot but since we were about to go airborne I thought this was also normal. Slowly, the old bird began it's procession out to the end of the runway. As she taxied along, I noticed she sure "creaked and squeaked" an awful lot, but again...what did I know? I'd never been on one of these before.
After what seemed like an eternity, the flight crew took her to the runway's end and turned her around. We sat there for about two or three minutes while the engines "chunked" and "clunked" and revved up some rpms. Finally, the pilot let out on the clutch (this is actually what it felt like) and we started going faster and faster down the runway. When we had gone what felt to me like about three miles, we could feel her lift off. We hit turbulence at about 100 feet. They climbed to a height of slightly more than radio towers and maintained that level all the way to Louisville. I could see cars on the highway below and could actually identify what they were.
I looked down at the wing and noticed a bolt of some sort that was loose. As the plane vibrated and pushed through the air, this bolt turned ever so slowly on it's axis. I couldn't see what it's purpose was. It was out in the center of the wing so I was confident it wasn't anything that actually held the wing on but couldn't say for sure it didn't have something to do with the engine mount. I showed it to our stewardess and she laughed and said it had been like that for months. She said it drives everyone who sits in the seat I was in "nuts!" I thought to myself, "it's no big deal!" Little did I realize at that moment that six months later after I had finished my training, I would be flying the same plane home and the bolt was gone and there was a hole in the wing." No big deal.
About ten minutes into the flight, our stewardess came around and asked us if we'd like some coffee. It had been perculated in Paducah, placed in Thermos bottles and stored in a tub in the back of the plane. They could only serve it black as they didn't have cream and sugar on the plane. It was served to us in those old cardboard cups with "loop" handles made of construction paper attached to them. These things probably "scalded" more palms than anything on earth. It was nearly impossible to drink from them on land much less in this "bobbing and weaving" plane.
I couldn't help but notice that our stewardess wore a uniform that was a green skirt with white blouse and had a Sinclair Gasoline logo on the front, complete with their famous dinosaur. I assumed that Sinclair Oil Company owned Ozark Airlines. When she got a bit of a break, I asked her about it. "No," she told me. "When we get to Louisville, my return flight is six hours later. I work part time at a Sinclair station out across from the airport. It supplements my income." Made me wonder what the pilots did.
At any rate and after circling over Fontaine Ferry Park at least six times, they "set her down." The Louisville Airport seemed a lot bigger and busier than Owensboro. We taxied past some pretty impressive planes, both civilian and military. Our terminal was away from the larger airlines terminals and was apart from what was the main terminal. It was little more than a pole barn out at the edge of the property. When they got our plane stopped and the engines shut down, the stewardess opened the door. We stood up and waited to get out. It took a few minutes while the twin brother of the guy in Owensboro rolled the steps up to the door and we were able to de-plane. Since it was a decent walk over to the main terminal where our luggage was headed, they offered us a ride on a couple of the empty luggage carts. Some of us readily accepted it.
When we got to the main terminal, we had a layover of about an hour. We boarded a Delta (or Eastern, I forget which) for the flight to Chicago. This plane was "heaven" and I thought the old Ozark wasn't bad until I boarded this newer one. It had high back seats that reclined, foot rests, seat belts that "clicked" shut, magazines and stewardesses that wore Delta (or Eastern, I forget which) uniforms and who didn't have to "subsidize" their meager salaries by working at a gas station. The plane we took from Chicago to Seattle was even better. It was a jet and they even allowed you to get up and roam around the cabin for most of the flight. I was beginning to "take a liking" to this "flying" scene.
Months later, after we had finished our training, the flight home was just the opposite of the one coming out. We left "Sea-Tac" Airport on a modern jet, landed in Chicago, flew a prop jet to Evansville this time (it was a Delta or Eastern, I forget which). Since, like most soldiers, we wanted to surprise our parents, we had arranged for a friend to pick us up at Evansville for the drive home. When our plane began it's descent for Dress Memorial Airport, the fog was so thick you could see nothing at all. I hoped the pilots knew how to fly by some kind of instrument because it was impossible to see anything but pea soup. As the engines wound down and we were dropping, all of a sudden, we felt a hard "thrust" and the engines began revving up again. The plane began to climb. Our pilot came over the intercom and said due to the thick fog, they felt it was best to fly to Louisville where the visibility was good and they could land in a timely manner rather than circling over Evansville until the fog lifted. In a few short minutes we were on the ground at the Louisville airport. Those people who didn't mind waiting a couple of hours could catch a flight to Evansville and on to their original destination. Those of us that lived in Kentucky could catch a flight to Owensboro in about thirty minutes at no extra cost, which we opted to do. We called our friend at the Evansville airport and had him meet us in Owensboro. The people from Delta (or Eastern, I forget which) escorted us to a terminal in the back and right into ..... you guessed it - the same old Ozark Airlines plane we had ridden to Louisville months before, complete with the same stewardess and the same pilot and co-pilot. It was like old times.
I sat in the seat my buddy had sat months ago and they had repaired the seat belt. It worked fine. After we were airborne, I leaned over and looked out the oily window to see if the bolt on the wing was still loose and that's when I noticed it was gone, replaced with a hole in the wing. The old plane seemed to fly fine so I didn't give it any more thought. When we landed in Owensboro (which only took about thirty minutes because they had priority landing rights there...we didn't have to circle), they set her down and the same guy in the dingy coveralls and cigar stub rolled the gray steps up to the plane and we de-boarded. I was glad to be almost home but as I saw the plane take off and head for Paducah I couldn't help but feel an attachment to that old plane and flight crew.
Several months ago, I was surfing on the TV and came across some old black and white movie and one of the scenes was of an Ozark Airplane at the airport and I remembered my first flight and the oddball crew that took me off into the wild blue yonder.
And when I hear tales of people who fear flying I can't help but laugh under my breath.
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