Flying

This weekend I flew back to England to spend Christmas with my family. It’s a trip I’ve made quite a lot in the last few years. The flight between the two countries is so short that I suspect the airplane takes a run and jump towards England rather then actually flying through the sky.

This might also explain why the music from Back to the Future always pops into my head as the plane speeds down the run way like Marty McFly in the time traveling Delorean. However, I am fairly sure that a plane has to be going faster then 88mph to take off and there is little danger of it traveling through time when it does so. If it did a wide range of new holiday options would suddenly become available.

I have only experience bad turbulence once in all the years I have been flying (a fact that I am not too upset about). It was during a flight in the winter. The plane was constantly shaking and dropping a few meters. Every time it happened everything within the plane seemed to stay suspended in the air for a second before realizing they too should be affected by gravity (I believe this is called the Wily E. Coyote theory of course and affect).

A lot of people were starting to get worried, including myself. There were cries of panic, a near by child threw up; all that was missing was Scotty from Star Trek screaming, “She canna’ take much more captain!”

Things were looking very bad. Then I noticed something that almost made me laugh. At the front of the plane there was a group of English tourists returning from a weekend in Amsterdam. Every time the plane dropped in one of its stomach churning losses of control they threw their arms into the air and cheered as if they were riding a roller coaster. Suddenly the situation was no longer scary and a short while later we landed safely.

If comedy can make a situation like that seem alright then maybe airlines should think about having a trained comedian onboard and replacing the oxygen masks with Helium.