Robert Simpson: The miracle of flight … from ground level

Family is everything. So when my daughter invited me to come help celebrate my grandsons’ birthday and visit for a few days at the end of May, it was hard to resist. But she didn’t want me to drive the 900 miles there and 900 back this time. She wanted me to fly. That put the brakes on the whole idea, because I declared about 10 years ago that I had no intention of ever flying again for the rest of my life.

It isn’t that flying itself is foreign to me. Over the course of a long life, I have traveled through the air in everything from a four-engine jet airliner to a 2-place observation helicopter. I have sat in every position from the comfort of Delta’s first class to the bucket seat of a C-47 Gooney Bird to the open door of a Huey helicopter with my feet hanging out over the skids. I have slept stretched across four empty seats of a Pan Am flight non-stop from Bahrain to New York City, and sat crowded and miserably awake from Seattle to Chicago while an exhausted young soldier slept with his head on my shoulder.

I can appreciate not just the utility but the joy of winged flight. As part of a training program, I had the opportunity in my youth to take the controls of an Army L-19 “Bird Dog” airplane for an hour of playing and experimenting in the air over Oahu, Hawaii. A few years later, an Air Force fighter pilot allowed me to take the controls of a single-engine jet aircraft and feel the instantaneous, silky response of an incredibly fast and powerful machine as I played with it for a while in the sky over Japan. Had I possessed the proper talents, I can see how a career of flying could have been very attractive.

Commercial flying during my early years was not just chronologically but also spiritually in a different century from flying today. Those passengers who didn’t dress somewhat formally for the trip at least wore neat, complete casual wear. Soldiers, if flying “space available” at reduced cost, were required to travel in uniform. Not today’s wrinkled, camouflaged fighting and fatigue duty uniforms, but a complete service uniform with necktie. I would fly, space available, from Fayetteville, N.C., to Atlanta for $30 and from Atlanta to Columbus for $12 more. In uniform. I might have been a cheapskate, but I was a well-dressed cheapskate. No shower clogs, tank tops, or sweat pants.

In those earlier days, buying a ticket for a trip by air was not much different from buying a ticket for travel by bus. Go to a counter, pay some money, set your bags on a scale, get your ticket, and you were all set.

But times change, the world grows more complicated, and we have to change along with it. So I told my daughter I would give serious thought to flying to Detroit, the major airport closest to her home. Serious thought, even though my visit would fall across the Memorial Day weekend, with its added traffic and confusion. And I did give it serious thought. I was still considering it when I saw those news reports showing fantastic lines of travelers, most of whom had waited three hours or longer, many of whom had missed their flight at least once already, and quite a few who had slept on cots or worse in the airport while waiting.

I don’t blame the airlines for this, or even the government. It’s a fact of modern, terrorist-threatened life. But knowing it can’t be helped right now doesn’t make it any more enticing.

Family really is everything. And I look forward to seeing mine the next time I can make the trip by automobile.

This story was originally published May 21, 2016 at 6:16 PM with the headline "Robert Simpson: The miracle of flight … from ground level."