I can’t say as I have ever been terrified by flying.  Sure all the loud noises on takeoff and landing cause an uptick in heart rate occasionally.  And outside of a sudden drop in altitude, in- flight turbulence is something I have gotten used to.  But recently I had a flight that had me wondering if maybe I ought to spend a little more time getting my affairs in order.  It involved the first leg of my return trip from visiting my elderly mother who lives in St. George, Utah.  There aren’t many options for flying back and forth from Omaha and St. George.  All require a plane change in Denver.  i prefer flying into and out of Las Vegas, which is only a 1 and 1/2 hour drive from St. George.  Then I can catch a direct flight, and car rental is not exorbitant because usually my visit with my mom is only for 2 or 3 days.  But because of my mother’s failing health, moving her into assisted living, sprucing up her condo and making  realty arrangements for its sale, my trips there have taken more time,  and I have found using my mother’s car that she no longer drives saves me considerably on transportation expenses.  And so transpired my first flight out of the St. George airport.

I encountered my first hurdle right off in the TSA line.  At the check in station, my boarding pass would not scan.  I had printed it off of my mother’s PC.  I am a Mac person and find PC’s unwieldily, but after battling with all the changing of screens and clicking on the multiple tabs required by a PC that my Mac forgoes, I got the thing to print properly I assumed.  The bar code was plainly visible.  But there I was, holding up the line, albeit a line of merely 4 people  (this is the St. George airport).  After viewing me suspiciously, the TSA employee called over an associate and between the two of them they must have come to the conclusion I was no eminent threat and let me proceed.  As luck would have it, I was not allotted pre-appoved status on my boarding pass.  Actually it wouldn’t matter in any case, because the St. George airport has no PRE line, nor from all appearances does it need one.   Don’t get me wrong.  It’s a very nice little airport, architecturally very modern and clean.  And the city has grown by leaps and bounds.  But it’s a retirement community.  There just isn’t a lot of activity going on that requires an urgent movement of population.  Well, I suppose there are more funerals per capita.  There’s that.  But this is Mormon country,  It’s not like there is a huge Jewish community where sticking the dead in the ground asap is all part of the program.  I think there is like a 24 hour time limit or something for them.  Then there might be a sudden rush for travel reservations.  There are smatterings of Protestants and Catholics (of which my mother is one), but Mormons predominate here and I get the impression that particular religion gives a wide birth to any family that has to make funeral arrangements.   I mean just look at the the streets in Utah.  Talk about wide birth.  In Omaha, there’s a likely chance you’ll knock off your car’s side view mirror on a street-side mail box.  In St. George, all the two lane streets are close to six lanes worth of pavement.  A Boeing 737 could land on any  one of them.  I don’t know for sure, but I think the Mormons plan way ahead and don’t do much of rushing into anything.  So I bet they put their dead on ice.  Gives you time to snag a cheap flight.  No need for haste.

There are no exceptions to the screening procedure here.  Everyone, get your belt and shoes off and take all that shit out of your pockets.  To complicate things at this point I have an after market knee joint. Remembering to mention this fact usually saves me a lot of grief at the TSA checkpoint.  But at the St. George airport, all members of the surgically improved club get patted down, and when this happens to you be prepared for an examination of medical quality thoroughness.  A picture of the guy that performed  mine is at right.  In all honesty, considering the probability of joint replacement in the general population of St. George, I  would hazard a guess that if you unfortunately book the same flight as the St. George chapter of AARP, you should prepare  yourself for a long wait in the TSA line.

There was a twenty minute boarding delay onto my plane.  That always bothers me a bit.  A basic question usually arises- why?  It’s 7am.  The plane has been sitting around all night.  Are they waiting for the sun to come up to throw daylight on the problem?  I became aware of impending trouble as I finally started to strap myself into my seat.  It was cold as a refrigerator in an igloo in there.  To top things off I was wearing cargo shorts and T-shirt, my customary attire for St. George in March.  I like to travel light.  I knew the temperature for that morning was going to be cool by St.George standards, however my total time in an outside environment amounted to the walk from a taxi to the airport front door.  But inside the plane I was freezing.  Normally I find them stuffy and frantically twist and turn my overhead cool air nozzle to coax anything I can out of it.  At first I thought that might be the problem, so I twisted and turned it to make sure nothing was coming out of it, and nothing was.  That doesn’t happen really till the engines fire up.  I finally got some insight into the very cold facts from the stewardess.  Singular.  It’s St. George.  Your in luck if the plane you are  headed out of St George on has two pilots.  This particular stewardess was bundled up in a winter coat, was wearing ear muffs underneath the hood of that coat, and accessorized her ensemble with a colorful pair of fur-lined gloves.

I don’t recall much of  the mandatory aircraft safety instruction. That was the second thing that didn’t work on this plane- the intercom system.  I never pay attention to that stuff anyway.  What’s the point.  As far as the oxygen mask goes, my feeling is I’d just as soon not mess with it.  That way I might be totally unconscious when the plane disintegrates into an explosive inferno.     And the floatation device I’m supposedly sitting on.  Come on!   I’m flying across the Great American Desert for Pete’s sake.  The Vegas odds of this plane landing in water would be comparable to those given to a gopher winning the Kentucky Derby.  One thing I did glean from the stewardess’s teeth-chattering speech was that the plane had some sort of heating malfunction and we would be in for a rather cool flight.

I was starting to get a little nervous.  It seemed to me there was an inordinate number of electrical problems going on here.  That is never good.  Some loose wire could be shorting out.  What’s next?  An electric arch that causes the fuel to ignite?  I began to wonder about the more structurally pertinent things on this airplane.  I peered out the window, scanning the wing for missing rivets.  As we took off, I felt the aircraft was taking far to much time to become airborne, and was making way too many strange sounds.  After twenty minutes of air travel, a third problem presented itself.  It’s details were never made completely clear to me.  As I said, the intercom system was useless.  There was a lot of commotion in the rear of the plane, some grumbling and a yelp, something in the way of a scream maybe.  My take on the inaudible intercom explanation the stewardess gave was that the rest room toilet was malfunctioning as well as the lock on that door. This is never a problem for me on a flight that is less than two hours.  It is always part of my pre flight protocol to drag my luggage through the spottily hygienic airport rest room facility and use all means to prepare myself  for this  very type of adventure.  But on this plane, and I suspect all passenger planes using the St. George airport, one rest room is all you get.  So I imagine there were some people aboard who wished they were as dedicated to a pre boarding schedule as I always am.

By this point in time I don’t think I was alone in thinking this plane might fall out of the sky.  But after a touch down that had to completely blow out at least one shock absorber on the wheel struts, we all made it alive to the Denver airport.  You would think that would be the end of this story but you are wrong.  Our plane remained stationary on a side runway for 30 minutes.  First, we could not proceed to the terminal because another plane with problems of its own was blocking our gate.  Then when our pilot was given instructions to proceed to a different gate, we  could not disembark because there apparently was no jetway in working order available for us to disembark on.  So close!  By this point as you can imagine there was a lot of grumbling going on.  Passengers who previously had decided to get through the chilly ordeal by loading up on Bloody Marys were starting to become cognizant of the fact that since this plane had no available rest room, that decision might prove to be an embarrassing one.  When all gate problems were finally resolved and the hatch opened, a communal shout of relief resounded from our plane that very possible could be heard  echoing through the entire Denver International Airport.

Of course everyone was anxious to get off that plane, but I don’t care how overly extended your bladder is you’re not going to bull rush past me while I’m still getting out of my seat.  Wait your turn.  People are so impatient.  There is always some uppity strutting prick who thinks the rules don’t apply to him.  You don’t proceed until the person in front of you does.  It’s simple  courtesy.  If you fail to comprehend this rule of etiquette by attempting to slip past me, I am  going to hip-check you into the adjacent row of seats.  I will make it look accidental, but nonetheless I will also make it a point to see that the maneuver is as painful as possible for you.

I must say it was a very disgruntled group getting off that plane.  Not many thank you’s passed along to the bundled up stewardess as people paraded out the door.  One passenger in particular seemed to relay a concise and thoughtful expression of how we all felt about this airline.  I have posted a picture of her below.  The flight delays I encountered required I make a mad dash to make my flight connection to Omaha.  I was a few minutes late, but the attendants held the plane for me and another passenger.  Of course there was no time to perform my prerequisite pre-boarding ritual in a DIA rest room.  As I quick-stepped down the jetway, I said a silent prayer that this airplane had a functioning rest room.  That is another story I may some day tell you about.