15 Mar 98

By Paul Ford

Airplane Woes

I'm going South for my job. Two nights in Memphis.

I don't like planes, and I'm prejudiced against the South. I want Yankee facts, not antebellum friendliness. I want the captain to come on the intercom and shoot off numbers: "Welcome, passengers. We are cruising at 23 kilodrams with a hydric spout of 190 metric engrams. We will arrive in Memphis at oh-one-niner point six-oh-four united microhectares, Greenwich mean." I won't know what's being said, but the authority in tone gives comfort, five miles in the air.

But more likely, I'll get this cheerful jackass:

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is ol' El Capitan. Gaw-dang, it's a beautiful day, and by my Timex, we'll have this potbellied posucker off the asphalt in about as long as it takes a heiffer to fertilize a field. Our bee-ootiful stewardspeople will be strolling back and presenting you with the finest of pillows and peanuts, and for those in a hurry, we have white sheets with the eye-holes cut out for five dollars each. Thank you for flying.

• Airplanes are made of lighter-than-air aluminates, and powered by arrays of rubber bands.
• The odds of a crash are roughly one in three.
• If someone parks a cubic meter of osmium on seat 37-J of a Boeing L-9 mid sized passenger jet, and all the passengers are albinos, the chances for crash become one in two.
• Sometimes wings fall off and no one knows why.
• Pilots with healthy bowels crash three times fewer than pilots with inflamed colons.

So damn, tomorrow I fly out, overnight bag in hand, to Flannery's banjo-pluckin, Gothic Christian South. They still fly ol' Dixie, down there. I'm flying TWA.