Love is in the air
Can it be that one in fifty people have found true love on an airplane?
I find it a bit hard to believe. I’ve struck up a few interesting conversations, but the closest I’ve come to an emotional bond was when I was nineteen years old and flying alone on a milk run type flight in the midwest, in a relatively small propeller-type plane. There were maybe 40 seats or so, the weather was very foggy and quite rough, it was nighttime, and we were supposed to land in Detroit but got diverted to Toledo, Ohio because the Detroit runways were iced up.
Once on the ground in Toledo, we paused for a while, and then the captain announced that we were going to “try for it.” This didn’t sound reassuring to me, so I gathered myself up and told the stewardess that I wanted off. She said that they would accommodate my request, but there was no way to get my luggage off the plane, too.
So I went back to my seat, decided to have a drink (something I just about never do), and gripped the hand of the 50-something guy next to me the whole way.
Maybe that is a kind of love.
If you listen to Ron White on plane trouble you’ll understand why it immediately came to mind when reading this post.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH-LmkLFJg0
Last summer, we were coming into Tucson, which can be gusty in summer, and the pilot had three missed approaches. After the third, we flew to Phoenix and waited an hour before the fourth final attempt. I got home two hours late.
I’ve had missed approaches coming into Tucson in summer before but never three in a row.
I believe that one survey found it to be 1 in 50, but I would be surprised if that result were representative.
Still, the environment certainly supports close communication. I still think fondly of some of the people I’ve met on airplanes, and the conversations we had. Casting my mind back, the most memorable are:
A young man of about 15, very very bright. He asked me about what I was reading and then chatted intelligently about literature and movies. He was so much fun I never went back to my book. We kept in touch for a while and he sent me one of his own stories; I expect he’ll be a successful writer.
A management consultant who helped me understand some things that were really helpful for what I was doing at the time.
A ten-year-old girl from India with long beautiful braids who set me straight about just how many languages are spoken in India (as I recall, they have about seven official ones and then there are the rest).
A generous young woman whose roughly eight-month-old baby was so sweet and happy that we all played the whole flight. On landing, we shared a long hug when we parted (astonishing the friends who were there to meet me!).
So, yes, as in your story, in a certain sense, I fell in love with all of these people!
We feel in love in Physics 101, the very first day of class. Still in love. A deep, long lasting love is a great gift. Although I doubt the 1 in 50 claim, falling in love on an airplane is obviously possible.
I don’t know about 1 in 40 or 50, but I know someone who met his wife on an airplane. They’ve been married for something like 30 years, have raised two kids to adulthood and — as far as anyone outside a marriage can ever tell — seem to me to be very happily hitched indeed. So yes, it can happen. Hearing their “how-we-met” story really made me think about the vicissitudes of fate. What if one of them had missed the flight, or had decided to book a different one, or had been seated in a different row? Such a glancing encounter to have such powerful lifelong consequences!
That may be possible for some, but as I consider plane flights as something to be endured, I try to sleep.
Though, there were some exceptions.
Some 2 decades ago, I sat next to a five year old who was traveling solo. His mother had escorted him onto the plane. We had an enjoyable two hour flight, chatting about this and that, until I had to leave to transfer to another flight. We were both sad to part.
One time on the BUS/VAN from the airport to downtown, I had fun interacting with a similarly aged baby and his parents.
On a flight to see my father in his final days in a hospital, I had a conversation with a woman who had lupus. I guess that helped give me perspective.
I had quite a few conversations while hitchhiking, with a number of cross-country trips in addition to local jaunts. At night, you often got a ride so you would talk to help the driver keep awake. Speak for your supper?
English 101 (Composition) for my wife and me – about 41 years ago.
I fly a lot for work. Call me cold and anti-social if you will, but I do not talk to others on flights unless they are a friend or co-worker.
Ugh, airplanes.
I see them like the lottery. I’ve always seen many pretty girls in roughly my target age bracket on every flight I take. But I always get losing numbers sitting next to me, to put it gently. I remarked to my special lady (I did not meet her on a plane) before a recent flight that I don’t think I’ve ever sat next to a pretty woman on an airplane – excluding her, of course!
Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever sat next to a woman (or man) less than 15 years older than me. It’s really bizarre.
I think it’s God’s way of setting me straight: “Young man,” he reminds me, “Planes are for suffering and torture, not for love and comfort.”
Although I am tempted to respond to him now that I get the point and the good lord is just kicking a dead horse, he apparently likes that sort of sport.
If Augustine were writing his Confessions today, I’m sure he’d have a story about airplanes and their relation to sin, punishment, and repentance.
Only half kidding.
(PS – neo, this is the first time I’ve commented on the new site, and I didn’t put any thumbnail picture there, but it naturally took one from somewhere on my computer. Should I be concerned? Does it mean it’s linking to somewhere “traceable” so to speak?)
kolnai:
That’s a good question. If it’s linking to something, it’s certainly not a process I’m aware of, nor do I have Facebook comments or disqus. But I looked it up on my blog comment settings just now and found this:
So apparently, since this is an avatar-enabled site, it is keying into an avatar you once linked to your email address or perhaps something else connected to WordPress. As far as I know, the only avatars it displays here are for people who have linked their names or emails to an avatar. Most of the commenters here just have a generic “mystery person” that displays.
The only way I can get rid of it is to disable avatars entirely on the blog. Otherwise, I would imagine you can disable it on your end if you find out where it originated. Did you ever set up that image as an avatar or gravatar somewhere?
I was on a flight that stopped briefly in Reno before going on to SFO. We got HORRIBLE turbulence over the Sierras. It was like a freaking roller coaster. I was terrified. I was sitting next to a young Sikh man. He was probably about fifteen years younger than me. I turned to him and very calmly told him I was scared out of my mind. He let me grab his arm. He was a very nice young man.
I’ve chatted with some nice people on the plane. And really enjoyed their company. But then the flight is over, and we part.
I used to look forward to good conversation when seated next to someone.
Then I sat next to this guy.
https://ed-bonderenka.blogspot.com/2014/05/travels-and-travails.html
At least I got to sit next to my wife after that.
Got on a plane on April 6, 1988 and a woman changed seats and sat beside me so that another woman could sit next to her child.
The woman who wound up sitting next to me and I just celebrated our 22nd wedding anniversary.
We were going to our mothers funerals, both of whom passed away that day, 4-6-88.
I still remember the night time bus ride back from Kennedy’s funeral in DC. Struck up a conversation with the girl in seat over and she ended up falling asleep with her head on my shoulder. She got off in New Haven, where she was in college, and I continued on to Boston. I wouldn’t call it a romance, but it was a memorial experience for a high school student. And I’ve always been partial to red hair…
Oops, Hartford, not New Haven.
neo –
Geez, I mean, I don’t recall ever setting up an avatar for the email account I use here (this is the only blog I comment on, and when I comment on, say, a YouTube channel, it’s always with a Gmail account solely for that purpose).
And it’s not that I *mind* it – you understand. It’s just paranoia about anonymity and untraceability in this Age of Scalp-Hunting and Blacklisting Conservatives.
I’ll try to figure out what’s causing it to show up. Thanks for the feedback.
And P.S. to Richard – that’s an amazing story. I’d find it contrived if I saw it in a movie, but you know how the saying goes: truth is stranger than fiction.
Love was in the air for Dana Perino met her husband Peter on a flight to Chicago.
kolnai:
Let me know how it goes. If you want to let me know by email, that’s fine. I wonder if WordPress got your wires crossed with someone else. One suggestion I would make for next time you comment (and, as always, I welcome your comments) is to change your email address to something else. It can even be a fake email address. See if the avatar still comes up. If it doesn’t, you’ll know it’s somehow connected to your email address.
DonKeyhoti,
Also for Mike Nichols and Diane Sawyer, who met on the Concorde.
I would guess that flying first class (or on the Concorde, when it used to fly) makes it easier for celebrities to meet each other on airplanes.
Several years ago I regularly commuted once a week from Vancouver, BC to Victoria, the provincial capital. It was to attend a set of all-day meetings, and I determined to fly over and back in one day to avoid a hotel charge. But the only feasible way to do that was to fly HeliJet Airways – in a Sikorsky S-76 helicopter. Since I took the first flight in the morning, it was often nearly empty and I usually did not sit next to anyone else.
But one morning I sat next to a middle-aged woman who told me nervously that she had never flown in a helicopter. I tried to be reassuring but things went wrong on takeoff. Standard practice was to lift up to about 10 feet or so and hover for a few seconds, to do one last check on all systems. Then the departure consisted of rapidly putting the nose down to get some forward speed, followed by a steep climb out. This was to avoid staying too long in the “coffin corner” where the copter is too low to auto-rotate in the event of loss of power, but still high enough off the deck that a crash could be fatal!
My fellow traveller told me she was quite comfortable flying in airplanes, but when the nose suddenly went DOWN instead of UP on takeoff, she figured we were going to die! She grabbed my arm so violently and tightly that it raised welts on my skin, even underneath a shirt and suit-coat! She also screamed loudly, but nobody else heard her but me, because the noise level in the cabin was quite high, especially at takeoff. After we landed in Victoria she told me she was changing her plans to take the ferry back to Vancouver!
I fell in love with a beautiful German girl on a flight from the US to Frankfurt when I was 18. She was about my age. It was a long flight, obviously, so we talked. I found out her family owned a brewery, owned their own private lake, and was so well-off and well-connected that when her dad decided they needed a van he commissioned Porsche to build him a custom VW Vanagon with a flat six and transmission out of a 911. At first I was skeptical but as the conversation progressed my doubts evaporated.
She was beautiful, going to be an heiress to a major German brewery someday, rich, and I wanted to drive her dad’s VW van (something I never wanted to do before).
I was in love! Unfortunately although she was friendly enough she didn’t feel the same way about me.