Sitting in the Phoenix airport waiting for the flights of friends to arrive before a vacation weekend, everything felt fine. My wife and I were parked at a table in the concourse enjoying a bagel and getting some work done before sloughing off the work week.
Our Southwest flight from Hobby Airport was perfectly pleasant, a smooth trip for a sometimes nervous flyer like myself. And I was embracing the vacation vibes. But things were quite different just 24 hours earlier.
Months ago we had booked our flights on United as usual. The airline giant, with its massive presence in Houston, was typically our go-to for travel for the convenience of Bush IAH, which is closer to us than Hobby, and the reasonable cost (mostly) to all kinds of destinations.
We are not frequent work travelers. We almost always fly for vacation and my wife and I both don’t like stopovers, so we bite the bullet and pay a little more for nonstop as we had this go-round.
Up until a couple weeks ago, we had no reason to see what aircraft we were on. Who cares? We’ve flown routes to Denver and Salt Lake City, knowing Phoenix would probably be about the same in terms of planes. Nothing fancy or huge, but not a puddle jumper either.
Then, the door plug blew out of an Alaska Airline flight and things started to change.
My wife is a very calm flyer, someone who has traveled the world and rarely complains about airports or planes. She often sleeps during flights, something I have always envied. I, on the other hand, had at one point in my life a paralyzing fear of flying after years of world travel in my early years.
Through immersion and the occasional pharmaceutical assist, I have beaten back virtually all the demons of my younger years and come to manage my fear, even, dare I say, liking the convenience flight brings. Instead of opening and closing the window repeatedly as some sort of OCD nightmare, or downing shots of vodka, I have come to be comfortable reading or watching shows during flights (as comfortable as you can be in a tiny tin can zooming through the air – On today’s flight, I read a book when the wi-fi stubbornly refused to cooperate – “It’s these older 700s,” our flight attendant informed me referring to the model of the airplane.)
So, when I checked and found out both our flights to and from Arizona were on Max 9 jets, I became…concerned. For a week, she and I discussed it and thought, “Well, it’s fine. These are the most scrutinized airplanes in the sky.” We reconciled ourselves to a slight uptick in nerves, but nothing else.
Then came the morning before our flight. The familiar ding of my text message alert sounded and my wife forwarded me an article from The Daily Mail. My heart sank.
The publication known for its verbose headlines and gossip-filled pixels had this doozy: “Multiple former senior Boeing staffers – one of whom also worked for FAA – say they would NOT fly on killer 737 Max planes and that they’re urging their families to avoid them too.”
“Should we book a different flight?” she texted. Look, my wife is a tough, resilient, nearly fearless human, so when she made the suggestion, I flew into action. “I just don’t want to be afraid to be on a plane,” she reasoned. That’s all I needed to hear.
I immediately went about the task of booking new flights and not without pain financially and otherwise. Instead of IAH, we got Hobby. Instead of United, Southwest. Instead of a leisurely 11:30am departure time, we got 9 a.m. . The traffic getting to Hobby was brutal. The seats were tighter together and, as is customary with Southwest, first-come-first-serve.
And it was expensive. Last-minute flights often are. We were able to offset it a little by canceling the United flights and getting credit for later, but that credit is only as good as the plane we would be booked to fly on. While canceling, I quickly surveyed the flights to and from Canada we have scheduled (and paid for) in April: Airbus…whew.
Oh, and the return flight from Phoenix has a stop in Austin. Wonderful.
Now, sitting in the airport in Phoenix safe and sound, I feel a little silly, especially considering the United flight we were booked on is on the way here and seems to be just fine. Nevertheless, it didn’t feel crazy yesterday when my brain conjured up thoughts of door plugs sucking me out into the sky, or at a minimum “leaving me topless” as my wife suggested. Never mind the image of “flying machines in pieces on the ground,” as James Taylor once sung.
At that point, it felt perfectly reasonable. I mean, these are employees of the manufacturer saying they wouldn’t let their own family fly on these planes. Who am I to argue with that nerve-wracking reality?
And until there is a similar story saying, “Boeing staffers have a change of heart — including higher ups at the FAA — who say the killer 737 Max is now just a sweet puppy of an aircraft ready to fetch your morning paper and curl up on your lap,” I’m not getting on one. My wife probably isn’t either.
Until then, I’ll check the airplane models carefully before booking or keep my damn feet on the ground.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
