Flying home with a fudge factor

"Give yourself a three day fudge factor on air travel in Alaska," my friend Sam, a white-haired pilot said. (I like my pilots older; it means they've been at this a long time). Sam was quoting a much older pilot, Layton Bennett, the founder of the now defunct LAB Flying Service of Haines. "Layton always said if you get where you want to be within three days then you're golden," Sam said.

Easy for Sam to say. He wasn't stuck in Juneau wondering when he'd be home. He had already been from Juneau to Hoonah and back with a load of packages and passengers since I had first greeted him in the Juneau airport an hour earlier. My flight up to Haines had begun well. I called the regional air taxi from a nearby motel when I saw the low clouds to check if they were flying, but was assured we'd be taking off on time, at 7:45 am. (The two small airlines flying to Haines use visual flight rules. If the pilot can't see, they don't take off.) I walked over at 7:30. At 7:40, eight of us were ushered out to one of the bigger small planes, a Cessna Caravan. Seven of us were in jeans, one in brown denim. I noticed, because I had just returned from New York the night before, where my best clothes had seemed casual. Here, I was almost dressed-up with newish jeans and a clean Patagonia jacket.

We waited in the drizzle while our pilot bolted down more seats. As a pretty big guy stepped up the folding stairs, the plane dipped. On the jets from New York to Juneau, I'd read a "Ladies' No. 1 Detective Agency" novel. In it, the heroine, Precious Ramotswe's beloved little white van is on its last tires as a result, in part, of the uneven distribution of the load it bears daily: her own large, "traditionally built" body. This man was definitely traditionally built. His colleagues were not small people, either. I let them sit in the front, figuring if we went down, I might be cushioned from the impact. A terrible thing to admit, I know, but I am a nervous flyer and was growing more anxious by the minute. Especially as I watched the pilot flick the switches on his dashboard and nothing happened.

He jiggled and clicked and dialed, and some lights went on, but the engine remained silent. I noticed a drip from the ceiling near him and thought about announcing that I was about to have seizure — and exiting. Instead, I strained to hear what he was saying to someone on his headset.

What if he did get the plane started, and then what would happen it if, say, we hit a bird, and the engine stopped (is that possible on a single prop plane?) and then it wouldn't start again, and we were up a couple of thousand feet over Lynn Canal? Before I could worry too much, he announced that the plane didn't seem to want to take off.

The man closest to me said, "The safest plane is one that won't start." Everyone laughed but me.

Then we all disembarked, walked back to the terminal, and watched out the window as a couple of mechanics looked under the hood. I was the only local on the plane, but we were all Alaskans, and no one seemed a bit bothered or even curious about the wait. There were no announcements from the counter, no offer of refunds. One man did wonder out loud if there was time to go eat breakfast. I figured I'd get some coffee. On the way back, I asked at the ticket counter how long the delay might be, and the clerk seemed surprised to see me, he had thought we had left. He said they didn't have another plane around that could take all of us, so he wasn't sure what the plan was.

That's when Sam came back from Hoonah and said the good news was the weather was getting nicer by the minute. It was turning into a beautiful day to fly, he said. Then he said, "You know the airline rule? Better to be here wishing you were there than to be there wishing you were here."

What the heck does that mean?

About forty-five minutes later, the clerk said that half of us could leave on a little plane that had just arrived, and the other half could leave in about an hour on the next one.

I looked at the traditionally built man, who was in a hurry, and volunteered to wait. Turns out, the available six-seater was already heavy with mail, so the five lighter passengers were chosen. I was in that group.