Taking Flight
by Peg Hernon
Aer Arann Flight RE-231 from Dublin to Galway was filling up this Thursday morning as I settled in at my window seat. My husband and I were returning from holidays, and he, seated next to me, had the blank, inwardly focused look of someone who is already somewhere else. The other passengers were all adults, and judging from the number of suits and briefcases moving down the aisle, they were mostly business people, like the two seated behind me who were going over the fine points of a sales presentation. When the engines turned over I turned my face to the window and tuned out all those grownups. I’m forever a kid about take-off, that magical moment when an aircraft leaves the ground and rises surely and steadily, the earth slipping away beneath. It’s the best part of every flight. I’m one of the dwindling number who still find flying extraordinary. It’s still magical to me that an aircraft can leave the ground. My first flight was in 1958 from New York to Shannon and took 13 hours with a stopover at Gander. I was eight and my mother pointed me to the window seat with a look that said “sit down, shut up and don’t touch anything”. I didn’t mind. My mother had her hands full with my sister Annie who was 15 and teary eyed about leaving her first boyfriend behind. From the window seat I could see the curve of a long wing with two huge propellers. Back at school that September my class was told to write about our summer holidays. I thought about my uncle’s farm in Gort, Co. Galway, side trips to Dublin, Knock and Killarney, the 33 first cousins I had met, and Punch, the lamb who herded the sheepdog, not the other way round. But what I wrote about were the flights, over and back, that had meant four magical take-offs with the stopover at Gander.
49 years later I’m still hooked. I could write about this holiday just ending, again to my uncle’s farm in Gort, but this time to celebrate his 100th birthday with a gathering of 33 first cousins and their families. My sister Annie was teary, but now it was about her brand new first grandchild. On the flight from Galway to Dublin, she shuffled the pack of baby pictures and my husband good-naturedly took the photo tour of the christening again. I owe him for that one. I was looking out the window at the unbroken network of lights beneath us. From the air, urban sprawl on both coasts looks like the bookends of a growing megalopolis in between. We touched down and everyone leaned forward and then back as the aircraft slowed down. Landing is okay but it’s never as good as take-off.
Flight RE-231 taxied out and trundled slowly around a couple of turns in the maze that leads to the top of the departure runway and paused. The aircraft vibrated slightly as the whine of the engines increased to a roar, and then we dashed down the runway at full throttle, gathering speed, and Wowza! We’re airborne, going surely and steadily UP, the sprawl of Dublin telescoping backwards below. As we entered the vast airspace above the clouds the flight attendant handed me the morning newspaper and one look at the headlines booted me right back to adulthood.
I’ve worked at Inis Mor airport for a dozen years and I should be embarrassed at my vague grasp of how planes get off the ground, but my job at Inis Mor airport is office work that doesn’t require I understand the science of flight. The ATR aircraft I’m seated in this morning weighs about 18 tonnes, or 36,000 lbs, with all us grownups and our baggage. If I really want to know how 36,000 pounds gets off the ground I could ask any one of the Aer Arann Islands pilots who come and go daily at Inis Mor airport. I’m not sure I want to know because science will suck the magic out of just about everything if you’re not careful. But if I asked, the pilots would explain the science of flight to me, and without any pitying looks. It’s my experience that when pilots are not actually flying, what they talk about is flying – high altitude flying, low altitude flying, instrument flying, and flying in every possible weather. When an Aer Arann Islands pilot has a two-hour sit out at Inis Mor in between flights, nothing makes him happier than the arrival of another pilot to talk flying with. It doesn’t matter if it’s another BN2 Islander pilot, or one from a Cessna, or one from a tiny microlite that looks like a flying cockroach. As soon as the new arrival has parked, the Aer Arann Islands pilot cranes his head to see if the new pilot is an old friend, or someone who will be an old friend in about ten minutes. A full tour bus once pulled up and dropped off one man who held out his business card to the two pilots sitting in the sun. He was a pilot who flew Boeings for Delta Airlines, and while the island scenery was fine, the view from the main road of two parked Islander aircraft was even finer. A three-way Show & Tell followed. The pilots wandered back and forth between the two aircraft and settled for a discussion at one white pointy aircraft nose. I had to interrupt them to ask which aircraft was to depart first, as passengers had begun to arrive. The Boeing pilot said, “I regret it ain’t me babe” and after handshakes all around, he headed for the airport bus bound for the village. On days off pilots go to air shows, or fly around in private club planes, and occasionally they bring their spouses out for a spin to Inis Mor. That pilots manage to get married at all amazes me, but at some point it must have occurred to them to lean over and ask, “Would you like to go flying with me?”
There were no Aer Arann Islands pilots sitting out two days later when I got back to work from holidays. It was a busy morning and by noon all aircraft had returned home to Inverin airport for a spate of flights to Inis Oirr where some event was taking place. Our evening schedule would resume with the next departure at 3:15 pm.
After lunch the crew tried out the new super power sprayer. When the Jeep withstood the blasts, they thoroughly punished the fire truck. Silence followed and I wondered if they had found a way to hunt rabbits with the new weapon when suddenly a tsunami swept across the windows in front of me. Passengers checking in for flights all afternoon asked if it had rained here at the airport.
A group of first year tourism students from Limerick checked in for their flight late in the day. I asked which site they had liked best and they agreed it was Dun Aenghus, the majestic Celtic fortress on the cliffs. One student stated that the walk up to the Fortress through rocky empty land could be improved with some informational signs along the way. “A whole Celtic village would fit up there” said another. “With pens of wild boars” added a third who apparently hadn’t yet read the chapters on public safety or insurance. “What if it’s supposed to be empty?” asked the student who had handed me the group’s tickets. “What if what’s there is what was there when the ones who built it saw it back then?” This was digested in silence, but then the sign lover insisted that there should be a sign that said exactly that so people would know nothing was really something. “You’d need a billboard for all the languages” said wild boar lad helpfully. “Just leave it alone” said sign lover irritably. “Exactly” said the one with the ticket stubs. Students are great.
I leaned against the now sparkling fire truck to watch the last departure of the day. The Islander BN2, weighing about three tonnes, or 6,000 lbs approximately, taxied out and turned onto the runway. It trundled along to the end where it turned around and paused. Then a fast sprint back, and UP! Gets a wowza out of me every time.
