Here I am, sitting in a Boeing 747, a plane that if tipped onto its nose, would rise as tall as a 20-story office tower. I'm at 33,000 feet over the middle of the Pacific Ocean, traveling at 600 miles per hour, bound for the Far East, a voyage that once took seven weeks in a sailing ship. And what are the 400 passengers doing? Complaining, sulking, reading the paper, and tapping grumbly rants into their laptops. The man next to me, having paid a $5,600 business class fare, is upset because there's a dent in the lip of his can of ginger ale.

Progress, one way or the other, mandates that the extraordinary become the ordinary. In the case of commercial aviation, luxury and privilege were distilled into common vinegar for the masses. But don't we lose valuable perspective on our own capabilities and triumphs when we begin to equate the commonplace, more or less by definition, with the tedious? Don't we forfeit a bit of our pride when we sneer indifferently at sight of a jet airplane -- something that is, at heart, a world-changing triumph of industrial design?

End of rant.

If any of the preceding paragraphs sound strangely familiar, that's due to their having been culled from a column of several months ago. They also provide a sneak peek at the opening pages of the still unnamed Ask the Pilot book. "The Painter's Brush," courtesy of pretty Samantha, wherever the hell she is, will be the title of my introduction. This being Thanksgiving, a holiday that brings with it more in-transit human beings this side of the Hajj than any other, a revisit seemed in order.

Wednesday before the holiday is historically the year's busiest travel day. This year, however, the Air Transport Association is predicting that Sunday, Nov. 30, will be the single busiest day in U.S. airline history, with an estimated 2.2 million passengers systemwide.

To those of you who plan to be among them, I'm assigning a task to see if you're paying attention. Contracting what inspiration you're able to from my paean above, see if your travel experience this Thanksgiving can't be just a little different: something you notice about the lines of the 757, a curious airline you never recognized before, a nugget of architectural whimsy from the terminal. This time, keep your window shade up. If you're leaving from La Guardia on the Delta Shuttle, walk the extra 20 steps left of the awning to see those gleaming art deco doorways of the famous Marine Air Terminal.

And if you want, tell me about it. An observation, a query, a noted pleasantry where you didn't expect one. Anything but a complaint about legroom or another sordid account from the security line. I'll publish the choicest submissions in the weeks ahead.

I will not be flying this Thanksgiving. But each year when the end of November rolls around, I always think of 1993, when I was a captain still, assigned to a 37-seater for the Northwest Airlines affiliate based in Boston. I was heading to New Brunswick, Canada, that day, and my first officer was the always cheerful and gregarious Kathy Knight. If you're a very astute reader you might recall Kathy as the co-star of my "Getting Started" anecdote two weeks ago. Kathy is one of only three people I've ever met who'd been a flight attendant before becoming a pilot. While learning to fly and building time, Kathy spent a few years serving peanuts to passengers at Delta.

Today, she was serving me. Literally, for she'd brought along an entire cooler full of food -- huge turkey sandwiches, a whole pie, and plastic tubs of mashed potatoes. We assembled the plates and containers across the folded-down jump seat. Just one of those sentimental oddities a pilot files away in his mental logbook. They don't reflect on wind shear and near misses; they reflect on dinner at 20,000 feet on the way to Moncton. Or at least I do.

Kathy went to work at one of the majors after not too long, and I never heard from her again. I imagine you can fit a much larger feast across the jump seat of a 777 than the skinny cushion of a Dash-8.

One of the other flight attendants-turned-pilot I'd met was a young guy named George Land. I never had Thanksgiving with George and only knew him for a couple of months, during training class at a small airline in 1996. He had some funny stories of working the aisles at TWA. In 2003 I know exactly where George is, mainly because he is dead, killed in the crash of a cargo jet in 2000.

Speaking of cargo jets, and diametric to my vignette from '93, I recall Thanksgiving of 2000. Flying to Brussels that morning, an eight-hour haul, I'd avoided breakfast in full anticipation of a well-stocked galley of holiday comestibles. No respectable caterer would skimp on Thanksgiving, and my appetite was prepared. As second officer on the old DC-8 (not unlike the one poor George rode to his grave), roughly 80 percent of my job involved heating up dinner and emptying the trash, and today I would produce my pièce de résistance from trays of cafeteria-cooked turkey and potatoes from a box. I was hungry just thinking about it.

Alas. The freight is loaded and the doors are about to be sealed, when it's realized the caterers have forgotten us entirely, too busy stocking the galleys at Delta, United and American to worry about three undernourished pilots in a freighter at the back side of the tarmac. Not even a soda can. When we're told it would be at least an hour's delay, the company orders us to depart, broken-hearted and empty-stomached.

At the last second, a pickup truck whirls to a stop and an agent climbs the stairs. He's smiling and carrying three large bags. Before he reaches the top step I see the Golden Arches and smell the greasy hash browns.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Do you have questions for Salon's aviation expert? Or Thanksgiving aviation stories to share? Send them to AskThePilot.

Recent Stories