by Grace Campbell

To compensate for the worst summer of my life, my mother sent me to Los Angeles with my older sister. We drove together and then I flew home alone. I had forgotten to do…

by Erin Murphy

Model plane, plane delay. Butterfly net, net income. Kite string, string theory. You have a knapsack packed with every reason for whiskey: a woman who loves you for loving her, a boss you call…

by Erik Bittner

It’s pinned to the plaster ceiling over my desk, which my wife doesn’t like so much, but I put it there so I could look up and always see it, a little model airplane.…

by Pavle Radonic

Touch over 35mins on clear, open freeways in Jakarta on a Saturday; as soon as we cleared Thamrin City it was a breeze. As a consequence there would be a 4 hour wait at…

by Scott Knoll

This story takes place sometime in the early 90’s, when the internet was still associated with that horrible dial-up sound and when comic books were still considered socially taboo. My family and I were…

by Sophia Lyons

It was early in the morning and the sky was still asleep. Generally, I had two to three more hours of sleep. It was so early even the birds were asleep. Stretching my legs,…

by Alex Ehrenzeller

Despite my advice, Captain Juanito felt prepared to take a midnight flight. It was dangerous enough just standing in the stockroom. Why my cousin decided to fly his plane in the shelving fortress of…

by Bonnie Boyles

The adolescent seatmate plunked down in the narrow seat next to me on the plane bound for Phoenix. The electronic game was immediately taken from its case and thumbs set in motion to play…

by Michelle Goering

Propped up in bed with the 1918 Spanish flu, Lydia Burkholder of Nappanee, Indiana, sighed restlessly. An Amish ten-year-old and my eventual grandmother, she longed to go outside. Her fever had broken but her…

by Laura Taylor

The early morning light made long tree shadows below us. I took the card out of the pocket of the seat in front of me. It said we were on a Vickers Viscount twin-engine…

by Jehan Ramadan

I sat next to a woman and her eight-year old daughter on a cross-country flight one day. That's not that long, you may think, but by the time we landed it felt like I…

by Sheila Sundar

In the winter of 2009, two days before my son was born, I walked my father the four miles from the door of my Brooklyn apartment, across the Manhattan Bridge, to the pier on…

by Melanie J. Mendenhall

My three-year-old wants to fly. Not in an airplane. She’s done that dozens of times, and that’s not at all what she means. She wants to hang in the sky like a butterfly, sail…

by Maryann Aita

In a time before WI-FI on airplanes, my nineteen-year-old self was thrilled to have a nonstop flight from New York to Phoenix to visit my parents. I was looking forward to a five-hour nap.…

by Sarah Scarborough

I woke up with slight confusion to the feeling of a sharp, quick, but non-painful touch to my head; I had been hit by an unidentified flying object. I glanced to my right and…

by Peter Bracking

I am a space-race child. I was an Elroy. From a very young age I was aware of the sky. The television and radio were filled with spacecraft and astronauts seeking unknown planets. I…

by Kathryn Kohnert

We stored small roller bags in the bins above row twenty-three, then settled into our seats and exchanged names, places of origin, and reasons for travel. Similar introductions took place throughout the back cabin…

by Lisa Kay Adam

As our flight lifted over the city, he thought he could pick out which house was his friend's, the one with the swimming pool—among house after house with pools sprawling in the paisley pattern…

by Miles Stearns

I was young and asleep and dreaming of things which get lost upon waking. It had been a long day in the Mexico City airport. My asthma acted up almost immediately upon arriving and…

by Jennifer Weitman

It was that damn kid. That crying baby did it. The couple next to me—tanned and ugly—argued about the hot sauce they’d have to throw away because someone forgot to put it in their…

by Deborah Elder

“He gets airsick” she chirps, handing over his duffle and walking away. I show him how to work the seatbelt, put him where I can see him, and then hand him an airsickness bag…

by Chloe Olewitz

What is to be said about that shrieking baby three rows back? I remember the story of my twenty-second-story Gardenia neighbor in a Manhattan restaurant with a similar screaming child. A grown woman whose…

by Marta da Silva Carvalho

The best stories of our lives are never truly remembered by us; they are told and retold by proud mothers and grandmothers. This particular memory was told to me by my grandmother who was…

by Katie Harriman

I was sitting in the aisle seat. My mom, my step-dad, and my then five-year-old half-brother, Sean, were sitting in the row beside me. We were on a five-hour flight from Los Angeles to…

by Elaine Bassier

When I was 14 and a half, six years ago, I went on my first plane trip without my parents. Delta has a program that allows children from ages eight to 14 to fly…

by Jeanette Lukowski

On Friday, April 24, 2009, my 15-year-old daughter ran away from home. The next day she was discovered in Chicago, approximately 650 miles from our home. While I could have driven to Chicago to…

by Roger Sedarat

After 17 years of marriage, I had a little affair with my wife. Because it happened on an airplane, to this day I find flying especially erotic. On this particular family trip I had…

by Brenda Tobias

Are there any airplane experiences left that do not bear a strong resemblance to an emergency shelter? This is not a rhetorical question. When they asked me to book my own flight, I did…

by Alethea Kehas

Each summer when I was a child, my sister and I would fly 3,000 miles across the country to visit a place my mother was trying to forget. We drove from our home in…

by Mara Huber

I wish I could recall when the utter absurdity of that initial trip revealed itself. I was dropped off at the airport by taxi, not wanting to disturb my family in the wee hours…

by Roxane Gay

When I was a child, the people who smoked at the back of the airplane were so sophisticated. They sat in the last four or five or six rows, lounging in a gray cloud…

by Stacy Thowe

The day had finally come. It was my dream trip. After scraping by, cutting back, and eating at home, I still didn’t have enough money for the trip. So I did what most Americans…

by Catherine Newstead

After spending 25 days traveling with my son Blair, his girlfriend Helen, their friends Dave, Reena and Neil, I was flying home, leaving them to continue their exploration of the East Coast of Australia.…

by Christopher Schaberg

It was warm coming down the concourse even in the late evening. The moon lit up the taxiway around the blinking lights and illuminated the planes. It was winter around the airport but the…

by Len Kuntz

Seated next to him, the girl keeps herself busy drawing pictures of dismembered pets—dogs, cats, rodents with collars. He pretends not to notice, looking instead out his window at a bright white heaven under…

by Kim Chinquee

On the plane to Mexico, the woman next to me said she was going to find Jesus. She bounced her boy, a toddler, and said Maine weather made her evil. She smiled at me.…

by Josh Highlander

Being a military child usually means lots of travel, from base to base and from assignment to assignment. For me, it meant constantly losing friends, and having to make new ones rather quickly. My…

by Taylor Phelps

As a fifth grade boy only months away from the start of middle school, I did my best to mask fear from others hoping to appear as the man I so desperately wanted to…

by Payton Moreland

Years ago, when I was an eighth grade student in middle school, I was given the opportunity to be a part of a trip that would go to Spain. After raising the required funds,…

by Jody Hedstrom

“Ma’am!” The flight attendant barks at me like I’m a stray dog begging for a scrap of food. I let the curtain close behind us and ignore her intimidating glare. “You can’t stay

by Marguerite Kenner

As we roll along on the granite floors of the concourse on our way to Gate 44, I feel a bit hypocritical about the handsome matching luggage my husband and I just bought. If…

by Pete Olson

We just sat there for a few seconds, peering into the snow and ice crystals dancing straight at us into the windshield, front-lit by the landing lights, total blackness beyond, shaking and rattling in…

by Sandra Vallie

I could fall the distance between the plane and the ground in a bit more than two minutes. I have no wish to do this, but it’s good to know I can still figure…

by Linda Coburn

My usual modus operandi while waiting for a plane is to find a seat far from the gate and any aisles, away from the eager beavers who jump up the minute they hear the…

by Nicole Heaton

I had a lot of apprehension about flying with my infant daughter for the first time. I had boarded many planes in my life, but never with a baby in tow. As the day…

by Kristi DeMeester

It was only my second flight, and I hadn’t yet mastered the grace that inevitably comes to the seasoned traveler. The subtle removal of shoes, the flick of the wrist that empties pockets, hands…

by Bobby Smithe

I was twenty-nine, already middle-aged in my mind, and had made my decision. By the time I bought the plane ticket I knew there was no turning back; I was leaving my wife and…

by Beth McKim

In those days it was as if each of us had been given a daunting assignment: observing and reporting all suspicious people and their activities. This was especially true of those flying on commercial…

by Roz Warren

I always request a seat assignment when I make a plane reservation. If you wait till you get to the airport, you’re liable to wind up squeezed into a middle seat between a morbidly…

by Allyson Goldin Loomis

Before I get on an airplane, I prepare to die. My terror cannot be assuaged by anyone’s quoting safety statistics, the laws of physics, or the training regimens of commercial airline pilots. I cannot…

by Jennifer Kowalski

Okay, it wasn’t really a play date; it was just my son and me. And it wasn’t weird, like that time a few years ago when one of my friends wanted me to go…