Airplane Reading

Featured story

Afterimage

by KT Thompson

When the airplane crashed in the meadow, I was on a walk to look for birds. My torso a crosshatch of straps: binoculars, camera, sling with water and treats for my dog, the leash.

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Points of departure

The Last Flight

by Margo Stutts Toombs

In the summer of 1974, I performed my final flight attendant duties with an extra bounce in my step, knowing it would be my last time to serve rubbery, chartreuse eggs, mystery meat, and…

Class Matters

by Neal Pollack

I’m betraying my age by revealing this, but I’ve always loved the Saturday Night Live film from the early 80s where Eddie Murphy goes undercover as a white person. He discovers that being white…

Unaccompanied Minor

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…

Expect the Internet

by Stewart Sinclair

The commercial pilot has pretty well completed the transition from hero to robot that Roland Barthes explored in 1955 in his essay “The Jet-Man.” The jetliner itself has lost the appeal that once made…

Connecting

by Weldon Ryckman

I let myself drift into sleep, almost. I lean my head back and allow myself to fall in rhythm with the humming undercurrent of the drone of the engines, or maybe it's the wind…

Landing at Moisant Field

by Louis Gallo

...at some point in my twenties: Bloody Marys, "Rhapsody in Blue," oxygen masks, Delta does what it can to erase the memory of the one that sank, splintered and disappeared into Lake Pontchartrain. So…

Frequent Flight

by Ian Bogost

I will fly more than 200,000 miles this year. It routinizes, like an extended commute. The suburbanite knows every moment of the drive: on-ramp, lane-change, morning-show, cup-holder. I'm like that, but on a global…

Humiliation is a Part of Us All

by Greg Keeler

Delta had just absorbed Northwest and I didn't know which gate to check in at when I was returning home from D.C. a couple of summers ago, so I went to Delta. The desk…

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