by Brandon O’Deay as told to Kyla O'Deay

I work for a local Louisiana government as the head of the IT department, and something new is always happening at the office with all the characters I work with. For example, one random…

by Morgan Matteson

Pilots are traditionally buried in their uniforms, cap in hands. This is something I learned preceding my step-grandfather's funeral. He had been a lifelong career pilot for United Airlines, something that was fated

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 Emma J. Voigt

My body is being shaken about, but it’s a perfect day. It has to be. With nothing more than a warm breeze, the cloudless sky is safe. I loosen my grip on the yoke,…

by Pavle Radonic

Squeezed in the middle. Point of honour not to hog the rests. Window French chap; aisle Indo domestic going back to her kampung for a fortnight. Both uncommunicative. Former had just come out from…

by Scott Saalman

Leveling at 30,000 feet after departing LaGuardia Airport, our jet was jostled. We represented nothing but a tubular chew toy in the jaws of a masticating, mythical sky beast. The plane’s drop was sudden,…

by Rossana G. D’Antonio

My plane was screaming down the runway...or was that me screaming. The little Cessna’s wings wavered and bounced slightly as we gained speed. My heart was pounding, and I stared out the window as…

by Rebecca Evans

I was about to push faster than the speed of sound, something the human body was not designed to endure. Especially mine. Only twenty, I weighed 100 pounds and focused on staying skinny, breastless,…

by Andrew Chinich

I’m not sure when I realized the depth of my love of flying but I got hooked early and it’s lasted a lifetime. In 1941, my father was just barely twenty-two when he found…

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 Scott Saalman

So, everyone has boarded our transoceanic aircraft at O’Hare. The flight safety message has started. It’s the kind you watch on TV monitors, not a flight attendant’s live reenactment of what you should

by Lara Lillibridge

When you fly at a thousand feet, you see the world differently. Commercial planes fly at an anonymous altitude, so far up that houses become invisible. General aviation flies lower. We are able to…

by Deborah Elder

Sitting on the lid of the toilet I check the bars of my phone and dial his number. This is the usual spot, less static on the line and the only place in the…

by Michael Martone

The Indianapolis department store,* When, commissioned Art Smith, the Bird Boy of Fort Wayne, to address the sky above the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in May of 1920, the year the famous race instituted the…

by Michael Martone

Art Smith, the Bird Boy of Fort Wayne, attempting to elope with his fiancée, Aimee Cour, escaping from Fort Wayne to Hillsdale, Michigan, where he believed they could be married quickly, crashed his home-built…

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 Liz Stephens

I don’t think the ink on my brother’s shirt had dried on the day that I flew in a small single-engine plane for the first time. New pilots traditionally rip away the bottom of…

by Erin Seidemann

I named my Cessna “Orion” for the constellation that was shining majestically above him on the night he became mine. Not too long after Orion was born, I washed and detailed him. (I say…

by James Schaberg

As we roll toward the runway in preparation for takeoff, I catch sight of two red foxes. The pair is skirting the taxiway in the tall brush, probably headed for the nearest hole joining…

by Katie Pugh

There’s no holiday spirit in airports. It’s Christmas, and I am flying from Pittsburgh to southern Virginia to visit my family. Everybody boarding the plane has an air of pleasantry as fake as the…

by Vincent Eaton

“Over there is your airplane, sir.” The Munich airport employee had checked my one-way ticket to Rome, then gestured to the bright tarmac of that reflected a bright winter day. There, over a ways…

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 Mike Coe

“It is not really necessary to look too far into the future; we see enough already to be certain it will be magnificent. Only let us hurry and open the roads.” —Wilbur Wright “Science

by Kevin Bray

In any airport that makes it possible, I like to see the plane on which I will soar. Most terminals I have been in afford fantastic views of the tarmac and the impending plane…

by Elise Gottschalk

Mom tells me that as a toddler I'd look up at a plane in the sky and point and say "Daddy! Daddy!" I don't remember doing this, but I'd guess it's true. After being…

by Jack Saux

This story dates back to the 1970’s, so all statutes of limitations have expired and airline procedures have changed. In the pre-9/11 era, occasionally “bomb threats” could be traced to the last passeng

by Ehud Sela

At thirty thousand feet above the plane began to shake. “Turbulence,” explained the captain over the PA system. “Fasten your seat belts.” And wait, I thought he said, after all that’s all yo

by Rose Cook

And so as we take off the cheerful man in the seat next to me, with his giant RAF watch with gold wings for hands and his crowned winged badge in his lapel and…

by Carol Tracy Carr

Fresh out of law school, I was happy to find a job, even though the hours were long, my boss was eccentric, the salary was pitiful, and he offered only one fringe benefit: flying…

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 John Goossens

The West Jet plane that had departed Toronto Pearson Airport five hours prior started its descent toward the Vancouver skyline and the snaking Fraser River. At first take, the seemingly shoddy design of the…

by Claude Clayton Smith

At the far end of the hall lived a guy whose name I no longer remember, perhaps because I’m repressing it. I’ll call him Moe. Moe was suicidal over a girl who had broken…

by Dawn Corrigan

Like messages from an entrepreneurial God, banners unfurled across our sky each summer day at the Jersey shore, proclaiming unportentous facts like BLEEKERS BUFFET - ALL YOU CAN EAT 8.99 or SAFE & FAST…

by Hal Sirowitz

I was on a flight from New York to Pittsburgh. All of a sudden the pilot got on the loudspeaker telling us that we’re going to make an emergency landing in Harrisburg, Pennslyvania. He…

by Patricia Colleen Murphy

If you want to know for certain your father loves you, take his large wingspan hand into your delicate one. Remember how he pointed to each word as he read to you from Kipling.…

by Jim Courtad

It was a flight from Detroit to Austin with a stop at Houston Intercontinental Airport. My wife had a conference in Austin (where we lived for 6 years) and I was along for the…