by Barrie Cole

I was on a plane once a long time ago, and the woman sitting next to me had never been on a plane before. She was young, perhaps nineteen or so, and she explained…

by Eleni Stephanides

At the table next to me inside the airport restaurant, I hear a brother explain what braces are to his younger sister. A blond boy with short legs holds a mug of coffee in…

by Elizabeth H. Boquet

Newsfeeds tripped across the flat screen in my basement the nights after Katrina slammed ashore, and I found myself a thousand miles away from the place that will always be home, calling my parents…

by Sandra A. Miller

I boarded the plane and settled into 26A, a window seat next to an empty one. And that’s the first time I felt it in my gut—the uncoupling—even more pronounced than at 4:00 that…

by Tomoé Hill

Speak to me of love; I will speak to you of wings. The too-bright rising sun glinting on metal; sharp angles cutting through clouds; the mechanical sounds of a plane beginning its descent above…

by Jennifer Wagley

I enter relationships the same way I enter planes. I settle in quickly and then immediately begin searching for emergency exits, planning an escape route should one prove necessary. Three months in and 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 Nathan C. Martin

I remember passing a Nalgene bottle—a popular outdoor accoutrement in the West—full of Red Bull and vodka around the car on the way to Salt Lake City International Airport. My 19-year-old girlfriend and I…

by Erica Garza

The first time I fell in love with a fellow passenger was in 2002. It happened on a tiny plane that I boarded at the Houston airport (a layover from L.A.) en route to…

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 Lauren Hunt

You: Twenty-something bearded fellow, right aisle seat on a Southwest flight to Oakland. Me: College student in the middle seat with the huge book you thought was Harry Potter but was actually a collection…

by Julian Hanna

Future wife and I were waiting at SFO to catch a post-Christmas flight back to Edinburgh, Scotland, where we lived at the time. It was the second leg of a lengthy tour to meet…

by Christopher Shipman

My wife gets gassy and wonders if I still love her in this airport where she squints her face to shape how the air may smell for a few seconds, because I don’t squint…

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 Wayne Scheer

Alex found flying boring, but when he squeezed past the attractive woman in the aisle seat to get to his, he thought this flight might not be so bad after all. Maybe he could…

by Barry Basden

She flees on the first available flight. Still, her suite overlooks Waikiki. For days she stares out to sea and hikes the beach toward Diamond Head. In the evenings, after dinner alone, she writes…

by Koty Neelis

Traveling makes me feel really sexy. I love the way people dress—in business suits and sundresses, in hoodies and pencil skirts. Some are traveling for work, others for pleasure. You’ll never see these people

by Jami Nakamura Lin

We squeeze into our seats, my sister Cori and I. I get there first, so I steal the aisle seat, crushing my pink backpack underneath the seat in front of me. She nestles into…

by Geoff Watkinson

Although I’m surrounded by thousands of people at the Atlanta airport during a layover, it’s a lonely Fourth of July. I call Natalie, a girl I’ve known since I got my driver’s license, who…