by Jey Sushil

I was trying not to think, or possibly I was not in the mental state to think anymore. It had been 40 hours since I slept, arranging for my sudden flight to India. My…

by Susana H. Case

My husband wants to make a video of me packing a suitcase for YouTube since we fly a lot. I go to my computer and learn that videos of “How to Pack a Suitcase”…

by Barrie Brewer

The flight from Lima to Cusco was like something out of a horror movie. The wheelchair was a dead giveaway. Our son Goose was so weak we had to wheel his limp body from…

by Nadir Benslimane

When I attempt to recollect my memories from my journey to France, the memories of Paris pop out vividly: winding streets down to a small corner cafe; the crisp morning air as sunlight parted…

by Emani Leefort

Six thirty a.m. at the Louis Armstrong International Airport. Who books a flight for that early in the morning? Answer: a scholarship foundation. Once a year, every year, all scholars go to the Mentoring…

by Vivien Marx

My suitcase is far too plump but it closes and the zipper is strong. Some travelers manage a long trip with two t-shirts, three pieces of underwear, and a toothbrush. That’s not me in…

by HyoKyung Park

About a month ago, I took a flight from Korea to San Francisco to start my exchange program in New Orleans. Since there was no direct flight to New Orleans, I decided to spend…

by Claire Mitchell

Most people go through childhood viewing their parents as human adjacent. As a kid I thought my parents never had a human emotion until they drank too much, or when we attended funerals. Really…

by Alyx Marroquin

I’m convinced that airplanes, airports, and everything to do with them exist out of time. They are liminal spaces that hold everything transitory, including our memories and feelings. Nothing that happens within ex

by Damari Esqueda

I remember only two things from the first time I rode in an airplane. One: my mom took two dramamine that knocked her out, a precaution so her eardrums wouldn't pop. And two: the…

by Mae Bennett

I concealed some shame for a very long time for not having left America in my first twenty-two years. (Champagne problems, I know.) When my friends began to study abroad sophomore and junior years,…

by Drew Payne

The airport’s hand soap had only been used to scrub my hands and forearms, just below the elbows, but its cloying scent lingered as if I had bathed in it. I had felt infected…

by Pavle Radonic

At the terminal and passing the boutiques the adjustment was always needed for the frequent flyers. First-classers even, if not A-listers, might be sprinkled there too. Directly from the street a little shock was…

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 Elaine Joy Edaya Degale

I purchased last-minute tickets to Cuba. This was my first solo-trip. I started writing this in Miami when I was on a ten-hour layover from my long, and very cheap, journey to Havana. Without…

by Crockett Doob

Sometimes you date your opposite. This is common enough. My parents are opposites. My mom the talker; my dad not. This woman I dated was a lot like my mother, which normally would repel…

by Terry Borst

It’s long been accepted mythology that the classic Byrds' song "Eight Miles High" is about being stoned—maybe about an acid trip or an evening on ‘shrooms. Band members David Crosby (now p

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 Natalie Elward

I have a love-hate relationship with airports. Mostly hate, if I’m being honest. I appreciate the grandeur of being able to travel such great distances, but there is still always an acute form of…

by Gavin Garza

Dad texts me before my flight and asks if the airport brings back memories of Vegas. I lie, and say yes. It’s been ten years since I left the state by plane, two since…

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 Won Lee

Almost missed my flight to Portland. Woke up at 730 in the morning, triple-checked Benjamin's flat for forgotten items, lugged/dragged my much-too-heavy suitcase down an interminable number of steps, exerting my fles

by Joan Potter

In a wooden jewelry box on my bedroom dresser, along with some old beads, a bunch of unmatched earrings, and a broken wristwatch, is a metal coin bearing the raised image of an airplane…

by Nadine Dolby

I hurry towards the gate at JFK. This is a journey I have made many times, and I feel a rush of anticipation and excitement as I begin to hear more and more travelers…

by Stephanie R. Pearmain

The first time I boarded a plane to Honolulu, it was a one-way ticket and I cried most of the flight. I’d just turned 15 and while more than once in the recent past…

by Scott Zukowski

I wake in an altered state as we descend from Phoenix into JFK. My cylinders fire, my spindles spin, my cogs turn, but the time surrounding the machine is warped and delayed and advances…

by Sara Barnett

The Great American South, till now, remained a mystery, one that blurredly conjured thickset women in rolled down stockings fanning themselves in the heat on a porch stapled to the earth by wisteria vines…

by Suzanne Weerts

I literally missed the train by one croissant from the breakfast buffet stuffed in my purse, one hand heart-directed at my daughter as I went down one escalator and she headed up another toward…

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 Gail Brady

For as long as I can remember I have been fascinated with travel, perhaps a manifestation of my Celtic-Gypsy soul. Even in utero I was transported across the country from Boston to Los Angeles…

by Anthony DeVita

It was a rainy winter night when I made my way toward the back of the Boeing 747. As the line of people before me struggled to stuff their outrageously large roller luggage bags…

by Kay Bontempo

To the Customer Service Department at United Airlines: My sincere apologies for missing my scheduled flight from Chicago to Puerto Vallarta (with layover in Mexico City) on March 8, 2019. This was 100% my…

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 Victoria Houser

When the plane left Terminal C at Ted Stevens International Airport, it traveled over 18 years of silent longing and hidden assault. As we gradually picked up speed, I watched the tarmac lines disappear,…

by Holly Hein

We flew off into the most spectacular sunset over the front range with the Denver lights spread out in twinkling patterns below. That winter there was hardly any snow in the Rockies, a clear…

by Gabriel Meek

With flying you rarely know who will be seated next to you until, well, they’re seated next to you. It could be a priest who gives you a dollar for good luck. Or it…

by Stewart Sinclair

Whenever I sit down on a plane, I resign myself to death. It’s the only way I can reconcile my fear of flying with the fact that I have had to do it on…

by Julian Hanna

It's a warm January morning and I'm heading to the airport in an old yellow diesel Mercedes taxi driven by one of my students. I spent the previous day swimming in the sea, which…

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 Avery Keatley

I had made a rather serious mistake. A few weeks before my family’s first-ever overseas vacation, when I would be strapped into a Dreamliner for eight hours, I watched Castaway. I didn’t watch it…

by Richard Klin

The Lufthansa flight from Milan, bound ultimately for New York, was crowded and uncomfortable. I needed to switch planes in Frankfurt, which elicited no great reaction on my part. While I preferred direct flights,…

by Kathy Doherty

Our family had moved to one of the beckoning Chicago suburbs in the 1960s. Mom took a job in a typing pool at a large oil company nearby and my stepdad rode the commuter…

by Richard Kiln

The Lufthansa flight from Milan, bound ultimately for New York, was crowded and uncomfortable. I needed to switch planes in Frankfurt, which elicited no great reaction on my part. While I preferred direct flights,…

by Tom McCarron

Thoughts of kickflips and 50/50 grinds slid through my mind as if on a polished granite ledge. The thoughts flipped and spun and twisted my head into a different world. Skateboarding; and I could…

by Chris Wiewiora

At arrivals, a man stood with his chest out. His middle stretched against his seaweed green wool sweater. The man smiled at Dad. “Czesc, Zdzichu,” Dad said. Dad and Zdzichu hugged. I’d only seen…

by Madeleine Feola

My fingers wind their way into my earbud cord, faded bluish and dreamlike in the dim glow of the seatback screen. Wrapping the black wire around my thumb, over and over, around and back,…

by Andrew Arnett

I settled into my seat on board China Ailrines flight 1133 and opened the complimentary China Daily to the article "Today is the Most Balanced Day of the Century." It was November 2, 2011,…

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 Amy Gutierrez

I watch as the man chews. He chews big, big, big and then tiny (chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp). He bites into the gooey cheese sandwich, jaws locking and popping as he tries to force…

by Aaron Gilbreath

Sitting on a bench in downtown Portland, Oregon, a man asked for a cigarette. When I handed him one, he lowered himself beside me. He wore jean shorts and a yellowing white sleeveless t-shirt.…

by Lauren NuDelman

I’ve been in plenty uncomfortable situations on airplanes before: the requisite overweight passenger suffocating my comfort zone, or the squalling baby who cries as her ears pop with the altitude change. There was

by James Stafford

“Pay attention, boy! Get on the other side so we can push her out.” I skittered under the belly of the darkened airplane and grabbed her strut. My father and I had just enough…

by Sandra Park

A layover is a lay without sleep or sex. Like a silent sled, the red tram zips from domestic to international gates, transport without a sense of direction, follow the arrow. What I…

by James Moran

Of the throngs of humanity sleeping on cots by the heat-blasted roadside our flashing honking careening bus disturbed not a soul. We had witnessed this Indian ability to sleep through anything before. We were…

by Merrill Sunderland

All around me is the snap, crackle, pop, sigh, hiss, shloop, and swoosh of air. In this airplane, I’m vacuum-sealed like packaged meat, yet air moves all around me. Changing places. Over water and…

by Patrici Flores

I’m either an idiot, or I enjoy the surprises that come from terrible planning. My ego much prefers the latter as an excuse for my hastiest decisions, including the time I jumped on cheap…

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…

by Jessica Shepherd

I stare into my computer screen trying to do the reading that my university has so thoughtfully assigned before the semester has even begun. I lose focus and the screen goes black but I…

by José Duarte

I am neither an adventurer nor a traveler. I like things that are secure, that you can take for granted. But that is not life, which is why we need to take some chances.…

by Lucy Corin

Some bored friend of mine had driven me to the airport and we talked about boredom. We felt it but remained skeptical about it defining our generation. I said I was keeping an eye…

by Margaret O'Brien

“Bet you don’t know what they’re saying,” the Frenchman said to me in accented English as he clicked on the laptop that sat on his desk. Intrigued, I listened. To my surprise it sounded…

by Gaia Veenis

“You’re traveling into the future,” my friend typed into a Facebook chat box before I embarked on the 17-hour journey across the international dateline to his hometown of Melbourne, Australia. I was cou

by Anca L. Szilágyi

I’m a firm believer in write-what-you-desperately-want-to-know. Research, empathize, repeat. It’s not impossible to write beyond your own experience or beyond your own precise demographic. But it is a risk. I

by Giulianna Di Nenna

Life-searching questions arise at night, after sunset, and not just on park benches along river banks. Watching rushing water, reflecting upon its cleansing qualities, can soothe. If only I could have been near a…

by Cloé Vaz

In April 2012, I went back to the place I was born: Guinea-Bissau, a small West African country. It was definitely an emotional trip, as I hadn’t seen my father for a year and…

by Tânia Limbert

I clearly remember my first airplane ride. It was in my last year of high school, and instead of taking the the usual mainstream trip to Lloret Del Mar (Costa Brava, Spain), my friends…

by Luís Pires

A few years ago I went to London with some friends. Just entering the airport gave me the feeling of entering a whole new universe. There were busy people hopelessly trying to run with…

by Anouk de Jonge

In March 2010, I went on a trip from my home in the Netherlands to Brazil. I travelled around a little bit, visited Rio de Janeiro, Foz do Iguaçu and Florianópolis. The favelas, the…

by Diogo Almeida

A few years ago, I went on one of those terrible affairs known as “family vacations” with, well, my family. At the time this included both my parents and three cousins. Mind you that…

by Nicoletta-Laura Dobrescu

In 1998, I flew for the first time when I was a second-year university student. Many people may find it rather late for a first flight, but at the time nobody around me thought…

by Kobus Moolman

I recently spent two months as a guest of the English Department at the University of Calgary. I was on a sabbatical, completing work on my doctorate. Getting to Canada involved an almost twenty-hour…

by Kyle Talbot

My history with air travel has led to an increased loss of hair at a young age. I’ve been late for flights, delayed by flights, and even unintentionally abused by the people on flights.…

by Emily Roth

Until my first year away at college, I had not traveled out of the country. I had flown from Washington to Florida and yet never took the relatively short trip from my Washington hometown…

by Susan Vander Kooi

The turbulence started suddenly and I gripped the armrests and closed my eyes against my jarring reality. I was coming back home from a ten-week study program in the British Isles, and there was…

by Jessie Hodet

Birthdays are always a time for celebration. A couple of years ago my family and I had planned a fabulous cruise down the Mexican Riviera. My husband, our two kids, my mom, and my…

by Krystal Valle

Alaska Airlines claims the flight from Yakima, Washington, to Seattle is only about 43 minutes. This is a lie. The actual flight takes 17 minutes, but you end up spending more time on the…

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 Phyllis McKinley

“You go first, Nana, to break a path.” These are my instructions from six-year-old Josh. I plunk onto a sled in the sub-zero Canadian air with eight-year-old Rachel bundled in front of me. Off…

by Simone Ashby

It was 1996 and I was at the end of a two-week holiday in Malaysia from my teaching job in Korea. My employer had asked with no trace of humor that I return to…

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 Joe Bardin

While living in Tel Aviv, I received a call from a girl I’d had a weekend romance with in New York City after college. She invited me to meet her in Hawaii to celebrate…

by Roselle O'Brien

The sun was rising this morning when I pulled out of the parking lot. I stopped, shut off the headlights. They were the wrong illumination for the dawn’s tease of wild places lingering silent…

by Rita de Costa

Even if I didn't have my nacrolepsy under control by that point, I thought I knew what I was doing—I thought I could manage the flight and two plane changes. It was 1979, and…

by Tim Lantz

During the second sunrise of November 1, 2010, it occurred to me: Last night I was in a haunted house on the other side of the world. It was the second of three flights…

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 Bobby Fox

After a trip that embodied Ukraine’s unofficial motto (“Ukraine is not for the meek”), it came as no surprise that departing from the country was, in a word, difficult. Two days before my departure,…

by David A. Fitschen

2/28/98 Quantas Airways Seat 51H I could have started a few days before this, but I saw no point. The flight is now. Which makes it the day the tour starts. 11:21 p.m. I…

by Marisa Mangani

Twenty minutes into the flight and the plane’s ceiling tore open. Misty air fogged into the cabin. It had been a three-hour wait in the Miami airport for the connecting flight to the Dominican…

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 Kelly Bergin

The first hour is anxiety. The pot she smoked in short-term parking is wearing off and the panic becomes physical when she realizes that her medicine is packed in cargo, somewhere below her seat.…

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 Dolores Banerd

Here’s what you need to remember when you return from any trip: No one wants to hear your travel stories. No one. Not your doting parents who usually hang on your every word. Not…

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 Marcus Speh

Suddenly I remember my trip through the U.S. in 1980: no cells; the locked dials of the Bakelite phone next to the motel bed. 70s colors everywhere, today’s retro was still just yesterday then.…

by Sandra Gail Teichmann-Hillesheim

This new beaver stroller suits me, and I'm going to Chicago. Uncut guard hairs, and I know, too warm for the latitude where we live. The sales clerk coveted the cut and sheen, but…