Ask the pilot

Remember the sense of awe you used to feel on an airplane ride? Where did it go? Plus: The lowdown on that "filthy" and "germ-laden" cabin air.

By Patrick Smith

Read more: Technology & Business, Flying, Airplanes, Bacteria, Business, P. Smith, Ask the Pilot

March 9, 2007 | If the feedback from my last two columns has taught us anything, it's that people really, really don't like to fly. With that on the table, try to imagine the following:

You wake up early for the 45-minute subway ride to Logan International Airport in Boston. The shuttle bus brings you to Terminal C, where you stand in line to be frisked and X-rayed before reaching an overcrowded departure lounge. Half an hour later your flight pushes back, languishes in a taxiway queue for several minutes, then finally takes off. So far this is nothing exceptional, but here's the twist: The plane's scheduled destination is, well, Boston. The jet never climbs to more than 10,000 feet. It makes a lazy circuit above the North Shore coastline, swings eastward toward Cape Cod, then circles west in the direction of Logan. Fifteen minutes later, the landing gear clunks into place, and just like that you're back where you started. You disembark, with smiles and handshakes all around, head for the shuttle bus, and take the subway home again.

To most of you that doesn't sound like a terribly fun morning, but what if I told you that once upon a time, not only did thousands of people willingly endure this, but they actually paid for the privilege? It was the late 1970s, and I was one of those people.

The flights were yearly fundraisers, hosted by different carriers on behalf of local charities. In '78, I remember, it was the Boy Scouts of America. A year later it was the Jimmy Fund, an organization dedicated to pediatric cancer research (and best known for its partnership with the Boston Red Sox baseball team). People paid 10 or 15 bucks for a ticket. Flights left hourly, all day long, with each ride lasting about 25 minutes. For the airlines, maybe, it was an IRS write-off, but the crews worked for free.

At the time I was 13, maybe 14 years old, but this wasn't just for schoolchildren. My friends and I, along with many of our parents and teachers, spent weeks looking forward to it. On board, the crowd would be a mix of first-time fliers, airplane buffs and regular people looking for an unusual way to spend their Saturday.

I did it three times. The first, in 1978, was on board an Air New England FH-227, a 50-seat turboprop. I still have several photographs, snapped through one of the plane's giant, 19-inch oval windows, showing snaky brown marshlands and the contours of Revere Beach from 5,000 feet. (My camera was a brown Kodak Instamatic no bigger than a deck of cards. I took so many adolescent airplane pics with the damn little camera that I can vividly recall the feel of its thumb-driven film winder.) Seated just aft of the plane's high-mounted wing, I remember the sight of the landing gear folding backward into the engine nacelle and the puff of white smoke on touchdown.

Next it was a TWA Boeing 707. That was a Jimmy Fund flight, and my first and only ride in a 707. While aloft, passengers stood in the aisle and were escorted, two at a time, onto the flight deck.

And the last one -- I'm thinking 1980 -- was with Eastern Airlines on an Airbus A300. Together with four friends, I splurged for two flights that day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, at $10 apiece. That's what we did with our Christmas money. Eastern was the first U.S. carrier to fly the wide-body A300, which had two seats on either side and four across the center. We pressed to the front of the line in order to snag windows. By the time they closed the doors, every seat on that plane, middle rows and all, was taken. A popular local disc jockey sat in one of the cockpit jump seats, broadcasting live during takeoff and landing. On touchdown, everybody clapped.

Much has changed in a quarter-century. For one, all three of those carriers are gone now: TWA into American; Eastern into Frank Lorenzo's toilet; Air New England, whose planes were once as common around here as pigeons, into some obscure oblivion that even I can't remember. And the entire premise, of course -- shelling out cash for a flight to nowhere, and actually being excited about it -- will strike most people as ludicrous.

A form of these flights still exists, albeit not marketed to the average citizen, and for considerably steeper fares. In Europe, agencies arrange trips for airplane junkies, who pay hundreds of dollars to experience a round-robin journey aboard this or that unusual airliner. But what's missing is the public's sense of awe, the shared thrill of going for an airplane ride.

Where it went, of course, both for better and for worse, is into the maw of deregulated skies. Jimmy Carter put his name to the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, and shortly thereafter these charity junkets began disappearing. Airlines were no longer willing to volunteer their employees or equipment, and it wouldn't be long before passengers themselves, flying in ever-greater numbers, no longer savored the thrill. In came cutthroat competition and cheap tickets, out went the novelty of flying. The first-time flier is today a rare bird, the enthusiastic flier all but extinct.

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Q: Could you clear the air, as it were, regarding one of the most common water-cooler topics pertaining to flying: the quality of cabin air. We hear lots of anecdotal talk about how filthy and germ-laden it is.

"Filthy" and "germ-laden" are two of the milder descriptors used in popular reference to cabin air. A scan through some of my letters reveals these as well, used alone or, more commonly, in a long, multi-adjective chain: rotten, disgusting, wretched, skanky, rancid, putrid, fetid and fart-filled. And legion are the accounts of travelers allegedly made deathly ill by microscopic pathogens circulating through a plane. There is also the notion, similar to the myth about reducing the amount of oxygen, tackled here a couple of weeks ago, that crew members tinker with airflow in efforts to save fuel. But despite what people think, and despite the lies and nonsense put forth by "advocates" like Diana Fairechild (almost nothing on this page, for example, is accurate), the air is surprisingly clean and fresh.

Next page: You're better off with dry, cleaner air than damp and more germy air