Airplane Readings

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by Catherine. Dube

The Red KiteMilo found a red kite tangled in the old mango tree behind his house. Its tail was torn, and one wooden stick had snapped. He almost threw it away, but something about its bright color made him carry it insid...

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47 stories match your filters.

Airplanes

Clear Air Turbulence

by Carole Greenfield

There is so much about flying that she loves. When the turbulence dissolves and the plane is flying smoothly again. She's never taken drugs but te...

Airplanes

We Live in Turbulence Times

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 mastica...

Airports

My Gypsy Soul

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 acr...

Airports

Pre-Flight Fright

by Jade Arvizu

It’s going to be different this time. You’ll be ok. Breath. Don’t be afraid! Don’t cry! This is my travel mantra. Internally o...

Airplanes

Playlist in the Event of a Water Landing

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 d...

Trips

Island to Island

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 pre...

Death

Rekindled

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...

Airplanes

The Day I Die

by Georgia Knapp

The locals were wrapped in parkas, hats, and gloves. Anna and I wore t-shirts, jeans, and cardigans slung across our arms. It was early afternoon. The...

Airplanes

Diaries Of A (Slightly) Deranged Traveler

by Benjamin Rietema

As I writing these words, I’m sitting in a small aluminum tube about 38,000 feet above the frigid waters of the Pacific—where I’m su...

Airports

O'Horror at O'Hare

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 monitor...

Airports

Unaccompanied

by Lisa Kay Adam

As our flight lifted over the city, he thought he could pick out which house was his friend's, the one with the swimming pool—among house af...

Airplanes

Planes, Chutes, and Mortar Shells

by Greta Foltos

Not many people are willing to jump out of a plane with nothing but some cloth and string strapped to their backs. Of those who are willing, almost al...

Airplanes

Fear, In a Manner of Speaking

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...

Airplanes

My Mother’s Presence in the Universe

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...

Airplanes

Permission to Fly

by Kurt Mullen

One thing nice about space is it keeps going.                  &n...

Airplanes

The Nameless and Handsy Italian Man

by Hannah Griggs

Let me start out by expressing how much I hate flying. Three years ago I had a bad experience falling from a cliff while on vacation, leaving me with...

Airplanes

Run

by Mar Scheerer

Use your breath as a guiding force for movement and transformation. Breath. Movement. Transformation. I closed my eyes. I was on the plane, unsure if...

Airports

Panic On Board

by Bárbara Sorger

My mother used to work in a publishing house that had three magazines related to Africa and Brazil. Once a year there used to be a party in one of the...

Airplanes

NAS to BWI

by Monica Aust

I’ve been flying all my life; in fact, I even flew in utero, when my mother was pregnant with me, when all I’d ever known at that point wa...

Airplanes

Everything Will Be Fine

by Jordan Tyler

We are making a trip from Dallas to Palm Springs for a national powerlifting meet. In the Phoenix airport, our layover stop, we are about to board. I...

Airplanes

Bird’s Eye View

by Kelly Ross

Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to...

Airplanes

The Airplane God Doesn’t Mind Me

by Jourdyn McClain

Orville and Wilbur Wright had their first successful experiment with the airplane on December 17, 1903. Today the airplane is not perfect or anywhere...

Airplanes

Fears and Affections

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...

Airplanes

In-Flight Connection

by Jane Blakeley

On a connecting flight from Tallahassee home to Kansas City, I fell in love. Or, rather, I was coming from one love and rebounding into the thin, synt...

Airplanes

Up, Up, and Away

by Sharon Kurtzman

For the last 16 years, my husband has spent about a third of each year traveling for business. The kids and I miss him when he’s gone and t...

Airplanes

Holding Hands with Strangers

by Suzy Eynon

I treat the date of travel printed on my flight itinerary as an expiration date. I always manage to board the plane, but the fear stews, seeping out i...

Airplanes

Flush Away the Fear of Flying

by Scott Saalman

My great-great uncle, Joe Reed, was a wing walker in the 1920s. He also did loop-the-loops, barrel rolls and hung from planes' axles. Uncle Joe wa...

Airports

Airplane Drinking

by Sara Elle

My name is Sara and I’m an alcoholic; I did some of my best drinking on airplanes.  By the time I was eighteen, I had a fake ID, a rich boy...

Airplanes

It Happened One Bastard Winter...

by Pearu Unga

I hate flying. My two-hour and ten-minute flight to Prague seemed to last for at least half a day. But then I had been awake all night and your brain...

Airplanes

Ukrainian Airlines

by Bobby Fox

When I arrived at the gate for connecting flight from Germany to Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, it was clear I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. The crowded w...

Airports

You Are Now Free to Go Fuck Yourself

by Jonathan Small

*DING* “Uh, well folks, looks like our trusty little, uh, navigator here, well, she seems to be pointing us in, uh, the wrong way here, so, we&r...

Airports

Returning to the Water

by Marisa Mangani

It’s August and I’ll be fifty in nine days. We’re at the Tampa Airport, checked in and sitting at the bar for a breakfast rum drink...

Airplanes

Extreme Turbulence

by Bryan Batt

Over the past several years, I have become quite the frequent flyer, more so than I ever would have thought given the history of my fear of flying. La...

Airplanes

There's Always Hope

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 a...

Airplanes

Mother Tongue

by Alex Pruteanu

"I'm not religious," she says. "You know me...live and let live...whatever you believe is okay with  me." Her favourite c...

Airplanes

Taking Off

by Taylor Phelps

As a fifth grade boy only months away from the start of middle school, I did my best to mask fear from others hoping to appear as the man I so despera...

Airplanes

First Flight

by Jacob Rodell

We have our special first times which might include our first day of school, first kiss, first time driving, and the infamous first haircut. One of th...

Airplanes

Conquering My Fear

by Payton Moreland

Years ago, when I was an eighth grade student in middle school, I was given the opportunity to be a part of a trip that would go to Spain. After raisi...

Airlines

O’ What a Lovely Flight

by Mike Duggan

Ryanair: Oh where to do I begin, Mr. O'Leary? Your airline appears to be a joke at every passenger’s expense. You're not kidding anyone....

Airplanes

Rituals

by Anastasia Nicole Simon

I was raised Catholic so I carry several coin sized medals in my wallet depicting saints, the Virgin Mary, and Jesus Christ, more like a superstitious...

Airports

Going Home to Strangers

by Ramona Scarborough

I almost missed my connecting flight to Omaha due to a delay at the Portland airport. Quickly seating myself, I noticed a large, swarthy turbaned man...

Airports

Separation Anxiety

by Allyson Goldin Loomis

Before I get on an airplane, I prepare to die. My terror cannot be assuaged by anyone’s quoting safety statistics, the laws of physics, or the t...

Airports

Have a Safe Flight

by Michael Howarth

It’s only during the past ten years that I’ve developed an intense fear of flying. I do realize that my chances of dying in a plane crash...

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