AIR TRAVEL, SOMETIMES: PART 2 (PEOPLE + STORIES)

JUMP TO EXTRA GOOD

Hello (last Tuesday) from the Capital One lounge at DFW. I look toward the wide expanse of windows to check for the impending thunderstorm, and my neighboring lounger, who is typing away next to me, looks up and says, “It’s for a training exercise.”  My eye then catches the billowing black smoke, and I remember another Tuesday morning in this exact spot: for training purposes, a mocked-up plane at the southwest end of DFW is regularly set on fire, and then emergency teams work quickly to put it out (they seem solid!).  I appreciated his alert; his tone hovered ever so close to mansplaining, but I know from experience that the first time anyone sees this scene, they stand up and start reaching for their phones to call 911.  So I assume neighborliness instead, which is the best and least aggravating assumption to make when traveling.  Sometimes it might not be true, but sometimes it is, and I’ve had enough true times to know that it’s a good bet.

FIREFIGHTERS + EMERGENCY PERSONNEL: WE THANK YOU FOR YOUR RIGOROUS, CONTINUOUS TRAINING 🫡 !

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Our last post featured a long, running list of typical air travel inconveniences (which grew longer and longer the more I pondered: “Oh yeah, and that's another thing 🤨”), but then we shifted to the brighter and more pleasant aspects of airports and airplanes.  Today, we pull in a third element of air travel: the people, and by extension, the stories.  [Though occasionally, the people of air travel are not actually people:]

Air travel is a hub for stories because airports and airplanes are hubs for humanity. When I'm not preoccupied with arriving at my gate on time, I try to look around and remember that each person in sight has a story, and that many of those stories are co-mingling — sometimes colliding and other times collaborating — in the swarming airport spaces and in tight aircraft cabins. Writers and filmmakers know this intersecting junction is full of spark and drama, giving us lots of air travel material:

• Crazy Rich Asians (the glitteriest eye candy)

• Catch Me If You Can (with Leo DiCaprio's lost-soul long con)

• The Terminal (with country-less kind soul Tom Hanks)

• Bridesmaids (with Kristin Wiig's over-sedated, underfunded First Class-crashing)

• Wings (never saw it, but it ran for ten seasons!)

• Airplane! (the spoofiest spoof / not sure if I've ever seen the whole thing)

• The Rehearsal, Season 2 (C recommended this Nathan Fielder docu-comedy (??) about commercial aviation safety / high cringe, iffy ethics, and — at times — very interesting!)

• Non-Stop (Liam Neeson thriller — never)

• Snakes on a Plane (absolutely not)

• Flight (Denzel Washington as a troubled pilot — too intense / only made it through the first 15 minutes)

• Planes, Trains and Automobiles (the best movie couple ever: Steve Martin and John Candy — see their very LOL melted rental car scene from the Thanksgiving Is a Group Project post!)

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In real life, the people of air travel mostly get press when they are behaving very, very poorly — the TikToks of belligerent passengers, the Reels of cranky crews, the Twitter threads about passengers deliberately sitting in wrong but preferable seats. The stories go on and on and on.

When it comes to air travel, it’s easy to not be at our best.  In fact, given the relative anonymity of flying, combined with its sometimes-to-frequently miserable pressure points and personal-space intrusions, it may just seem easier not to be at our best.  At minimum, air travel becomes a signal to acceptably retreat into a headphoned bubble-space of self-containment (🙋‍♀️).  

But that's not the whole story, and today we are platforming the decent, the aware, the generous, the helpful, the honest, the compassionate, and the kind.  THEY EXIST 😇. And they do not need to make a profound megaphoned statement to make a difference. For example, when passengers are asked to remain seated to make way for travelers with tight connections AND THEY ACTUALLY DO, that’s a victory for humanity.  The same is true for:

• Taller people helping smaller people heave carry-ons up into the bins

• Seated passengers holding coffees as onboarding passengers manage their belongings

• Smiling and waving at babies who may or may not cry the whole flight through

• Awkward but neighborly acknowledgements of sharing of tight quarters

• Passengers giving local recommendations to fellow passengers

• Friendly pilots giving helpful updates. (This recent X-Twitter thread was so good.)

• Crew members looking out for solo kids, elderly travelers, and anyone with extra needs

• Crew members making routine announcements funny, entertaining, and/or more human

It all greases the wheels of graciousness, and that’s a very good thing.

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I’ve had several good air travel experiences stored up in my head — and there are also a few that recently made the news. Mine, especially, are not big stories; they are actually tiny, very contained vignettes that generally would not register beyond a dinner-table conversation.  But since I consider this website to be a dinner table-type forum, here we go:

PERSONAL GOOD IN AIR TRAVEL

Note: #3 and #4 are sad but also good

1. Turbulence 

Despite years of flying and all the rational explanations of turbulence as relatively harmless little air bumps on the highway of the sky, I remain afraid of this common phenomenon.  The roots of my fear formed on a flight in my young-married 20s from somewhere to Chicago’s O’Hare.  I was flying solo at nighttime, uncharacteristically in the aisle seat with a wide view of the cabin around me.  Maybe an hour before landing, the plane started bouncing like a piece of popcorn in an old Presto popper, but less enjoyably.  Even in those early flying days, I knew to assess the threat level of turbulence by looking around me: are my fellow passengers still peacefully doing their crossword puzzles?  Are the flight attendants still smiling and calm?  In this case, all my regular signals pointed to disaster.  

A large, bearded, lumberjack of a man was squeezed beside me in the middle E seat.  I think we had exchanged some quick small talk at the start of the flight and then assumed a respectably silent passenger-ship.  But at some point, as our circumstances and outlook cratered, I turned to him and plaintively asked, “CAN I HOLD YOUR HAND?”  And he immediately, graciously offered me his large left paw as goodbye tears streamed down my face.  For the rest of the flight, my hand remained tightly interlocked in his (does he still carry the dents from my fingers?) as he tried to lead a casual conversation in a very noble effort at distraction.  

I will never forget the generous comfort of human touch — and also his gallant disregard when I threw up in the seat-back airsick bag shortly before arrival.  You were a real one, my man.

2. THE Purse 

Here I am at Love Field in Dallas last spring, waiting by the baggage claim area windows for E to pick me up.  I plopped into a seat and noticed an older, somewhat weathered-looking man and woman discussing a small bag several open seats away from me.  They had discovered a purse that was missing its person.  Naturally, I started eavesdropping.  With an earnest practicality I immediately admired, they decided to ignore the many signs about not touching abandoned bags and alerting airport security ASAP.  And while they seemed hesitant to invade the bag’s internal privacy, they also had a problem to solve.  Carefully poking inside, they found a phone and discussed how to use it to find its owner.  Just as they held out the phone ready to take action, two middle-aged women quickly crossed the open space toward them, one being the purse’s person.  

My brain reflexively registered contrasts in the pairs — different races, different generations, other differences, too — and I wondered what would happen next.  Gratitude and humility are what happened next.  The purse owners immediately overflowed with appreciation and relief, instantly offering to pay for the purse-finders’ lunch.  The purse-finders shyly declined the reward and deflected the praise. The purse-people, smiling so widely, then HUGGED the purse-finders.  Tears filled up as I watched this suddenly personal and very human exchange in a space so accustomed to fleeting anonymity.  I took a little pic of the baggage claim tile floor to remember:

3.  Lounge EQ

Rick and I are in the very, very crowded American Airlines lounge at DFW on a short layover last fall.  We have only a few minutes to grab a snack and scout out seats.  Finally, we find two chairs in a corner, close to a fellow middle-aged man discussing business on his phone. 

You can tell a lot about a person by the way they talk when they don’t think anyone is paying attention.  I’ve rolled my eyes at some airport talkers — the slick talkers, the distracted talkers, the domineering talkers — but hearing this man’s tone and style (tight quarters/inevitable eavesdropping), I think, “This is someone we’d invite over for dinner.”  He seemed like a good listener.  He frequently said, “Buddy” in a friendly Texas way.  He had the aura of an all-around decent human being from my 60-second assessment.

As he continues his call, a tall man next to him stands and slowly walks a few steps toward an open area in front of us.  He looks stricken, tears collecting in his eyes.  Two women approach him from the entrance, their faces crumpling.  You just knew.  The three of them silently embraced; it was a deeply private, anguished moment in the middle of this tightly-packed, bustling public space.  As we start gathering our bags to catch our next flight, the phone guy looks up and takes in the scene.  He quickly finishes his call, snaps closed his laptop, gathers his belongings from his prized seat, and quietly scoots away, invisibly making space for the embraced group to sit together when ready.  

I took a pic of a nearby table to remember, but then I must have deleted it. But you can imagine.

Is this guy a hero?  Well, maybe not on a grand scale, but I do consider him a micro-hero (and imagine what our world would be like were it filled with micro-heroes/heroines on every corner, at every school board meeting, on every flight).  He saw a need and instantly — and nearly imperceptibly — created some gracious space.  His situational awareness and active response stay with me.

4. COMFORT + CARE 

It’s January 2017.  My dad is in a Dayton-area ICU, near the home of my younger sister’s family in Ohio.  His condition is serious and declining, and I have my ticket to fly from Seattle to join my sister’s family and be with him.  The day before my flight, we hear that my dad is rallying, and I imagine holding his hand while trying to regale him — he, our family storyteller who now had a tube blocking his voice — with stories to break the monotony of his long hospital days.  I just wanted to get there, fast.  

Very early the next morning, I am in my window seat just before take-off, and my phone silently rings.  I whisper-answer to avoid annoying the older woman sitting next to me, and I hear my sister gently telling me that my dad just passed.  I am too late.  Too, too late.

I press my face tightly against the cool, rain-splotched window, knowing my rising grief has no acceptable place to go.  I try so hard to disappear, to be silent, to curl into myself, to not draw any attention, to not hyperventilate, to not be sitting right there in that window seat when I want to be outside shrieking or howling or both.  So I think I am tricking everyone as I silently weep into the cold window. But grief must have a sort of radar signal; the small, white-haired woman next to me puts a hand on my arm and asks if everything is okay.

You know when you know you absolutely cannot start speaking for fear of what might happen next?  That was me at that moment.  First, saying it out loud would make it real, and it could not be real. Second, saying anything out loud risked a scene I might not be able to control.  So I just nodded yes, which meant no, which she instantly understood.  She leaned down, still wearing her little Patagonia jacket (of course, Patagonia: Seattle), to rummage through her bag on the floor.  She then rolled back up with an unopened pack of “bamboo and sugarcane” travel tissues (of course, bamboo and sugarcane: Seattle).  The pack was pristine, as though it were just waiting to be called into service for a moment such as this.   

As we flew the many hours east, I eventually found I could talk.  I cannot recall any details of our conversation, but I do remember telling her stories about my dad and also about my mom, who passed three years prior.  The talking became surprisingly easy, because there were so many stories to tell.  After we landed, I handed the half-empty tissue pack back to her with my sincerest thanks.  She said to keep it, which I did.  And still do.  It’s one last tangible link to my dad, and it somehow seems a little sacred. 

To this day, I think of the very, very kind Patagonia-and bamboo-tissues woman as my middle-seat angel, lending supplies, care, and comfort when I needed them most.

🩶

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NEWSWORTHY GOOD IN AIR TRAVEl

Every so often, a great plane story comes around. Back in 2018, we had the viral, play-by-play, live-Tweeting of a budding love story occurring one row behind the Tweeter. The privacy concerns are legit, but it was also very funny and charming! From the TODAY show:

"Modern Fairy Tale! Matchmaker Passengers Detail Viral Airplane Love Story"

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And last month, we learned about two off-duty paramedics who, after assisting another passenger with a medical issue on a Delta flight from Atlanta to Portland, then shifted to helping a woman GIVE BIRTH to a healthy baby girl. They improvised MacGyver-style, using blankets belonging to passengers for privacy and bundling and SHOELACES to tie off the umbilical cord and make a tourniquet to start an IV 🤯.

"It was really nice," said paramedic Tina Fritz. “Baby pinked up right away. She was gorgeous. Mom was a rock star ... I feel like we’re friends now forever.” Talk about rock stars: Fritz and fellow paramedic Kaarin Powell each deserve a set of golden Delta wings and so much more. From CNN:

"Baby on Board: Paramedics Help Passenger Give Birth Just Before Delta Flight Lands"

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AND SAVING THE BEST FOR LAST:

Also in April, a Southwest Airlines flight attendant on a route from Dallas to San Diego made the following announcement:

“Today we do have a very special passenger on board … we have a young hero named Cruz who is 2 years old,” Carolyn Gallagher said. “He has been battling a very rare form of cancer and he is now officially cancer free.”

After the announcement, given with permission by Cruz's parents, flight attendant Gallagher then invited passengers to write notes of support for Cruz and his family on napkins passed out by the crew. According to Gallagher, of the 160 on board, every single passenger who was awake wrote an encouraging note or poem, many with doodles and artwork for extra pizzazz.

This article from The Optimist newsletter via The Washington Post is so worth your time to read. Best of luck getting through it without heaving:

"A Flight Full of Strangers Celebrated This 2-Year-Old’s Cancer Recovery"

This short NBC News video is very uplifting, too:

*Southwest Airlines provided the flight from NYC to Dallas and then Dallas to San Diego to Cruz and his parents at no cost through a partnership with Children’s Flight of Hope, a nonprofit that coordinates free air transportation for medically-complex children and their caregivers. Life-changing support!

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The clearest theme emerging in all the stories above is CONNECTION ... and connection especially when our cramped, crunched, and cranky circumstances on a plane or at the airport set the stage for the opposite.

The first words of the headline for Cruz's story above are "A Flight Full of Strangers ...". Air travel — and so much more — invites a shift from stranger to fellow human to participant in a new story with every flight. And who doesn't love a great story?!

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EXTRA GOOD

ALSO LINKED THROUGH THE EXTRA GOOD PAGE HERE

SUNDAY, MAY 31, 2026

1._GOOD-NATURED: You might still be wrecked from the Cruz/napkin-passing story above. Take all the time you need ... and when you've collected yourself, you can turn your attention to Bumpy.

Bumpy, if you don't already know, is the orphaned hippopotamus rehabilitating and bonding/snuggling/frolicking with his caretakers at the Sheldrick Kaluku Nursery in Kenya until he is healthy enough to join other hippos, perhaps along the Athi River.

As noted in the delightful Washington Post article below, "the young hippo appeared to capture an emotion bigger than he is." Angela Sheldrick, chief executive of the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, says:

“Bumpy is just what the world needed. He is like a tonic, this vulnerable, enchanting, lovely creature.”

For more Bumpy joy that's not to be missed, here's the full article:

"How Bumpy the Orphaned Hippo Sparked Joy Amid Tragedy"

🦛

FINALLY: THANK YOU, GENEROUS READERS, FOR CONTRIBUTING TO MALLORY COLLEY'S GOFUNDME IN SUPPORT OF HER 3-YEAR-OLD SON WITH WILMS TUMOR, A PEDIATRIC CANCER OF THE KIDNEYS. I WROTE ABOUT THEIR STORY IN EXTRA GOOD HERE, AND YOU CAN STILL GIVE TO THEIR FAMILY RIGHT HERE. THANKS, ALL!

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SEE YOU HERE NEXT TIME FOR

ANOTHER BATCH OF GOOD

😀