Fly By

While boarding the 09:00 flight to Tinsen Pen in Kingston, I could not help but wonder.

“Why”, I wondered, sure that this was a correct way to begin a statement expressing wonder, “why?” Why do I ever have to fly, let alone the fact that this flight will be on another Shorts (ooh, and on the big forty seater this time!)?

I really hate this flight, in part, because I hate to fly. Oh, sure, it is tolerable on most occasions, but to me, the experience is too much like a bus ride, not those super deluxe monsters full of crying babies and boredom that ply the intercity routes, but the smoky, rattly, crowded and musty contraptions that assail the intracity routes, full of elbows and stinky humans. That is what I hate about flying (besides the projectile hurling), and it is the same thing I hate about crowds,... the people.

Today, I was joined in transit by just less than a dozen only slightly stinky German tourists and their Jamaican guide (just enough for a cricket team). All of them armed with cameras and the latest in digital video gear. Then there were a couple of Asian couples, also on vacation it appeared, as they were very casually dressed and had that tourist look to them (after a couple of years here, you can begin to pick them out). Besides me, only a half dozen business types.

As is the norm, the flight was delayed, first for fifteen minutes, then for another twenty, then for an additional twenty. In the beginning, the airline claimed the mysterious “mechanical problems”, and later explained that they were changing the tyres on the plane. First they changed one, then decided they had better have a matched set, so they scrounged up a spare for the other side, then decided that they really should replace the nose wheel as well, so they had to do the scrounging act again. In the end, we were an hour late for a half hour flight.
The tourists did not seem to mind.

I spent some of the time waiting with the executive chef for one of the all-inclusives. He is also a neighbour. Magic Johnson walked through the commuter terminal on his way from the flight line to somewhere else. Some of the contractor’s people were there as well, waiting for others of the contractor’s people to fly in from Kingston. Eventually, Chef bummed a ride on a four-seater prop plane that a passing friend was taking to the First City and I was left with my Gleaner and it’s too easy crossword.

I got to Kingston an hour late, but still an hour early for my meeting, so there was no rush, and I found a rogue Company guy to catch up with as I passed some of the time, filling the rest with some work that was prepackaged on the machine, my friend and constant companion.

Meetings over, I made it back to Tinsen Pen again later in the afternoon, with time enough to spare to suck down a barley pop, conveniently purchased at the awful airport restaurant. I consumed the refreshing domestic lager at my most favorite departure lounge in the whole world. Outside the ticketing counter, it lies on the same asphalt slab as the planes. The seating consists of two rows of five or six tiers totaling fifty or sixty not altogether uncomfortable plastic chairs bolted to the pavement, where we wait under an expanse of corrugated metal roofing. A one meter chain link fence is all that secures and separates me from the aircraft parked around the tarmac. Under the tin, there is shade and a little breeze, and a rapidly emptying bottle of Red Stripe, outside the tin is a hot and dusty aerodrome, with the typical afternoon Kingston haze settling in from all sides.

Again, the tourists abound. There is a new team of Germans, with a German tour guide this time. The Asians seem to be returning on this flight as well, although only half of them I remember from this morning. Again, only a few business types and, more typically, no celebrities, unless you count the Minister of Education as a celebrity. I note in the baggage being loaded that there is a new set of airplane tyres, no doubt to replace those taken out of the Sangster inventory this morning.

Tinsen Pen is a small airport. When you land there, you hit the ground hard, and in my mind’s eye, I can see both pilot and co- standing with both feet on the brakes, doing their best to stop the plane before we run off into the cane field beyond the terminus of the runway. When they make the turn at the end, we are usually less than fifty meters from vegetation.

Takeoff from Tinsen Pen is less frightening, but more uncomfortable. Kingston is hot in the late afternoon. The air is thick. Thick with city stench and tropical humidity. The plane must plow through this to get airborne. Also working against the plane is the short runway, new sticky tyres, and a really huge guy in the first row. To allow for these factors, the crew turns off all of the interior ventilation, saving everything for acceleration. Again, the boys stand on the brakes, while they ramp up the throttle to 110% percent, or at least to the point where the whole plane is shaking, accompanied by the scream of the turboprops and an uncomfortable and heavy buzzing sound radiating from the right nacelle, located just next to my head.

Then we are off and running, then off the ground and flying into the late afternoon thermals which give the plane a little shake and shimmy which does not go away until we rise to 1000 meters or so, on our way to 2500 meters, at which point we begin our descent.

“Champaign?” asks the sky waitress, clutching the half empty bottle from the last flight and a handful of quarter dram plastic cups.

“Flat sparkling wine?” I am tempted to reply, but am really in no mood to deal with such trivialities.

Once more back in Montego Bay, feet on the ground, my only loss to a day wasted in meetings and flying, and the drive back through town to home ain’t too bad. And in all, it all irie.