Under the Wire

The old ranch house television set was abuzz awhile back over the tragic crash of two airplanes that may have had similar malfunctions leading to their crashes. While most “Under The Wire” columns rarely begin with such a somber beginning, stick with me, this will make sense very soon.

These tragedies have left a black mark on air travel and a lot of red ink on some airplane manufacturer’s balance sheets. That said, I just came home after seeing a sight that renews my faith in the aviation industry’s resourcefulness.

On my way from Brush to nearby Akron, I passed a train parked on the tracks just outside of town. Certainly not an uncommon sight, what the train was moving across country was. Midway between box cars, huge shipping containers and flat beds full of who knows what, were four extra-long flat beds, each loaded with an entire airplane body, minus wings and tail feathers. Windows, captains cockpit, all else looked ready to take off. Then it hit me.

I may have just had the idea of the century. “They’ve got these planes that may or may not be safe to put in the air, fully equipped with seats, magazines in the pouch on the back of each seat, beverage trays, maybe even the little bags of peanuts have been loaded. Why not go ahead and sell tickets. The trains have stations along the way to board passengers, who cares if they are being transported at 10,000 feet or just barely off the ground?” If something goes a bit wrong they can stop and let folks jump into the grass along the tracks or just order another beverage and wait for a mechanic to come fix what’s wrong.

So it takes a little longer. Who cares? Have friends meet you half way, get in their car and probably beat the train to your destination anyway. I can just imagine the take-off procedures.

“Good morning everyone,” the very competent voice on the loud speaker begins, “I’m Justin Time. I’ll be your engineer today. We will be traveling at somewhere between nine and 70 miles per hour at an elevation of 12 feet. Your attendants will be going over our emergency measures, mostly involving cattle on the tracks, which we always stop for plus what you should do if there is need for an over water emergency landing. Just kidding. We are in Eastern Colorado. Not much chance of that!”

“Our arrival time should be somewhere between noon Tuesday and late Thursday, depending on how long it takes to unload the corn in the grain cars directly in front of you. Thank you for flying … er … traveling with ‘OnTracks-sort of-airlines,’ where our motto is ‘We never let you down.’ Seriously.”