Since we're all talking about planes...

I am not a fan of aeroplanes, though I do like the bit where they get you to somewhere else.  It's the part in the sky I don't like. I have a couple of friends who are pilots, and one of them is especially enterprising in finding clever ways to chuckle at me and my irrational fear. As a military-turned-commercial pilot himself, he naturally doesn't share my freakish nambiness about planes,( although a rather fun scenario if he did, surely: "Cabin crew prepare for take off, wooooooooo-aaahhhhhhhhh ... ".  He should fake this, on his last day.) I once phoned him in a blue funk just before boarding for a longhaul, and got told, with audible relish, "Hmmm, it WILL probably be fine - the only really dangerous bit is take off. And landing." Anyway, last summer, we sat over several bottles as he regaled me with stories of  "really scary flightpaths".  With full knowledge that I have to fly there every February if I want to ski, he went sly and decided the Scariest of them all was Definitely Innsbruck.  "It's a bit tricky to find a clear path through the mountains," he said, eyes alight with faked awe "Even the pilots who are specially trained to do it just close their eyes and hope."

Now.  Of course I know this isn't true.  But this year, as we screeched up through some vicious winds and skidded over the Alps on our way back home, his words replayed again in my head. I haven't told him yet, as I'm sure he would merely be wickedly delighted. 

On this particularly horrible occasion, the captain came over the intercom and said "Ooh, it might be a bit bumpy!"  and that is not what I want when flying out of Innsbruck.  I don't want a surprised sounding, young pilot using words like "oooh" and "bumpy". I want a relaxed-yet-serious pilot of almost fifty, whose voice reassures you of blue eyes and grey hair and a weekend tennis habit. He needs to be called James.  And he needs to use clever sounding adjectives, suggesting top level education and a well-read personality. I think this pilot said his name was Steve, and I'm sorry to all the Steves I know, but for me, that is absolutely No Good At All. (I mustn't even think about women pilots.  I still try to cling to the shreds of my  former feminist fervency, and they would not survive any admission that I would probably get off the plane ...).  All in all, I need to know the guy at the front in the slidy seat firstly fits my stereotype ideal, secondly really knows what he is doing and finally isn't going to do loops for a bit of a laugh.

You see, I can't be sure that all pilots wouldn't.  I'm not convinced that pilots don't have a very distinct naughty streak.  The ones I know certainly do. And on long flights there must surely be a lot of time for sitting back and scheming up japish pranks.   I've heard tales of a captain called Alistair who decided to announce himself more gutturally as Ali after 9/11 for "extra frisson". I know a pilot who sauntered out into the main cabin to pull up a bit of carpet and see whether the wheels were down, and then, after one of those brace-brace-brace landings (the ones they warn you of on those cards with the odd drawings of smiling people about to crash) he said he thought the passengers who'd talked to the press about their near-death horror flight must have been a "bit drippy".  So either pilots are cut from  much sterner stuff than us, or they are genuinely just rattling with loosened screws.

In any case, I can imagine my devilish pilot-friend-in-the-north doing something like this.  You know who you are.