The Mile Higher Club: the Airways

(create bibliography page, include Metrolink)

Since September 11th, 2001--though one barely needs to mention the year--your average traveller has noticed an insane upgrade of security measures. It's understandable, certainly, but to the leisure traveller it's an imposition. It's hard to get away from it all when you're taking off your shoes among complete strangers, getting eyed and x-rayed and even virtually stripped by the new machine that some airports use to make sure you're not carrying anything even remotely like a weapon. It's shocking, to the casual flyer.

To a different type, well, it's a bother. There are the air commuters, that handful of souls for whom a commercial jet ride is no more interesting than driving an hour to work. He's learned what to pack and what not to pack, and in turn the concierges have learned what to include in his hotel room. The security, like anything else, is just something to be adapted to on the way to your meeting.

These hardy souls (like the train commuters on which I've based them) know their captains by name and consider their flight attendants and fellow commuters something like friends. They know each other in the way that urban dwellers often know each other--warmly but not intimately. Shared hobbies, sure, and a few become friends in the cities where they land. But in the air, they're...neighbors.