Nervous Passenger, Party of One

I have friends who are scared of flying. Some don’t even like riding in cars. You might call them nervous passengers. I’ve experienced being in a car with someone whose driving made me question my life choices, but I’ve never felt that way with Chad—whether he’s behind the wheel or at the yoke. With him, I’ve always felt things were totally under control.

When I’m in the right seat of the plane, I tend to keep an eye on the screen for nearby traffic. It’s not that I don’t trust Chad—I do. I just don’t extend that trust to other pilots. The more I’ve learned about altitudes and navigation, the less I interrupt Chad with questions like, “Why are we flying straight at that other plane?” or “Shouldn’t we be the ones going up?” I still don’t love it when the two little triangles cross paths on the screen, but I’ve learned one could be 20,000 feet above us and not, in fact, aiming for our windshield.

Last night, however, tested just how not-nervous a passenger I truly am.

The South Carolina Trial Lawyers had their annual conference down in Hilton Head. This is a conference we used to attend religiously as a family, but in recent years, Chad’s had scheduling conflicts—or just found CLEs with better snacks. Last year, we had the genius idea to fly down just for the firm dinner. We took the PC-12, had a lovely meal, and were feeling very smug about our fly-in/fly-out plan—until the plane wouldn’t start for the return leg. After some late-night scrambling, we ended up cramming ourselves—Chad, Randy, Elisa, Jordan, and me—into a rental sedan and driving back home, pulling into the driveway at 3 a.m., feeling not so much like jet-setters and more like a very tired clown car act.

But because we are either eternal optimists or slow learners, we tried it again this year but in the Vision Jet. Same plan: fly down, eat, fly back. And this time we were successful, we made it there and back. But “success” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

We took off from Rock Hill around 5 p.m. into light rain. Monroe is usually just a six-minute hop away, but a Cessna with engine trouble needed to land, so ATC asked us to circle while they cleared the way. We did lazy loops in a giant cloud for 15 extra minutes—listening on the radio, nervously rooting for the poor little Cessna while also wondering if we were going to be the second act in a very depressing double feature. All we could see out the windows was gray. Solid gray. It felt less like travel and more like a trust fall with the universe.

We finally landed, picked up Randy, and headed for Hilton Head. Once we got above the clouds, it was gorgeous—sunlight so bright I had to pull out my sunglasses and protect my eyeballs from what I can only assume was heaven itself.

But air traffic control wasn’t exactly operating at peak performance. As we approached Hilton Head, he overshot us, asked us to speed up while we were slowing down, then casually tossed out a “sorry about that” when he realized his mistake. Very reassuring.

Still, Chad handled it all with his usual calm, and I watched him do his thing. But between the murky skies, the improvisational air traffic coordination, and the growing sense of running behind schedule, I felt myself creeping into nervous passenger territory. Thankfully, nothing a glass of wine and a good meal couldn’t fix.

The firm dinner was at Red Fish. Cam, still home from school, asked if he could come too. We said sure—there’s always room, right? Wrong. Turns out the dinner had grown and when we walked in, it was clear we were one chair short of a fire code violation. The restaurant did their best, but this was not going to be a quick meal. Chad and Randy were hoping for a two-hour turnaround, tops. Two and a half hours later (plus ten bonus minutes), we were still finishing up.

Now I’m doing mental math about how fast we need to get back to the FBO before it closes at 10. We made it just in time, Chad ran through his checklists, we loaded in, and off we went—back into the rainy gray night. There was a full moon, which might’ve been romantic if it hadn’t been hiding behind us and reflecting off the clouds in the eeriest, ghost-story kind of way.

Once airborne, I tried to relax. But it was quiet—too quiet. There was almost no chatter on the radios, which made it feel like we were flying through some kind of purgatory. It was so quiet, I started to wonder if we’d accidentally tuned into the ‘lonely pilot hour’ on NPR (which was off the air because it lost it’s funding). 

The good news? The Vison Jet flew beautifully. No turbulence—which was fortunate, considering I’d had a full dinner and a glass of wine, and did not need an upset stomach joining the party. Still, it wasn’t my most relaxing flight. I’ve been more at ease while dodging thunderstorms in daylight than cruising smoothly in a nighttime cloud cocoon.

So yes, in conclusion: I guess I am a nervous passenger… but only when it’s night, raining, foggy, quiet, we’re late, and air traffic control seems to be playing a game of “guess who’s coming to dinner.”

Other than that—I’m totally chill.