"Do you want the window seat?" my wife kindly asked as we finally reached our row toward the rear of a Frontier flight.
"I do!" I said, then, recovering, "You can have it on the way back."
There is a certainly childishness to gazing out the window during airplane trips. One that I've never outgrown. I not only gaze at the clouds all around and the landscape far below. Sometimes I'll even exude "We're flying!"
Because most people never will.
On my recent flight to Denver, I also had this colorful woodpecker on the winglet—the proper name for the turned up portion on the wing that decreases drag—to keep me company.
The bird helped. Otherwise, it was a typical full, charmless flight, the kind that really underscores the "bus" in an "Airbus 320." The typical, out-of-left-field mishaps. Someone on Frontier messed up the security check or, rather, misplaced the paperwork, and after all the passengers had finally filed on, we were immediately told to begin filing off, and half the plane was emptied before a pilot finally noticed the documents where they shouldn't have been, tucked behind a visor.
To make matters worse, the flight attendant working the microphone fancied himself a comedian, and kept up a steady patter that was supposed to be funny—he welcomed the Denver-bound passengers to our flight to Salt Lake City—but quickly began to sound somewhat unhinged.
After we took to the air, in a very turbulent flight, I took comfort that somebody at the Denver-based budget airline had the graphic sense and presence of mind to add this avian companion. About a dozen years ago, as it turns out. It made up for the glitch when leaving and its companion snafu arriving, as the plane was left five feet short of the gate, causing another delay.
I hadn't seen the entire plane on the way in. On the way out, I saw this row of Frontier jets. Obviously, the animal graphics is a Thing at Frontier. Good call. Now if they could only perfect the whole filing-security-check paperwork Thing.
