Plane Terror

Just to disambiguate that title, for starters: my  terror  is not of planes themselves, nor of flying in them (in fact I love air travel), but of being too late for the flight in the first place - something which has never yet happened despite my several hundred journeys by air over half a century on business or holiday trips.

That hasn't stopped it from being the drama of my worst and most frequent dream/nightmare, and the only thing guaranteed to wake me up in a cold sweat. The scenarios vary but the outcome is always terrifyingly the same. A plane is leaving without me. I was supposed to be on it - and for whatever reason, I'm not.

 

leaving without me...

It's pretty tame fare, I know, compared to people who suffer from life-inhibiting phobias, repeated physical or emotional abuse, political, religious or cultural persecution, financial worries or destitution - but I can only write in 'confessional' mode (as opposed to fiction) about what I know, about my plane terror. 

There's the driving variant. Sometimes I dream that I'm stuck in stationary or slow-moving traffic on a motorway, miles from the airport, no chance of getting there in time. I've witnessed the angst of people arriving too late at check-in because that has happened to them and it's not pleasant. At others I take a wrong turning, get lost, there are no road-signs or directions to the airport, no clue as to where it might be until a plane thunders overhead and I know it's my flight winging away.

There's the forgotten documentation version. In this one I manage to arrive on time at the airport but minus passport and/or tickets for the flight. Again I've seen the distress this causes. "I thought you had the passports." "No, I thought you brought them."  Amazing but true. And unless you're VERY famous (Paul McCartney allegedly was once let through without one), there's nothing to be done but to turn round and go home.

There's the wrong day script. "Mr Rowland your ticket is for a flight that left yesterday" or "Sorry sir, this ticket is valid for tomorrow's flight", the latter less taxing than the former, obviously. From all of my years sitting in departure lounges, I've seen both of these happen at least once.

Finally there's the 'Oh my God is it today?' frightener. This, for some reason, is the most popular. In this dream I wake up late, realise that I should be at the airport imminently but haven't showered, packed, arranged transport or anything. What to do? Scramble to go through the motions of trying to get there on time although I know it's hopeless? Or phone in with some fabricated excuse? I usually wake up for real at this point, in considerable anguish.

...in a version of my nightmare

As I said at the outset, none of these calamities has ever befallen me in the waking world, so I don't know why I dream about them happening so often, even now when I no longer work or (during the Covid years) go abroad on holiday. 

As an amusing aside, I did some online searching for reasons why people dream about missing flights and came across a very helpful website titled Biblical Meaning of Airplanes in Dreams. It dispensed the following words of wisdom: "He showed wasps that people who dream of airplanes have a unique character and live a particular lifestyle." Moreover, "Everyone who dreams of airplanes is on an academic path that will give them the strength to understand themselves and their surroundings better." And "It is well known that if you dream of a plane, it means you are looking for absolute freedom, both mentally and physically. If you do not have enough space in marriage, family or work, the plane will indeed appear to you in a dream." Now that is a terrifying thought! 😆

To conclude, here's a poem from my 'frequent flier' period. I did post it once before in an early blog back in 2014, but most of you will not have read it, or will have forgotten by now. It refers to a time when flights weren't allowed to land at Heathrow before a certain time of day because of noise concerns. I don't know if the rule still applies.

Holding Pattern
We bank, turn left once more,
circling the city,
Weird Summer in my headphones,
weary to the core.
We’ve made good time
on this moonlit night,
riding the curve of earth on a jetstream,
Hollywood to Cricklewood,
and I long to be home,
but we’re just too early to arrive.

We swing to the west,
winging over twinkling grids,
familiar patterns of bosky dark and sodium light,
Wembley stadium, Neasden mosque,
there’s Regents Park and London Zoo,
traffic building up at Hangar Lane,
North Circular already like a clogged up vein.

Down Euston Road, past Centrepoint,
we cross the Thames again
by Vauxhall bridge.
This city never sleeps.
Its avenues and streets, circuses and squares,
malls and mews, benighted thoroughfares
are all exactly where they ought to be,
shadowy but pulsing, a living Gazetteer.

We round the kidney-shaped pond
in the park near where we live -
it shines like mercury in the dark.

At this turning point,
after six thousand miles of flight
I pass mere feet above your heads,
above the beds in which you sleep and dream
and yet it will be several hours still
until I finally reach home,
treading down the dawn to our door.
We bank, turn left once more…

Thanks for reading. I wish you a peaceful week, S ;-)