A coworker and I traveled to Kentucky for business. To save $400 on each ticket, we flew into Louisville and drove the 100 miles up to Cincinnati.
On the way home, our flight left 43 minutes late. The pilot apologized and said that usually, he would try to make up some of that lost flight in the air. But, he continued, that wouldn’t be possible on this particular flight because the airplane was missing a gear door.
This was a bit startling. My first reaction was to glance down at the paperback I was reading — No Highways, by Nevil Shute. The tagline on the cover reads “Hours of breath-stopping suspense aboard a plane with a fatal flaw.”
My next thought was whether we would be scattering luggage and such all over greater Indiana.
And then I reflected that perhaps, if you don’t pay full price for your ticket, you can’t reasonably expect to get the entire airplane.