Saturday, October 10, 2009

What Happened to Kansas?

By now I'm sure there are a few people eagerly awaiting my arrival in Kansas, so they can direct me to the hilly bits where people know how to use pi correctly, or get me a tour of the Cessna factory. In my job, however, the fact that I have been told to go somewhere, that I have filed a flight plan, filled out a complicated webform, and advised customs officers of my intended arrival time never means that I actually went there. So no, I didn't go to Kansas. I pulled up the airline websitebooked a flight home instead.

Then I called back the US Customs people to say I wouldn't be coming after all. They couldn't find the e-form that said I was coming, so just as well. Then I called back flight services to tell them the flight was cancelled. "Mind if I ask why?" asked the specialist, in exactly the tone used by the guy at the newspaper when I told him I wanted to cancel my service forever. "The aircraft registration and certificate of airworthiness are missing," I explained. (To the FSS guy, not the newspaper guy. I cancelled the newspaper because the presence of a newspaper on my doorstep bore almost no relationship to the "vacation" status registered in their computer).

And then I took a cab to the airport, and flew home.

On the way I overheard a quintessential Canadian conversation comparing snow and rain, "In the snow it's cold but you can do things. In the rain you get all wet." Winter is coming. I don't remember if it was the same or different people who while discussing transit options came up with this arithmetical theory, "We could take the #44. Or we could take the #22 twice and maybe we'd get there."

Kansas, presumably, is still there, and maybe I'll get there later, too.

4 comments:

nec Timide said...

The aircraft registration and certificate of airworthiness are missing

Oh dear! What ever it is, it isn't yours, and it isn't an airplane. Aviation is a strange buisiness. A missplaced piece of paper is, for practical purposes, as bad as a missing wing. At least the documents should be less expensive, if not easier to replace than the wing.

A Squared said...

So, how long you reckon you've been flying around without a Airworthiness certificate and registration?

Aviatrix said...

Different plane. The PRM drove me from the plane with the broken cables to another city, where the plane with no documents was sitting in a hangar. I haven't flown it in ages, and it had docs then.

Frank Van Haste said...

Dear Trix:

I feel great sympathy for the poor bloke (or bloke-ette) who has to sort this out. If the aircraft is N-registered, it won't be easy.

As Donald Douglas said, "When the weight of the paper equals the weight of the airplane, only then you can go flying."

Regards,

Frank