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I put my bags up on the belt for a quick scan, but other than that, it was a lot easier than going through the normal line. My shoes were not on the belt. My electronics didn’t have to sit in their own bin. And we were able to get through the metal detector quickly enough.
We grabbed our bags on the other side of the line, and then Mr. Delaney turned to me.
“If you want anything from any of the shops, now is the time to grab it. Once we get to my hangar, there’s no turning back for soda, food, or anything. We’re not on an incredibly tight schedule, but we do have a long walk.”
“I’d like a coffee.”
Mr. Delaney nodded. We both went to a small coffee shop, and we each got a small cup of coffee. It was far too early in the morning for me to function properly, and I had a feeling I wouldn’t be able to sleep on this flight. I normally could on a commercial flight, but this was just too new of an experience for me to be able to sleep through.
Once we both had coffee in hand, Mr. Delaney motioned for me to follow him. He walked to one of the doors marked ‘employees only.’
I readjusted my duffel bag so that the straps ran over my shoulders like a backpack. It wasn’t the smartest way to hold these, but I needed one of my hands free. Without the bag bumping into my thighs, preferably, as I held it on my elbow with my coffee in that hand.
“Can I go through this door?”
“It’s the best way to my hangar,” Mr. Delaney reassured me, giving me a strange look that bordered on annoyance. “So long as you can keep up with me, no one will question you. The private pilots all go this way with their clients because the other option is to trek across the tarmac for way too far. Then the commercial airlines get annoyed because there are people wandering around as they’re trying to taxi around, and it’s a huge mess.” He let the door latch shut behind us as we walked through. “Just trust me. This is how we do things.”
I nodded slowly. While it didn’t make a lot of sense to me that there was a lot of space between the terminals of the commercial airlines and the hangars, I knew that Mr. Delaney knew what he was talking about. I hadn’t meant for my question to sound like I was doubting his expertise or knowledge of the airport.
We walked through the quiet, almost empty hallways of the airport marked for employees only. It wasn’t hard to keep up with Mr. Delaney, but I imagined that was because we were about the same height. We eventually made it out to his hangar, and the walk across the tarmac to get to the hangar wasn’t particularly long, but it felt like a mile in the unseasonable cold.
The one thing giving me some warmth was Mr. Delaney's good looks. And the way he handled himself - with such self-confidence. It was as if he had everything under control, and nothing could shake him. I just wish he’d be a little easier to talk to. Maybe I could break through his rough exterior during the flight. I’m always up for a challenge.
“Here we are,” Mr. Delaney said as he unlocked his hangar. “It’s a pretty easy process from here. Let’s get these bags loaded up.”
“You might have to help me figure out the best way to smush this duffel in there, but this suitcase-” I jiggled the handle I had been using to roll the larger suitcase across the tarmac. “-will have to be fit as carefully as possible. It has my camera.”
“Of course.”
I took a sip of coffee as he opened the cargo hold of the plane. The only bag we had to be wary of was the actual suitcase I had packed. The two duffels we shoved inside without much thought since there was nothing fragile in either, and he shut the panel to the cargo hold.
“All right. With the bags in, we can board and get going. We’ll have only about twenty minutes to take off after we get the plane deiced. It’s part of why I asked you out here so early. There aren’t that many early flights today, so we can get deiced and takeoff without much delay.”
As he spoke, Mr. Delaney opened the plane itself for me. There were only two seats – the pilot seat where he would be sitting and one behind him. He handed me a headset.
“The engine is pretty loud in planes like this, so these will be used for communication. No need to scream into them. Just enunciate clearly.”
I nodded. He helped me into my seat before getting into his and adjusting everything. He started the plane and got it slowly moving out of the hangar. Once the hangar was all locked up, he took the plane to the runway.
I watched with wide eyes as he handled the turns. I’d never been able to watch a pilot at work before. Perhaps there was material in an interview to be interesting to the rest of Tulsa. He was, after all, one of the most well-known Tulsa-based private pilots.
It didn’t take all that long to get the plane deiced since it was a small two-seater. Once we had been deiced, the tower gave us the go-ahead to take off. Mr. Delaney started the plane down the runway. Once we gathered the speed we needed, he started us up into the air with a little bit of a bump that I knew was coming thanks to having flown commercial.
I watched the ground fall away below us, and I couldn’t help but give a little laugh of excitement. Mr. Delaney was silent, focused on the controls. I couldn’t imagine being able to do this every day. It was almost too incredible for words.
“All right. We have reached cruising altitude,” Mr. Delaney said into the headset after a few more minutes of stoic concentration.
“This is so beautiful!” I beamed. “The sights up here are much better than those on a commercial plane. Although, I’d argue the sun glare is worse since there is no way to cover the window.”
Mr. Delaney laughed. It was a genuine sound, and it startled me a little. It wasn’t that he never smiled, he just didn’t seem like the kind of person who smiled – or laughed – easily.
“You’re the first to worry about that. Everyone is too excited about the view.”
“Have you ever brought a sweetheart up here, Mr. Delaney?”
I cast my eyes around the skies surrounding us to find a brilliant blue color speckled with the white clouds that we’d be flying through.
“No.”
