Down Mexico Way

ATA said "TA-TA" and Aloha said "Bye-Bye" this week. That's two more low-fare airlines on the scrap heap of bankruptcy. This comes squarely on the heels of the announcement wherein Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledged the U.S. could reel into recession. I would guess that the travellers stuck on the Hawaiian islands and elsewhere frantically searching for a way to get home would probably back that sentiment. Even if you're still not comfortable with the "R" word, the end of the fifty dollar fares to Honolulu are at an end.
This got me to thinking of my own experience with bankrupt airlines. Way back in the seventies, my family was taking one of our lavish vacations down south of the border. We flew to Mexico on Braniff, partly because of the deal we were able to get for our party of five, and partly because of just how groovy the planes looked. They were painted from tail to nose in colors like "Chocolate Brown" and "Metallic Purple." The Bradys wish they could have flown on Braniff to Hawaii. The problem with Braniff was not so much in form but rather in function. When we landed in Mexico City, we found out that the rest of our trip had somehow ceased to be. Here was my father and mother with their shiny happy children without a word of comprehensible Spanish beyond my oldest brother's junior high introduction. We were certain to find the nearest library, but it was doubtful that we could effectively negotiate the jungle of lost luggage and connecting flights that lay ahead of us.
The scary irony of this moment was that my father had wangled a way for us to take a small chartered prop plane to Acapulco, but cooler heads and a goodly bit of superstition about little plane got us a marathon taxi ride through the Mexican countryside to our next destination. We drove through the night on roads that wouldn't be mistaken for U.S. interstates, unless they were post-nuclear Armageddon interstates. When we arrived at our hotel, we were thankful for a few days of sand, surf and third-degree sunburns before we had to find another means of transport. For my grade-school brain, I was happy to get back home. Looking back on the experience as a parent now, I wonder how I would have coped with all that bad travel karma. I'm sure there was a moment where my father cursed a red, white and blue streak when he realized his little family was stranded in a foreign land without luggage or a way home, but I don't remember it. It was another thirty years before he got to scratch that itch of his for small planes, and it caught up with him. Nowadays, I flinch just a little when I see the Braniff logo at the end of every "South Park" episode, and I prefer my trips on the shorter side. Preferably ones I can walk home from.