Did I Mention Flying Great Lakes Airlines?

The Associated Press -- or the AP as it is more commonly known -- is contemplating retiring the aging satellite system it uses to provide content to thousands of media outlets across North America. They hope to move their transmission services entirely to the Internet sometime in the future.

In an effort to make this proposed transition as painless as possible to those media outlets, they've recruited a focus group of 5 newspapers -- the Southeast Missourian being one -- to advise them.

And so, last week they flew me to New York to participate in a kick-off meeting along with representatives from the other 4 papers. Because we are assisting them, the AP picked up the cost of the trip.

They also booked all the travel.

Which is how I wound up flying out of Cape using Great Lakes Airlines rather than driving to St. Louis as I usually do when I fly.

Did I mention that I don't particularly care to fly in small planes?

And the 19-seat Beechcraft used by Great Lakes Airlines on its Cape-to-St-Louis route qualifies as a "small plane" according to my personal definition of that phrase. Basically, I consider any aircraft that requires me to step outside the terminal to get on board, a "small plane."

Granted, the Great Lakes plane is not as small as the one owned by the Southeast Missourian, the publishers of this website and my employers. My company has a "really small plane." It is a 6-seater.

On the few occasions that I've flown on the company plane, the pilot always asks me how much I weigh.

I, for one, don't like to fly anything where my weight is critical to the safe operation of the aircraft.

What if you happen to be flying one of these planes and you underestimate your weight by a pound or 20? It could happen. Maybe you had a big breakfast and didn't realize just how filling that stack of pancakes actually was that you devoured at Denny's.

And let's not forget all the vain people out there. People always say their weight is lower than what it really is.

If I was the pilot of one of those little planes where the weight of my passengers mattered, I'd personally weigh each and every one of them just to make sure they weren't sand bagging or wearing a really heavy clothes.

Thankfully, the Great Lakes Airline pilots were not concerned with my weight.

My flight was scheduled to leave Cape at 8:30 in the morning. If I was flying out of St. Louis I know that you should be at the airport 2 hours prior to your flight. But since I was flying out of the significantly less busy Cape Girardeau airport, I figured this rule did not apply.

But, just in case, I decided to call the local phone number for Great Lakes Airlines to find out for sure.

That number is 335-0666.

Ok.

Great Lakes Airlines has a local phone number with rather unpleasant Biblical connotations.

Was something less pleasant -- such as 335-0911 -- already taken? Did anyone in the Great Lakes marketing department even vet this phone number? Or did they just assume no one would ever bother to call it, since it's just a small commuter flight operation located in a small community in rural Missouri?

By the way, did I mention that the name of this AP project for which I flew to New York is officially called "Freebird?"

The AP christened it that name in deference to the proposed decommissioning of its "bird" or satellite. Of course, the only thing I could think about was what happened to the band Lynyrd Skynyrd in 1977.

The only thing missing from completing this Trifecta of Bad Omens was to fly out on Friday the 13th. Thankfully that did not occur since this was a midweek meeting. I flew out on Tuesday the 17th and returned on Thursday the 19th.

And my fears were obviously unfounded or else I am blogging from Purgatory and am unaware that the plane went KER-SPLAT with me on board.

So with the exception of that highly unlikely scenario, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary happened traveling to or from St. Louis using Great Lakes Airlines.

The service was great. Both of the flights were fast and uneventful, and I didn't have to navigate through St. Louis in the middle of rush-hour traffic.

We even left St. Louis about 15 minutes before we were supposed to on my return flight home.

Both passengers -- yes, just me and another guy -- were waiting at the gate in St. Louis and the pilot asked us if we minded leaving early for Cape.

Did I mention that was an easy answer?