My favorite type of bucket list items are the ones that are unexpected and are added to the list after the fact. It’s these experiences that seem to leave the longest-lasting impression and help spark a sense of adventure.
One of these experiences for me was when I flew from Denver to Moab, Utah, on an 8-seater prop plane. As if the tiny plane wasn’t enough in itself, the other events of this flight made it one of the most unique experiences I’ve ever had.
Boutique Airlines is a small, regional airline that connects tiny airports to larger airports around the Midwest. They no longer fly the Denver to Moab route, but at the time, they were the only commercial airliner in and out of Moab, and their prices were extremely reasonable. I was flying for work, as usual, but I was also flying in early to spend a few days with my parents, who were in the RV camping area, so I had my tent with me. Generally, what I’m carrying in my luggage isn’t especially relevant, but the fact that my tent is a backpacking tent and very lightweight turned out to be extremely relevant in this case.
I checked in with the airline as usual, but as we went through the various boarding information, I was told that my total combined luggage weight needed to be less than 50 pounds. My checked bag, which was still carry-on size for the record, had clothing for a week, a camping pad, hiking boots, outerwear, and my usual toiletries and other accouterment. My carry-on was my tent, weighing in at 6.5 lbs. And finally, my personal item is always my backpack, complete with laptop, iPad, kindle, charging cables, etc. I hadn’t paid much attention to the small print when I booked the flight, so this came as a surprise to me, and there was a moment of panic, but I weighed in at 46 lbs.
It then occurred to me WHY this was a concern. On larger aircraft, being overweight by 100 lbs or so isn’t an issue, and the likelihood of being overweight is slim since the planes are designed to carry 100+ passengers and average luggage for each, as well as fuel for that size aircraft. Sure, they limit the weight each passenger can bring, but you can still pay to add more weight, and it isn’t an issue. In this case, there was only space for eight people. Going over the weight limit was a serious concern and not something you could fudge the numbers on. They also had limited cargo space. I got to see what this looked like later on, but basically, picture a long, skinny minivan. The cargo space was part of the main cabin. It was separated by a strong cargo net, and the bags were loaded by the co-pilot. It was the first of many strange duties the pilot and co-pilot had.
I headed through security as usual and went to find my gate. And when I say “find,” I mean it. I felt like I needed a compass and topo maps to find this stupid thing. For those of you who have not flown through Denver International Airport, it is a pretty sizable airport. It’s the largest in the Midwest and mountain areas, is a hub for United and Southwest, has six massive runways, and sits on a substantial plot of land outside the city. To get to my gate, I had to go to the end of the largest concourse, down an escalator, through several tunnels that had 90-degree turns every now and then, down several dark corridors, far away from any food vendors and souvenirs, and finally arriving at a seating area with five small gates on the same level as the Tarmac, none of which had jet bridges. The lack of jet bridges wasn’t too surprising. I’d seen small planes before, of course. They usually just roll stairs up to them, or they have their own stairs as part of the door, the latter of which was the case for this plane. The agents who had checked me in were the same agents at the gate. Budget airlines often do this, and thinking about it, it made sense that a small airline would do the same.
Now might be a good time to mention that it was about 15 degrees and snowing hard.
In Colorado, temperatures and snow like this in May weren’t uncommon, and DIA* is very used to it. I’d taken off, landed, and flown in snowstorms plenty of times before. However… Those planes healed 140+ passengers. This one held 8.
The gate agents called us up to board, and we got in boarding order… Which seemed pointless due to there only being 5 of us, one of them an infant, but procedure is procedure, I guess.
All 5 of us headed outside across the Tarmac in the snow to the plane, led by a woman who had come in to direct us to the correct plane. I could see a man loading our luggage into the back of the plane while we walked out to the aircraft. There was no special equipment involved. He loaded it just like you would a car.
We all boarded the flight and made ourselves comfortable. The woman shut the door behind us and then got into the cockpit. Apparently, she was our pilot! A few seconds later, the man who’d been loading luggage got into the copilot’s seat. I guess it doesn’t make sense to have a dedicated baggage handler, but I was a bit surprised it was the pilot who handled the passengers and the co-pilot who loaded the luggage.
We sat in the airplane for about 10 minutes while the pilot and co-pilot talked through their headphones and got in and out of the plane several times. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but eventually, the co-pilot opened the door and told us that the battery was too cold to start the plane and we’d be better off waiting inside until they could warm the battery up.
Well, that was a new one. I was starting to wonder if this tiny prop plane would make it over the Rocky Mountains in this storm.
We were delayed about 90 minutes while the crew tried to get the battery warmed up. They had a battery warmer, but it wasn’t working properly. They borrowed the battery warmer from Great Lakes Air, another regional airline, but the original battery was so cold that they weren’t having much luck getting it warmed up and functioning. They finally were able to borrow an entire battery from Great Lakes Air from a plane they wouldn’t be using that day. The plan was for Boutique Air to fly with the battery to Moab, pick up their passengers there, and fly it back to Great Lakes Air in Denver before their run to Michigan the next day. First, I appreciated them keeping us updated with so much detail. It was just fun to know, and as a passenger, it always makes me feel better knowing what’s happening. Second, I loved that this was the problem and solution. It was great to see these two tiny airlines working together to get their planes in the air. I’m sure the favor was returned at some point.
The pilot came inside to let us know that she just needed to install the battery, and then we would be on our way. She headed outside to the plane, and then 5 minutes later, she came back in to get us, telling us to follow her.
The co-pilot gave us the safety speech, which was surprisingly minimal, given the snowstorm. Realistically, if that little plane was going to go down, there was little chance of anyone surviving. Crash positions and over-the-wing slides were pretty irrelevant. The co-pilot also pointed to the lavatory and asked politely that we try to use it for liquid waste only if possible. He also pointed to the built-in mini fridge and told us to help ourselves to water and sodas. I really wanted a hot chocolate. It was so cold in the plane without the engines running.
When that briefing was over, the pilot attempted to start the engine, and after two tries, the propeller started spinning, and we were finally on our way!
We taxied forever. The area our gate was in was nowhere near the active runway, so we had to wind through the airport to get to the de-icing machines and back around to the runway.
If you’ve ever taken off in a snowstorm, you know it feels a bit sketchy. Now imagine strapping wings and a ceiling fan to an old Honda Civic and taking off in a snowstorm. That’s pretty much what this felt like. We were sliding all over the place, bumping up and down, and when we did finally get into the air, we kept hitting pockets of lower-density air and dropping a couple of feet before the higher-density air caught the wings. This happened for more than half of the flight. After about 20 or 30 little drops, my stomach finally stopped dropping with the plane every time.
I couldn’t see anything out the windows in the storm, so after I got used to the drops, I took a nap.
When I woke up, the clouds had cleared some, and I was able to figure out where we were. Instead of going straight across the mountains, we’d taken a slightly longer route to the south and were somewhere just south of the San Juans. The view was still broken up with heavy clouds, but they started to clear more and more as we got closer to Moab, and I was able to witness one of the coolest views I may ever get from an airplane. As we came in towards the airport, we flew around both Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park, both utterly spectacular from the air and two iconic monuments in the area that I have loved for years. It was that view that was the icing on the cake for this trip.
We made a bumpy landing onto a small airstrip. It was paved, but the airport was small enough that I wouldn’t have been surprised if it hadn’t been. We then pulled up to the literal gate. An airport staff member came out and unlocked the padlock to open the gate. My parents were on the other side with a couple of other people waiting to pick up the other folks on the plane. They stopped the plane right in front of the gate, and the pilot and copilot jumped out to unload us and the luggage. There was no baggage claim. We just grabbed our stuff and headed out.
I didn’t spend any time at the airport on the arrival flight so that was the end of the experience for the time being.
But I still had my return flight! I spent the week in Moab enjoying one of my favorite places in the world and doing some great camping and 4-wheeling.
At the end of the trip, I found my way back to the airport, which was more difficult than I expected. Uber isn’t a thing in Moab, so the only option was private car service, which is very expensive.
I got to the airport with about an hour to spare. There was no TSA. There was only one check in, and most of the check-ins were for local scenic flights and skydiving. There was a single tiny store with a few snacks and some Moab swag. The entire airport had maybe 50 seats for waiting passengers and only 3 staff members inside the building with various pilots, mechanics, and tour operators around the grounds.
My plane landed about 30 minutes prior to our departure time. They unloaded, and then the pilot and copilot, a different crew this time, began to prepare the plane. The copilot came inside at one point with the black water tank. This explained why the first copilot had asked us to avoid taking a shit in it… He was going to have to empty it!
One of the three airport staffers came to grab us when the plane was ready. We had seven people this time, and it was a much less talkative group. The staffer opened the literal gate, and we left our luggage at the back of the plane with the co-pilot and boarded the aircraft.
With good weather, we had no delays getting out of Moab. There were very few clouds until we got closer to the mountains, so we had more great views of Arches National Park and Canyonlands as we climbed. As we reached the foothills of the Rockies, the cloud cover obscured the view, and I sat back to enjoy the much less exciting flight.
We were only about 20 minutes away from landing when the clouds lifted. We were flying over the mountains on the east side of the Rockies. After a couple of minutes of flying, I recognized Long’s Peak, one of Colorado’s fourteen thousand-foot peaks, or 14ers, towering over valleys nearby. Long’s Peak is part of Rocky Mountains National Park, and we were flying around the edge of its airspace. The view was spectacular.
A little while later, we touched down at DIA. The runway was so long, and the plane was so small that we landed, slowed down, and then had to speed back up to taxi all the way to our gate.
When we deplaned, a small passenger van pulled up next to the plane. We collected our luggage from the co-pilot and then hopped in the van to head back to the terminal. The pilot joined us in the van, which was bound for the main entrance of the airport, seeing as the Moab airport didn’t have a TSA line and, therefore, we were unscreened passengers.
On the way back to the main terminal, we stopped at an intersection. Except that this was an intersection between service roads and an active runway. A large commercial jet was sitting on the tarmac at this intersection, and the pilot (of the jet, not the one in the van with us) rolled down the plane’s window to wave us through the intersection.
When it was all over, I felt like I’d had one of the most incredible flying experiences of my lifetime, and I was so happy to have had the opportunity to fly on such a tiny commercial airline. Small planes are much more intimidating than large planes, but we had competent, experienced pilots who were able to handle all the weather Colorado could throw at them. Sometimes, you just have to trust that the pilot and airline know that it’s in their best interests to keep you alive and roll with it!
*Denver’s airport code is DEN, but when it was originally opened, the code was DIA, which made sense for Denver International Airport. Everyone who lived in Colorado at the time learned it as DIA, and that stuck. You can tell someone is from or has spent significant time in Colorado based on what they call the airport.
