Q: What is the proper landing angle of an aircraft?

A: Anything below forty-five degrees will get you near the ground. From there a series of small adjustments gets you to right around three degress, a nice angle for your landing. Clean approach. Safe. Comfortable. Conservative. Boring.

Seems to me people have forgotten the awesome majesty of air travel. When I'm in the cockpit I make it a point to remind them.

I make my initial approach at one-hundred-thirty-eight degrees, an angle your average passenger finds terrifying. Most people expect to be looking down, at the ground, at the end of their flight, not up, at the vast expanse of the sky. It rattles them. They question everything. I hold there, for a moment,  so they may contemplate their lives, their choices, the roads not taken, the rings not seized, the lovers they let walk away. When I say "moment," I'm really talking ten, fifteen minutes. Folks make a lot of choices. I want to give them the chance to question all of them. In the middle of this painful reconsideration of their lives, I make a slight adjustment. Ninety degrees, straight down. You would not believe the screams.

I don't think I have to tell you that I'm something of a movie buff. Plane movies in particular: Airport, Airport 1975, Airport '77, The Concorde ... Airport '79, Air Force One, Turbulence.  These films offer a portal to another word, a world behind our own, a world where the Storm Gods wage ragged battle, with metal and lighting and flesh and water and wind and air, against all that is weak and soft and human.

Know this: I have crossed through the portal. I have seen the battles. When The Storm Gods fight the world shakes, the seas boil, the mountains crack; the whipping winds bring razor-sharp raindrops, and the cobblestones clog with blood and brain matter. And there are screams. Screams of the newly wounded, screaming for revenge. Screams of the long wounded, screaming for mercy, Screams of the wicked, screaming for joy. Ten thousand Storm Gods snapping, slashing, cracking, choking, decapitating. Ten thousand Storm Gods screaming, screaming in one voice, screaming  for victory.

It was the most horrible thing I ever heard. You can't even imagine. But it is a Christmas carol compared to the screams in the main cabin when I jack-knife my baby down to ninety degrees. A thousand different voices crying out at once, like something pure has been taken from this world. There is shrieking, sobbing, shouting, tribal chanting, maniacal laughter, soul-clearing bursts of prayer. When I close my eyes I can still hear her, the woman in 27B, clawing at her seat back, screaming "Why? Why? Why? Why is it taking so long? Why won't they let us die?."

Their behavior doesn't shock me. This is who they are. This is who they are when they have nothing left to shield them. I'm shocked they don't act like this all the time. One unexpected descent leads to this? This is all it takes? There exists in the world a madness ready to be unleashed at the slightest provocation. No wonder there's so much violence today. Everyone's on edge. We're traveling on a round, organic bullet that weighs so much that I don't even know how to say how much it weighs; it's a 6 with the 10th power and then 24 more of those exponential guys. It's very heavy. And it's traveling at 67,000 miles an hour. And shit, terrible shit, can happen at any time. Why is anyone ever calm?

Now, I'm not a mad man. I'm not going to kill anyone. I just make them think they're going to die. Once they believe, I mean really believe, I pull out of the plummet and even my baby out at a flat one-eighty. My passengers have earned their reprieve. They've glimpsed the Storm Gods. They know what exists on the other side. They're calmer now, stronger. Now that they've been jostled and soiled, had their faith tested and their appreciation for the miracle of flight restored, I bring them in  for the smoothest landing they will ever have. 99 times out a 100. 98 times. I forgot about Cleveland. But you'll hear more about that at the deposition.

This is the deposition?

How am I doing?