Growing up I was a frequent flyer. My parents were divorced. I lived in New York and my father lived in California. By the early 1980s I was taking several cross country flights each year, though I didn’t join a frequent flyer program for the first time until 1990. It was American AAdvantage – before a trip to Australia – and those miles expired. My account went dormant and my current AAdvantage account only dates to 1996.
I was well into my professional career before I ever had the opportunity to fly private. But I almost got the chance during one of my West Coast trips when I was 12.
The story begins with another odd experience of mine. I may have been one of the first white boys in the mid-80s to use ‘187’ as a term for murder. Most people only learned this from Dr. Dre’s 1992 debut solo song “Deep Cover” after the breakup of NWA.
My father’s family was in the car business. One of the customers was (as I understood it at the time) the biggest drug dealer in Oakland. The guy loved specialty cars, and my father managed to get him a Zimmer.
The man used to have boxes of cash in his trunk which always seemed nuts to me if he got pulled over but presumably he was paying off enough people in positions of authority that this did not happen. He referred to his boys, his crew, as his ‘187 Squad’. This was ~ 1986.
The Zimmer was being delivered in LA, He didn’t want to drive down to get it with his 187 Squad, so my dad told him he should charter a plane and make it a party heading down. Bear in mind this was before Netjets launched fractional jet ownership and before on-demand private flight services.
I was sitting in my father’s office. The guy says “yeah, why don’t you take care of it and you guys come along?” My dad and me!
My father assumes he’s kidding, but an hour later he gets a call from the guy’s wife, “Hello, this is Shirley. How big a plane are you gonna get, because I want to go too!”
I’m just visiting my dad. My parents are divorced. You can see him doing the calculation. He’d totally go! But there’s no way he can take me on a private jet with a drug dealer and not face consequences. I’m just going on 12. So I missed my first shot at flying private!
Flying private is not all that it’s cracked up to be. Give me TSA Touchless ID with PreCheck, a Polaris or Delta One Lounge, a wide lie flat seat with fine cognac, and I’m happy.
The car business, I’m sorry to tell you Gary, shouldn’t have ever existed in America. We should’ve been a country of robust public transport in and around dense, walkable, livable, cities. But the car industry shattered that dream, put highways through urban centers, and as the saying goes, paved paradise…
If you’d like a premium travel experience but aren’t interested in smoking drugs while in the sky, please consider Delta.
Hey, a lot of us learned 187 from the 1993 documentary “Demolition Man,” featuring Sandra Bullock and a some other familiar faces.
I wholeheartedly agree with Matt. And NO, I don’t own stock in Delta or know Matt.
Hey Erect, it wasn’t so much the car industry that destroyed American cities, it was government responding to a popular desire for auto mobility by the public, after they’d endured streetcar and railroad monopolists and aggressive unions that shut down systems.
My first private jet experience (outside of friends with pilot licenses flying 2-seaters to Sacto for lunch)! Was on the Steve Wynns high roller Cessna. For some reason he decided to use it to fly his lawyers from LA Vegas even though America West was far cheaper.
I like the bucket seats and the food service but would not want to do a long flight on these puppies as the bathroom is horribly tight.
Gary on a drug aircraft? Could this be the basis for another film in the Godfather series?
My head’s still spinning from reading Gary refer to Dr. Dre. Gonna start referring to him as “G Leff.”
“though I didn’t join a frequent flyer program for the first time until 1990…” So, 1990 was a good year after all. Nisssse.
@Matt — You never disappoint me. Keep Climbing!
OG Leff.