"Lovers of air travel find it exhilarating to hang poised between the illusion of immortality and the fact of death"

Alexander Chase, through his poignant observation, captures the paradoxical nature of air travel and, more broadly, the human confrontation with mortality. When people fly, especially at high altitudes suspended above the earth, they inhabit a liminal space that defies the ordinary laws of life as experienced on the ground. All the familiar markers, gravity, landscape, the continuity of land, fall away, leaving travelers literally and metaphorically lifted out of their daily realities. This sensation is often experienced as exhilaration: a giddy sense of freedom and detachment, perhaps even a flirtation with the idea of transcending the usual limits of human existence.

Yet, as Chase notes, underpinning this liberation is an undercurrent of existential risk. To fly is to entrust one's life to engineering, chance, and the skill of others. People are sharply aware, even if only subconsciously, of the proximity of death while flying. The machine's whir, the turbulence, and the thin, pressurized metal shell separating them from the deadly thinness of high-altitude air are reminders of mortality. This juxtaposition, between the seeming invincibility of technologically enabled flight and the underlying peril, brings into relief the psychological terrain that travellers navigate. The illusion of immortality emerges from the way airplanes effortlessly traverse the sky, suggesting a mastery over nature and a brief escape from the confines of earthbound vulnerability.

Air travel, then, becomes a condensed metaphor for the human condition. People careen, often heedlessly, between confidence and insecurity, delight and dread. The act of flying accentuates this duality: while marveling at the miracle of flight, there is always an awareness, overt or buried, of life's fragility. Exhilaration and anxiety intermingle, providing a unique vantage point on what it means to be alive, poised between dreams of permanence and an unyielding awareness of life’s impermanence.