It's usual in American cinema to assume that areas such as the stretch between Billings and Lincoln, some 800 miles away, are indeed nowhere – just part of the "flyover country" crossed unnoticed by coast-to-coast plane commuters.
She graduated from Oklahoma State University, where she majored in aviation science, went on to become a flight instructor and later piloted twin-engine freight planes and commuter planes.
One of those is Zunum Aero, which is looking to produce a small hybrid electric-powered commuter plane for six to 12 passengers, with plans to launch its first plane, the ZA10, in the early 2020s.
(I had flown dozens of times into Ronald Reagan National Airport, for example, but not until I flew there by commuter plane was I truly impressed by Washington's memorials, the Pentagon and those bobsledlike turns that planes must take as they approach along the Potomac).
Most observers construed this initially to be an accident involving a small commuter plane.
Only after 45 bumpy minutes in the Nova Scotia commuter plane did the truth dawn.
But the commuter plane, American Eagle Flight 753, arriving from Montreal, was approaching Runway 22 Left.
At 5 A.M., I found myself at the airport, waiting to board a small commuter plane to Venice.
After lunch, we drove to the airport and took a tiny commuter plane, then drove out to the plant.
A turboprop commuter plane nosedived into a maintenance hanger seconds after it took off from the Charlotte, N.C., airport.
