This Pilot’s Tune: Nancy in the Sky With Misgivings

First requirement for travel is a good companion.

Peter Garrison

Wednesday, July 23, 2025 at 07:00 AM ET

Verified

Edited By:

Travis Tingle

Nancy Salter and FLYING contributing editor Peter Garrison in 1976 [Courtesy: Peter Garrison]

Key Takeaways:

The article recounts the author's extensive flying adventures with Nancy Salter over many decades, beginning in 1967.
Despite Nancy's persistent fear and discomfort with flying, she accompanied the author on numerous challenging and often harrowing flights across continents and oceans.
After years of eventful journeys, mechanical issues, and aging, Nancy eventually made the decision to stop flying with the author.
The author reflects on their quarter-million miles traveled together, acknowledging Nancy's courage and appreciating her presence on those grand adventures, despite her different experience of them.

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I first saw Nancy Salter in the kitchen of a dilapidated three-decker in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in summer 1967.

The only utensils in the kitchen were a few wrenches scattered around somebody’s partially dismantled motorcycle. We didn’t talk then, but I worked up the courage to call her the next day—quite a trick, for me—and ask her to a movie. In spite of her having to get up early the next morning to catch the first of three buses for work at the Winchester Star, she consented.