Are planes becoming supermarkets?

Planes have fascinated me since childhood. They flew over our homes at night and left trails during the day. Occasionally, jet fighters from Nakuru to Nanyuki left sonic booms that frightened us as children. Small, low-flying planes ruled the day and rarely flew at night.

Helicopters were fewer. Many places and schools named “Kiandege” indicate planes and  airstrips were common before uhuru in the white highlands.

We dreamt of either flying in planes or flying planes as pilots. Curiously, all boys dreamt of becoming pilots till they met simultaneous equations and quadratic equations around Form Two.

My dream was even bigger: to design jet fighters like the ones that flew over our grazing lands overlooking the Rift Valley and its lakes in the white highlands.

That dream turned into a nightmare in a technical school; I didn’t even design a spear. But I learned of Bernoulli’s principle in physics and how a plane flies both at normal and supersonic speeds, beyond the speed of light or sound.

Today I think more of the business part of planes, not the technical part, despite visiting Boeing and Airbus plants in Hamburg and Seattle. How much would a new plane cost? What is its profit margin?

What is the best ticket price that will make a plane full? Why do we charge passengers for overweight baggage and not pay them to carry underweight baggage? Why not set a luggage exchange to match “light travellers" with overweight ones?