The really interesting airlines are those that fly single-engine four and six seat Cessnas and Piper Cubs over mountains through passes and onto single approach airstrips in the interior of Papua New Guinea. Pilots will tell you that flying routes around PNG with its dog's breakfast of weather patterns and crazy quilt cordilleras makes flying anywhere else as tranquil as a trip down memory lane.

In order even make a pretense at nationhood, Papua New Guinea needed a system of communication between the capital city and its most far-flung residents. Government services that we take for granted are, by virtue of the mountain ranges that erupt across the highlands, only accomplished with great effort. Since the system of roads and highways is still in its infancy, (in fact Port Moresby, the nation's capital, is not connected by road to any of the ten next most populated centers) most of the remote highland regions rely on single-engine aircraft. Since PNG was a territory of Australia for many years before independence in 1976, the idea of small aircraft service to sparcely populated areas was a natural outgrowth of similar service provided for citizens in the Australian Outback.

The MAF, known as the "Missionary Air Force", but really standing for "Missionary Aviation Fellowship", is the main carrier to the isolated areas of Western Highlands Province. My wife Ruth had made numerous flights to godforsaken areas to advise small business groups and tout the idea of banking or investing money obtained from coffee projects or alluvial gold mining. One particularly beautiful outpost was Koinambe, only twenty minutes by air from the Western Highlands provincial capital of Mt. Hagen but otherwise virtually inaccessible over the Bismarck mountain range. We chose a sunny Saturday morning to fly over to Koinambe and visit a British volunteer of our acquaintance who lived there. The first worm of doubt began to form in my mind when the pilot announced that he was just over from Oz (Australia) and had never flown into Koinambe before. Since Ruth seemed quite cool about this situation I thought that any shilly- shallying on my part might be interpreted as reticence, OK, cowardice.

Our Cessna 175's take-off was child's play and we soared into a brilliant sun overlooking a patchwork of native gardens linked to their owner's huts by spaghetti-strand footpaths. In a few minutes we were approaching the Bismarcks, a formidable alpine range, guarding the interior with rough shoulders of rock and snow. In sharp contrast to the sunlit airport in the center of the Wahgi Valley, we now faced a phalanx of roiling black nimbus clouds literally crashing on the mountainsides like a murderous dark surf. We began flying along the edge of the storm looking for a "hole to pop through" to quote our rookie birdman.

"Pretty rugged out there eh?", I said, trying to sound rugged myself and squeaking like Shirley Temple.

"No worries mate, its like that a lot out this way." said our fearless aviator.

Would it rattle him if I asked how he knew that, since he had never flown this route before? It sure as hell was rattling me. I glanced over my shoulder from the cockpit to Ruth in the back who was merrily knitting away just as if death were not imminent. "There's the ticket" our pilot beamed and banked sharply through a hole in the clouds between two gnarly peaks. I knew without looking that the hole closed behind us like the jaws of a mammoth venus fly trap. We were committed. Or should have been.

Immediately rain began lashing the windshield and the tinny little kite we had stupidly climbed into began to shudder and waggle alarmingly. Ruth is still knitting, I am starting to sweat like Liberace waiting for his HIV test results. Soon it was impossible to avoid going through the clouds instead of around them. Did this one have a soft centre or were we going to splatter into the side of Mt. No-Name and never be heard of again? Just as quickly we emerged from the cloud into brilliant sunshine. Relief, like a warm poultice, began to thaw my frozen internal organs.

Our pilot had been silent throughout my ordeal, probably trying to remember that tricky landing lesson he took to get his licence. "There's the strip." he said in a voice that was surprisingly normal even for an Australian. In the distance the Koinambe airstrip was half-way up the side of a mountain. Its grassy surface looked like a green tongue depressor lodged in a wall of rock. There was no turning around if you miscalculated the approach. It was a one way runway. Our approach seemed fine until we dropped about 50 feet below the level of the end of the runway. Below this particular airstrip was a sheer wall of mountain-grown granite. Now, I am no pilot, but, I felt behooved to mention this apparent anomaly to our latter-day Lindbergh.

"Bit low aren't we?" I spoke, with a tongue as dry as a worn-out loofah sponge. "No worries mate." (You won't believe how sick you get of this infernal expression). "There's supposed to be a constant updraft here that will lift us up and deposit us right on the grass."

As we flew closer to the rock face I glanced at Ruth whose knitting needles were clicking like a teletype machine, then to our pilot, then back to the rock face. I was sure we were going to end up a colorful smear on the wall. That thought eventually became clear to our driver also as he squawked a strangled, "Christ!" and slammed the plunger on the console that served as the accelerator. RPM's whined to a crescendo as our increased airspeed elevated us onto the strip. Our problem now was that we were going much too fast toward the end of the runway and yet another rock wall was approaching rapidly. The pilot was off his seat standing on the brakes, my adrenals were squirting like golf course sprinklers and Ruth was knitting. We finally spun out at the end of the strip and stopped a baby step from the face of the mountain.

"Got a little dicey back there eh?" said our fearless aviator, sweat blackening his light blue MAF uniform blouse.

I took this to mean that we were an eyelash away from becoming a loosely connected stew of aluminum, flesh, motor oil and bone splinters. It took all of that day and most of the next for Ruth to talk me out of hiking home over the mountains. You would think that maybe I had fulfilled my quota of terror for one weekend but, it was not to be. On Sunday afternoon after a weekend of heavy drinking and cursing the Wright brothers, I hesitantly climbed into the copilot's seat of the same aircraft, different pilot. This one was already sweaty but mainly from the tropical heat and being overweight by about 75 pounds. Before boarding, a crew of local people removed some of the rear seating and started to load 150 pound bags of coffee beans into their place. I didn't know what a Cessna 175 was rated for and was too stupefied at the time to ask but there was no way that we were adhering to industry standards. I felt like Sidney Carton climbing into a prop-driven tumbril complete with Madame DuFarge knitting my shroud in the back seat. The engine turned over an alarming number of times before it caught and we started waddling down the runway at a snail's pace.

We must have hit about 25 miles per hour when we dropped off the end of the runway. This time I did what Ruth must have been doing the entire flight over. I slammed my eyes and all of my sphincters shut, tight. In the inky blackness dotted with terror phosphenes it felt like the plane was falling down an elevator shaft in the World Trade Center. After an eternity, that overweight little puddle-jumper revved up enough to climb and we did, over the mountains and back to Hagen.

I no longer have any admiration for the pilot and passengers of the space shuttle. Their little jaunts into orbit are a stroll in the park compared to slaloming the mountains of the Bismarck Range in darkest New Guinea.