I’m a sucker for learning new things. I very much enjoy reading books about history, about how things work. Unfortunately, I’m also a sucker for booze and drugs and the poor choices and bad decisions they inspire, and that’s allowed me to spend most of the past two decades in a maximum-security federal penitentiary.
The old school mob-types call a trip to prison “going to college,” and it didn’t take me long to realize how fitting that is. As I said, I like to learn, and these years of carceral residency have given me a doctorate in the kind of things most of you in Polite Society will be lucky enough to never know.
In addition to the normal areas of penal system knowledge one is expected to learn—how to make a tattoo gun out of a BIC pen, a guitar string and a beard trimmer motor, how to make a knife out of a plastic cup from the chow hall and/or a toothbrush and a razor blade and, of course, how to make wine out of fruit, bread and a little bit of free time—I’ve also learned, first hand, what it takes to move dirtbags such as myself from prison to prison, and it’s more interesting than you might think.
Perhaps you are familiar with the 1997 Nic Cage classic, “Con-Air”? As with most Cage offerings, it’s a cheesy, cliché-fest of a movie that, despite yourself, you just can’t get enough of. Unfortunately, though, besides the title being a reference to the U.S. Marshals Service Air Transport division’s nickname, the movie bears next to no resemblance to the real deal.
This, my friend, is the REAL story of the REAL Con-Air, as related by a REAL convicted criminal who is, without question, FAKING it as a writer. There’s an old saying here in the penitentiary, “you can be whatever you want to be when you come to prison.” And, having failed at everything else I’ve tried to be in life, all that was left was to become a writer.
On November 1, 1919, a San Francisco Police officer by the name of Ivan R. Gates became the first person to transport a prisoner by air. That prisoner was a man named James Kelly, who’d been convicted of carrying a concealed weapon and he was flown from Alameda, California back to San Francisco, and the waiting arms (and handcuffs) of Chief D.A. White.
Prior to the official birth of Con Air, officially known as the “U.S. Marshals Service Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System,” or JPATS, moving criminals cross-country was a pricey and complicated endeavor, requiring that two U.S. Marshals and the convicted be booked on a regular commercial flight. This posed numerous problems, not the least of which were a high taxpayer expense, a backlog of marshals needed to perform such escorts, and, of course, a danger to the public.
On August 20, 1985, the Marshals Service was offered the “gift” of a beaten, yet serviceable Boeing 727 by a sister agency, the Federal Aviation Administration, with the idea being that it would facilitate the mass transportation of federal inmates, and Con Air was born. This “airline” greatly improved the efficiency of inmate transportation and, much to the relief of your average air traveler, made the sight of a shackled and heavily guarded commercial airline passenger a thing of the past. For a plane full of 200 inmates, only 12 Marshals are required.
Today, the JPATS fleet has expanded to four full size jets, which fly a large series of routes, touching nearly every major U.S. city. Over the years, I’ve had occasion to rack up some frequent flyer miles on Con Air and, while the flights themselves are fairly boring—no movie, an in-flight boxed lunch IS served, but it’s next to impossible to assemble a bologna sandwich while handcuffed, bouncing through turbulence at 30,000 feet—watching the Marshals do their flight attendant impression, pointing out the emergency exits and explaining the various post-crash egress procedure that the shackles and handcuffs affixed to all of us passengers would make impossible is, in its own morbid way, entertaining. Yes, my seat cushion MAY be used as a flotation device, but the ten pounds of chains hanging from me and the limited movement resultant of my bondage will ensure a trip to the very bottom of whatever body of water we’d happen to go down in.
Even though you’ve probably never heard of him, Ivan Rhuele “Van” Gates was much more than just the first person to transport a prisoner by air. Born on January 15, 1890, to English-Scottish parents in Rockford, Michigan, Mr. Gates went on to found the barnstorming group, “Gates Flying Circus,” which garnered much fame and success in the 1920s. Later, he teamed up with Charles Healy Day and established the Gates-Day Aircraft Company, later renamed the New Standard Aircraft Company, to design and manufacture airplanes.
Much like Con Air, Mr. Gates’s aviation pursuits started small, with one aircraft. In Mr. Gates’s case, a biplane he bought from a Kansas City doctor. Upon showing the flimsy, homemade creation to his Swiss business partner, Mr. Gates was swiftly left to be a one-man operation. With no formal pilot training, Gates took his purchase for a ride, managing an altitude of 20 feet. In 1911, he officially obtained his pilot’s license, and the rest is history.
As mentioned earlier, in 1919, while a member of the San Francisco Police Department, Gates performed the first aerial transport of a prisoner. It also bears mentioning that the prisoner was afraid of flying, but was persuaded to go along with the promise that he’d be given the minimum sentence for his crime, six months with a recommendation for parole in four.
No such promises or plea bargains are made to those flying Con Air. As with most prison related problems, any fears of flying must be swallowed by the inmate. Any protests made during the boarding of the plane or while in flight are generally met with a stern talking to from the U.S. Marshals, followed shortly thereafter by liberal application of a TASER. I was once on a Con Air flight from Rockford, Illinois to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where the Federal Bureau of Prisons has a holding facility, right on the grounds of the Will Rogers International Airport, and witnessed one of my fellow inmate/passengers having a fear-of-flying-induced panic attack/meltdown that was so severe that our flight was diverted to some airport in a lonely corner of Missouri. Upon landing, the plane was met by a large contingent of police vehicles, we were all escorted off the plane and made to wait on the tarmac while about a half-dozen of the largest sheriff’s deputies I’ve ever seen joined the contingent of Marshals on the plane to “fix” the problem inmate. No idea what actually happened, I just know that you could hear screaming and yelling, the Boeing 737 seemed to sway and rock rather violently for what seemed like an hour, and upon reboarding, the gentleman who’d caused the ruckus was lashed to a seat in the very back of the plane with what appeared to be a fencing helmet (said fencing helmet, this reporter later learned, was what’s called a “spit hood”) and was sobbing incoherently about how sorry he was, “for…everything.”
Gates went on to become a bit of a showman, founding his flying circus in 1921 which, in its heyday, regularly attracted tens of thousands to a single show.
Today, Con Air regularly completes over 200,000 prisoner movements per year, regularly serving 40 domestic cities, plus other U.S. locations, as needed. Con Air also makes open seats available for non-federal prisoners within the continental United States for the not at all reasonable seeming fee of $2896.00. Makes Southwest’s holiday price gouging to your favorite getaway spot seem like nothing, doesn’t it?
While the flight schedules for Con Air are kept secret from the public, they don’t tell us inmates much about where or when we are going either, which I guess makes sense to deter escapes and sabotage, and to prevent any other shenanigans from taking place.
Since it was founded, Con Air has had no significant aircraft incidents or accidents which, I guess, is something. But, truth be told, were a planeload of people like me to turn itself into a smoking hole in the middle of some Iowa cornfield, it probably wouldn’t stop the world from spinning.
And speaking of endings, what of Mr. Gates, the forefather of the present-day Con Air? Sensing that his barnstorming days were numbered, he started his aforementioned aircraft design company which, thanks to the Great Depression, went bankrupt in 1931. After several marriages and divorces, on November 24, 1932, Ivan Rhuele Gates slipped the surly bonds of this earth a final time, never knowing what his impact on the world would be.
Dan Grote is an incarcerated writer who has turned decades of poor choices and bad decisions into a mildly respectable pile of published poetry and prose, including his latest poetry collection, We Are All Doing Time (Iniquity Press/Vendetta Books, 2023). You may contact him at thedangrote@gmail.com.