There are flights over Burning Man, including to join Mile High Club

“Elephant! Alley-oop! Paprika! Colorblind!”

As a woman called out these “playa names” from behind a podium at Black Rock City Municipal Airport (88NV), the corresponding Burners stood and adjusted their colorful fanny packs, sequin-covered hats and other outrageous accessories, readying themselves to fly over Burning Man in small airplanes.

Some had camped at the airport the previous night to get the first spots in line. Others arrived before 6 a.m. and had been waiting and hanging out at the nearby coffee shop for upward of 5 hours. But considering the sweet deal they were getting — free 20-minute flights over the festival on private planes — it was actually surprising that more Burners weren’t in line.

Gift flights, it turns out, are not widely known about at Burning Man. But for those who hear of them and venture out on Airport Road to the pop-up airport about a mile beyond the pop-up city, a mind-blowing experience awaits. According to one airport employee, certain pilots even specialize in helping Burners join the Mile High Club, with mattresses installed in the backs of their planes.

When SFGATE arrived at the airport on Aug. 30 — two days before rain soaked the playa and shut the airport down — eight pilots were gifting flights in their small prop planes. Two-time Burner Kathy Cocetti had just returned from a flight in which her pilot allowed her to steer the plane. As he presented her with a flight certificate, she literally cried with joy.

“I feel so lucky right now,” she said. “Everyone needs to do this.”

Another Burner, Babak Sadeghi, had recently come back from his first flight over the playa. An enthusiast of aerial photography and airplane window seats, Sadeghi volunteered at the airport this year to increase his chances of getting up in a plane. In his 10 years of attending Burning Man, the flyover was “one of the most memorable experiences I’ve ever had here,” he said.

Clearly, SFGATE needed to try it. The man who helped us rise to the occasion was Purple Haze, a Reno-based pilot who’s been flying to Burning Man and gifting flights on his 1959 four-seater Cessna 182 for 28 years.

“They were built strong and rugged. They’re high-horsepower. They carry heavy loads,” Purple Haze told SFGATE. “That makes for a perfect playa plane, and so I keep this one just for Burning Man, basically.”

The additional seats on this purple-streaked plane would be occupied by photographer Jonah Page and another Burner, Daniel Silver, who had been waiting with a group of friends since 5:45 a.m. Silver was wearing pink booty shorts, a faux-fur tail attached to a jock strap and a woven blanket with a good story.

“This is from a guy that I hooked up with last night,” Silver said, winking. “A straight guy who turned out to be … open-minded.”

Page and Silver climbed into the back of the plane and I rode up front with Purple Haze, who primed us all with some history. He likes to remind people, he said, that if we were here during the Pleistocene, we’d be under 400 feet of water, with prehistoric fish swimming around and a primitive civilization hanging out along the shore trying to kill and eat those fish.

Then he gave some information about the airport — which has two runways — along with our flight plan and some instructions on how to open the window for better photographs. We’d need to be careful, he warned, because more than a few cameras have blown out of his plane and become “MOOP” (Burner lingo for Matter Out of Place, or trash). In one case, a passenger recovered the cellphone and had a stellar video of the entire fall, Purple Haze explained.

When it was our turn for takeoff, he accelerated down the runway and the plane seemed to float off the ground with almost no effort, kicking up a cloud of dust behind it. We flew high above Gate Road, which snakes its way from Gerlach to the entrance to Black Rock City, and headed toward the craggy peak of Razorback Mountain. Within minutes, we had ascended to 5,500 feet and were taking in views of the entire city, which sits at about 4,000 feet.

I fed my adrenaline addiction in various ways at Burning Man this year: from snowboarding down an artificial ski hill (and eating it) to climbing a 30-foot cube made of IBC water totes to riding a bicycle tied to 15 helium balloons. But all those other Burners were right: Being up in an airplane above it all was by far the most awe-inspiring and heart-pounding experience to be had around Black Rock City. 

From up there, the whole festival looked so tiny, like an ant farm tucked into the vast desert. The Man was the size of a pin, just barely visible in the center of the sweeping horseshoe of Black Rock City, which we took in from various angles. A little-known railroad track ran along the desert outside the city, and as we flew over Razorback Mountain, the wind caused some spine-tingling turbulence. We then soared over Frog Ponds, a patch of greenery above a hot springs source, before approaching the airport again. The landing was smooth, with plenty more dust kicked up in all directions.   

“That made my burn,” Silver told Purple Haze as he exited the plane.

When Page thanked the pilot and asked who paid for the fuel, Purple Haze smiled. “We all provide our own fuel and it’s our gift to the city,” he said.

On the way out we met Craig Steiner, an air standard safety supervisor, who gave us a bit more information about the airport. He said this year there were about 400 registered planes, and that celebrities come through all the time. He had seen Paris Hilton get caught in a dust storm right over there, he said, gesturing toward the control tower. 

He told us Purple Haze was kind of a legend, and that another well-known pilot, Captain Crunchie, was notorious for gifting Mile High flights in his mattress-carrying plane. 

“Does that really happen?” SFGATE wanted to know.

“No, not really,” Steiner said, smiling. “What are you talking about?”

We would apparently need to come back to the airport next year to find out.