The Spirit of Entertainment in the Skies I Learned in America

This essay is a true story about the “flying service” the author experienced while living in the United States.

Some time after I had moved to America, I had taken up flying light airplanes as a hobby. On weekends I would hop from one small airfield to another across Northern California. By the time this story begins, I had already visited almost every airport around the Bay Area.

One evening, while I was out having dinner with a few close friends, someone casually said,
“It’d be awesome to fly to Las Vegas, wouldn’t it?”

Naturally, they didn’t mean on an airline.
We were talking about taking the controls ourselves and attempting a night flight in a small plane—500 miles all the way to Las Vegas, Nevada.

“If we’re going, we might as well see the night view, right?”

The more we talked, the more excited we got. Once the date was set, my heart wouldn’t stop pounding with anticipation.

Heading for Las Vegas

On the day of departure, the sky was perfectly clear, not a cloud in sight. The wind was calm—an ideal day for flying.

After our preflight checks, we took off from a small Bay Area airfield. With the setting sun at our backs in the western sky, we climbed out toward the east. As the ground below slowly sank into darkness, the airplane under my control held its altitude and cruised on steadily.

Inside the cockpit, the only sounds were the drone of the propeller and the crackle of radio traffic over the headset. Las Vegas was about two and a half hours away. Once we crossed into Nevada, the world outside turned into pitch-black desert.

There was almost nothing to see outside. Our only guides were the instruments, the charts—and our own experience.

Light waiting at the end of the dark

Before long, the dark outline of a mountain range emerged in the distance.

On the other side of that, Las Vegas was waiting.

We checked in with the tower, and they began giving us altitude changes and course instructions. I figured we’d be cleared to cross directly over the mountains, but that wasn’t what they had in mind.

“Maintain your present altitude and follow the ridge line,” came the instruction.

I was a little surprised.

Going straight over the mountains would’ve been the shortest route, so why send us around? Still, we followed the instructions.

A few minutes later, as we banked left with the mountains off our wing—

All at once, a flood of lights exploded into view ahead of us.

Out of the darkness we’d been flying through, a dazzling ocean of light suddenly burst into our view.

It was, without question, one of the world’s premier entertainment cities.

Someone in the cockpit gasped, “Whoa…”
I was screaming on the inside.

“What a performance…!”

The true nature of their “service spirit”

After that, the controller kindly and carefully guided us through the approach to the airport.

But my mind was no longer focused on the landing itself.

“Wait… was that route earlier… on purpose?”

If the goal had just been to fly the shortest route, we would have crossed the mountains much sooner. Instead, we were directed to turn with the ridge off our left wing, so that the sea of lights would suddenly appear right through a break in the mountains.

It was a route that couldn’t be explained by safety alone. It felt like the moment the curtain rises on a stage—pure dramatic staging.

And I thought to myself:

“This is exactly what American-style service is about.”

Nothing to sell, but impossible to forget

When people talk about Japanese service, the image is often one of politeness, precision, and efficiency.

In America, by contrast, the experience itself is treated as the service.

Think of how the cast members at Disneyland aren’t just guides, but performers playing roles within a story.

That night flight to Las Vegas felt like the same kind of thing—a deliberate attempt to “invite us into a story.”

Service isn’t about selling something.

It’s about leaving a memory, creating an emotional impact.

That, I realized, is their idea of hospitality.

I still can’t forget those lights

Even now, I still think back to that night’s flight.

It was only an approach to an airport—yet it moved me to the core.

“Service means creating something that stays in your memory.”

That’s the lesson I feel I learned that night, high above Las Vegas.

Decades have passed since then, but the wave of lights we saw through that gap in the mountains is still shining brightly in my memory.