Random thought, while watching clocks tick into the 7:00 range, and watching 707 and 727, etc., go past:

What variety of plane have I flown most often?

At first, I thought it might be close, with at least three contenders.

Upon further review … I’m pretty sure it isn’t close, and I imagine it isn’t for most Americans.

I believe my first commercial flight was on a Boeing 727. A charter flight from Long Beach, California, to Carbondale, Illinois (to cover a college football game), in 1975. The mid-70s was the heyday of the 727, but because it was a charter, there is a chance it was a version of the older 707, which had entered the skies in the 1950s and become an international workhorse.

I would have thought I didn’t fly the 727 much more, after that, but I took a look at the dear departed Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) wiki page, and PSA flew mostly 727s, and I flew PSA quite often in the late 1970s and into the 1980s, to the San Francisco area and back.

Early in the 1970s, the Boeing 747 came on line, and back before fuel was massively expensive a person could fly a 747 on medium-length routes. Like, Chicago to Los Angeles. (Now, 747s rarely do anything shorter than coast-to-coast.) So I flew more than a few of those during the three years I covered the Los Angeles Rams … and then right into the 21st century, often on trips across oceans.

I had a handful of flights on the 747’s domestic competitors, the DC 10 and the Lockheed L-1011 — which probably was the nicest of the three jumbos but also the least successful. And did some of the McDonnell-Douglas planes, like DC-8 and the MD80.

The Boeing 757 came along, a loooong 3-3 configured plane (capacity well over 200), and it seemed like I rode that a lot in the past 20 years, much to my chagrin. (Some airlines have used the 757 to cross the Atlantic, which has to be quite unpleasant.)

Followed by the 767, still my favorite plane to fly — because it has two aisles and a 2-3-2 configuration, which means almost everyone is on window or an aisle. If I can get to a place on a 767, I will take it.

Followed by the 777, which is a torture device, a 3-3-3 configuration jumbo in most iterations, and that’s just hideous. I’ve done it a time or 10, but never if I could find an alternative.

And, in the past 20 years, the Airbus planes came into view, especially when flying to Europe. The 320, the 330, etc.

I have yet to fly on either the Airbus A380 monster nor the Boeing 787, but I am scheduled to do the former in a few weeks.

Anyway, upon further review, I realized that I must have flown Boeing 737s more often than any other plane. And it can’t be close.

The 737 not only has been in service throughout my adult life, it is the most common commercial jet ever produced, with nearly 7,500 delivered and another 3,000 on order.

Some of the stats noted in the link suggest that 1,200 Boeing 737s are in the air any moment of the day, and that two are taking off or landing every five seconds.

So, the plane not only is all over the place … varieties of the 737 are the only plane flown by Southwest Airlines, and Americans know what sort of traffic Southwest does. Almost unavoidable.

I am no fan of the 737. When operated by Southwest, in particular, it is another form of aviation torture, lending itself to bouts of claustrophobia and loathing of oversized passengers who might be on your right or left. It is the symbol of what is wrong with American civil aviation — crowded, rude and unpleasant.

But the world is full of them, and I’m sure I’ve flown it dozens and dozens of times. Maybe 50, 60 times.

I didn’t realize it was so popular. “Popular” in this case being “common” as opposed to “liked.”