Readers often assume that because Cordell Logan flies a creaky, seen-better-decades Cessna 172—the Ruptured Duck—I must fly something equally geriatric, dented, and emotionally complicated. This could not be further from the truth. In reality, I fly a first-generation Cirrus, a sleek, exceedingly comfortable machine with glass avionics, a side yoke, and a temperament that suggests it was designed by psychologists who wanted flying to feel like therapy.

Logan’s airplane may not be like that, but it is exactly like the airplanes I spent many years flying before making the leap to a Cirrus.

Before upgrading, I logged several hundred hours in a Cessna 172 upon which the Duck is modeled. The kind with sun-cracked plastic, an earthtone color scheme popular during the administration, and avionics that proudly proclaimed themselves “state of the art” in 1973. For more than a decade after that, I flew a Piper Cherokee 180 built in 1965. It was a wonderfully simple, sturdy, no-nonsense, stubbornly faithful machine that I bought believing it would meet my requirement of being able to carry my wife, two kids, and full fuel. Turns out, everybody was invariably too busy with their own lives and interests to come flying very often with me. Indeed, these days, I fly solo far more often than I do with passengers.

So I know Duck-like airplanes intimately. I know the way their control yokes feel at rotation, the way their cabins smell like hot engine oil and vinyl. I know the rattle behind the panel that every mechanic hears but none can fix. In other words, the Duck is hardly imaginary. He is an affectionate amalgam of real birds I’ve taken aloft, sometimes cursed at, but always trusted. I know exactly what it feels like to coax them to life on frigid Colorado mornings, and off of short runways on a 95-degree-check-density-altitude afternoons with little headwind, while making mental bargains with the universe.

But Cordell Logan isn’t me, and fiction isn’t a flight plan.

Logan is a man whose life has been rough around the edges, dented at the corners, and patched together with experience he doesn’t always talk about. He belongs in a plane with similar mileage. A Cirrus wouldn’t suit him—not because he couldn’t fly it, but they both would look out of place. Logan’s a guy who needs to be flying something that simultaneously annoys him, challenges him, and reflects back the parts of himself he’d prefer to ignore. The Duck is perfect for this. It’s anything but shiny. It’s stubborn. It’s loyal. It’s loud. It holds a grudge.

The Cirrus, on the other hand, suits me for precisely the opposite reasons.

For one thing, it moves. If you’ve ever flown a Cherokee 180 or an old Cessna 172, you know that “cross-country” means “pack a lunch and don’t wait up for me for dinner.” A Cirrus, by contrast, makes you feel like a responsible adult who can actually get somewhere before dark.

The avionics are another reason. After years behind steam gauges and radios that hummed like they were built like Marconi, stepping into the Cirrus felt like being ushered into the future. It packs the kind of avionics that leave you confident that if something does go sideways, you’ll know the score before the airplane begins making its own decisions. Also, like all Cirrus aircraft, mine comes with a parachute—a giant, entire-airplane parachute. If the engine abruptly quits and I can’t get it re-started, I pull a little red handle and we drift back to earth. Logan has no such options. And that, I suppose, is a fine thing, because it raises the life-or-death stakes inherent in any good murder mystery.

Still, the biggest reason Logan flies the Duck while I fly a Cirrus is that airplanes in fiction are characters, not conveyances. The Duck complicates Logan’s life. The Cirrus simplifies mine. The Duck forces Logan to stay alert, stay humble, and occasionally improvise with the enthusiasm of a man who suspects the universe has it out for him. The Cirrus lets me get where I’m going without too much spontaneous spiritual growth.

And after hundreds of hours in Cessnas and a decade in a loyal Cherokee, I can say with authority that Duck-like airplanes in particular have individual personalities, if not souls. The Duck is not a punchline. He’s Logan’s partner in crime.