Remember Max had the spiders steam a runway, plus he had the self aware ones fly them out, they are like Alice so they can react faster and do things better than any human pilot could
I just skipped the whole boring flight from the ranch to the sub to get things moving along. There was the potential for a funny scene with Petra's fear of flying but I think the story was getting a bit bogged down
In fact the next several chapters will mainly be prep for the next book then the finale in this book
Getting close to the end...