Let me get this out of the way. The other day I logged one of my greatest flying accomplishments in thirty-three years of flying.
Twenty-five years as an airline pilot.
Twenty thousand hours.
And while I hope I never have to interview for another flying job, if I do, this is the story I’m leading with. When I finish, they won’t ask another question. They’ll just say: “So, when can you start?”
It began, as these things often do, with weather.
We woke up in Tampa with a long day ahead of us and a forecast full of inclement weather. I switched on the news in the hotel while dressing and watched report after report about storms up and down the East Coast. I thought, “Whew, glad I’m not there” until I remembered that I absolutely was there and planned to fly through most of it if the day went as planned.
Four legs up and down the East Coast on our schedule. We arrived at the airport from the hotel just as the first line of weather passed overhead hard enough that passengers started filming the sideways rain from the windows in the terminal. The Starbucks line doubled as the departure board lit up red with delays and cancellations, and our inbound flight diverted somewhere for more gas. We, too, were given a significant delay.
So I placed a mobile Starbucks order for the crew to skip the line. It makes me feel like a VIP when I do. “Excuse me, that’s my order they just announced.”
And then came our reroute.
Just us two pilots, leaving the cabin crew behind.
When they change our schedule, you never know where they’ll send you. Though they have a computer program that optimizes who goes where in what plane I like to envision it’s a bunch of manatees in a tank with beach balls that have our employee numbers on them. One of the Sea Cows just pushed my ball into the Orlando bucket.
We were to reposition a 737 that had just finished up maintenance to Orlando. A short flight with no passengers.
Negating my coffee line cutting VIP status, we got shuttled across the airport in a beat-up pickup truck, our bags rattling around in the open bed still wet from the rain. We climbed the rickety stairs to the plane like sailors boarding a cargo ship through the galley entrance. The mechanics slammed the door shut from the outside and locked us in like Apollo astronauts in their capsule.
It was up to us now.
The weather passed, and we prepped to fly the empty plane to Orlando to save the day for another crew.
This is when the day got special.
When you fly without a cabin crew, the pilots have to preflight the cabin ourselves. Not something we do often, so we took our time, reading the checklist aloud, calling out items with gusto like we were playing a game of Concentration.
“Megaphones.”
“Wait, saw those earlier. Behind door two. Check!”
It took us four times longer than the flight attendants ever take. When we finally finished, we patted ourselves on the back and agreed they really do the hard work.
Satisfied that nothing would come loose in the back, we armed the cabin door with the associated emergency slide and started the engines.
Normal departure, normal weather avoidance, normal landing in Orlando. The only abnormal part was that it was just us two in the plane.
At the gate, my First Officer jumped up to disarm the slide before the cabin door was opened from the outside and yelled up to me.
“Dude. You have to see this.”
My stomach sank.
What did we forget?
Was the galley awash in drink cups we didn’t stow?
Did an emergency slide deploy into the jetway?
What kind of paperwork was this going to involve?
Before we left Tampa, we’d sat in row three to double-check the cabin, sipping our VIP coffees. Apparently my First Officer had left his cup sitting on the tray table the entire flight.
Takeoff to landing to taxi in, untouched, still sitting upright, not a single drop spilled.
We’d flown the entire flight, coffee still in its hardly functional solely decorative cupholder, awaiting his next sip.
Obviously, one of my greatest flying accomplishments.
As I said, I hope I never have to interview again. But if I do, this is the story I’ll tell.