Reflecting On A Life In Aviation

January 27, 2021     Cleveland, Ohio

"United 1 Heavy, contact departure!” Banking gracefully left, the mighty Boeing 777 climbed skyward. Engines at full power, it roared past the edge of my bed, out over the chest of drawers, and off into the great beyond. Slipping the surly bonds, or, rather, the woven blue carpet fibers of my childhood bedroom, was a regular occurrence back in those days, especially after school. Jet after jet followed as the evening departure bank was vectored out the door and down the hallway. Back on the ground, the airport fire fighters were responding to an emergency: the family dog had just kicked over my international arrivals hall. A full departmental response was required.

Growing up in an aviation family, I can’t think of a time when I wasn’t surrounded by airplanes. As a boy, I collected dozens and dozens of models. I’d save my allowance for weeks, covetously hoarding dollar bills until I had enough for a brand new jet. Friday afternoon saw me bounding excitedly down the steps and into the kitchen, eager to exchange the cold hard cash for my dad’s Mastercard. I’d use a marker to circle the month’s latest must-haves in the back of a magazine and call in my order as fast as my little fingers could mash the buttons. “Okay, we have your order, but can you put one of your parents on the line for me?” Of course nobody ever trusted that a 10 year old would have a line of credit. A few days later, charging up the driveway from my school bus, I’d catch my first glimpse of the telltale white cardboard box, perched atop a bench by our front door. That new plane smell will forever linger in my memory.

When the internet became a thing, of course I used it to harass and harangue every airline company foolish enough to put their contact information on a website. Every day became a mail call from far-flung and exotic destinations the world over. Safety cards from Brazil, stickers from New Zealand, pins and posters from Switzerland, often with hand-written notes of thanks or encouragement. My parent’s mailbox ran over with goodies from airlines and manufacturers around the globe. Naturally, sending envelopes packed with toys and trinkets to a child wouldn’t net any of these companies a new customer, but they sent them all the same, just because they “got it.” Airplane Dork is an international language, one which binds us and brings us closer, and I am forever grateful for the willingness of strangers to indulge my younger self and to share a tiny piece of their world with me.  

As a youngster, back when the airfield was dominated by noisy, straight-pipe Pratt and Whitneys, I’d spent probably hundreds of hours with my father on our local airport’s observation deck. I’d hang over the rail and snap away with the family camera, not really knowing what I was doing beyond framing up an airliner and pressing the shutter. Usually the photos came out overexposed or yellowed, but I didn’t mind too much; it was just a fun day at the airport with my dad. Later, as I entered junior high, my mom got a job working as an airline gate agent. After school and on weekends, my best friend and I would ride with her to work to wander the concourses and haunt the rails of the observation deck, hot dogs and cameras in hand. While today eight hours in a busy terminal sounds like a chore, back then it was hardly enough to satiate our need to be around airplanes. One day, on our fifth lap around the D concourse, radio scanner in hand, we saw a pilot waving at us through the cockpit windows of his airplane. He had noticed my scanner and, using his fingers to sign us instructions, gave us a frequency over which we could communicate across the ramp. His voice crackled through the radio’s speaker: “Airport bums, huh?” We didn’t have a push-to-talk switch to respond, but we didn’t need one for him to understand exactly what we were doing at the airport that day. “We’ll be back from Rochester in four hours. If you’re still here, meet us at this gate!”  

Fortunately for my friend and I, my mom “got it” too. She waited well beyond the end of her shift for us, and I’ll never forget the excitement I felt watching that ATR roar back into the gate. Walking across the apron, the smell of jet-A and airplane coffee thick in the air, I stared wide-eyed as the flight attendant welcomed us up the stairs. The pilots, finally done with their long duty day and surely ready to go home, had relinquished their seats to us before proceeding to spend the next thirty minutes fielding questions from two awestruck kids who wanted nothing more than to fly airplanes. When we ran out of things to ask, we simply sat there and stared, and they sat with us. The crew of that airplane didn’t owe us a single moment of their time, but they went out of their way to bring us into their lives and to share their craft with us. “Have a great night!” the flight attendant said with a wink, as we finally descended the air stairs back onto the ramp. I felt like I’d just come down from the clouds myself. It just didn’t get any better than that.

Last month, as I punched route guidance and wind calculations into my flight management system for the third time that day, I found myself caught up in the frenetic world of flying jetliners amidst a rapidly rebounding summer travel season. The inbound flight had to be met by police after several passengers chose to make life unnecessarily difficult for our flight attendants, and now we were running behind. Leafing through our flight release, checking over waypoints and fuel burns, I heard a voice from over my shoulder. “Excuse me, Captain? I have a little girl who would like to see the flight deck!” Eyes big as saucers, feet hesitantly shuffling forward, she inched her way into our domain. Suddenly, the time press seemed to melt away and, just like that, I had all the time in the world. “Would you like a picture in the pilot’s seat?”

Our work environment today is a very different place than it was in the glory days of my youth.  September 11th fundamentally changed our entire industry’s attitude, and 2020 brought forth a cataclysm the likes of which we never could have imagined. I watched helplessly as friends and coworkers were sidelined, furloughed, or let go completely. Some will never return to aviation; a few have flown west. For those of us still working, it’s important never to lose sight of where we came from. Very few people just “wind up” flying airplanes. For most of us, it has been a long and sometimes brutal road; a passion project. A lifelong dream achieved thanks in no small part to the time, patience, and encouragement of others.  

When thunderstorms conspire against my commute home, when maintenance issues or crabby coworkers seem to make my day drag on endlessly, or any time I see the letters “E-W-R” on my schedule, I close my eyes for a moment and remember what it was like to be a kid again, on the other side of the glass. Fortunately, I’m never far away from that feeling of wonder and excitement. For all the routine, working with jets day after day really is a wonderful way to spend one’s time. As for my childhood best friend? My fellow airport bum? He flies jets, too. Every once in a while we’ll pass one another in the terminal, and I always make sure I take a moment to send a selfie to my parents.