Posted on

My Favorite Things: As ‘Scene’ from the Flight Deck

Flying over Chicago: The Sears Tower

We were approaching Chicago one morning. I was working in the back of a 727 and the high-low chime sounded. I picked up the phone; it was the captain requesting that I come to the cockpit. Being fresh out of training, my heart skipped a beat. The captain calls crew to the cockpit to advise of trouble. When I arrived, I immediately noticed the field of white clouds below us. The captain welcomed me and pointed to his right. Below was the top of the Sears Tower sticking up through the area’s low lying clouds. I rushed back to the cabin and grabbed my camera, happy it was no emergency, but the chance to see a view not privy to many.
I was in a 757 flying a red eye to Boston one winter. The passengers were sleeping and I was staying awake on the jumpseat in first class. The pilots called for a lav break and as I entered the cockpit, the first officer mentioned that the aurora was visible. I entered the flight deck and the captain turned down the lights. There, I got to see the Northern Lights dancing in the skies to the north. I nearly melted. I’d never seen them from 36,000 feet and they were truly breath-taking.
I took this shot from the flight deck.
Since I was a little child, I’ve always loved thunderstorms. The flash of light, the anticipation of the clash. The rolling thunder and the crash, that would shake the house. My grandmother would comment, “Donner!”, as she had heard from her mother, who immigrated from Germany.
I love to watch lightning and to see it from the air is fantastical. From the ground, you lose so much perspective of just how much lightning is flashing in the storm. From cruise altitude, you can see the whole storm, with flashes hither and yon. The whole storm can be many miles wide and very high into the sky and there are flashes of lightning every few seconds. Perhaps you’ve seen a good storm out the side of an aircraft at night. But in the cockpit, the view is so much more spectacular.
In the days before 9-11, I used to spend a lot of time in the cockpit. Flight attendant staffing was such that I was not missed if I spent half an hour or so visiting with the pilots. It was also easier to access the flight deck. Back then, all it took was a knock. Now, it requires a whole sequence of events to get up there; it takes numerous people, and Mother Airline staffs the planes with fewer of us, so being gone makes a big difference to the rest of the crew.
Creative shot of the instrument panel.
One of the things I love is having a cross wind affect the direction the nose is pointing. There are times the plane starts crabbing, which means the nose may be pointing at noon, but we are moving towards 10 o’clock. The first time I got to observe this was during my cockpit observational ride during training. We approached the DFW airport in Texas. As we were heading towards the end of the runway, the nose of the plane was pointed more towards Ft. Worth than it was Dallas.
Spotting a plane from the Captain’s seat.
With the time I’ve spent in the cockpit over the years, I’ve learned a lot about the instruments and how to read things. I can spot planes on the radar and then search the huge sky to find them in the air. One of my favorite things is seeing other planes from the cockpit. The best is seeing one go directly over or under you, in the opposite direction. It’s simply fascinating!
Without doubt, the most thrilling part of the job for me is the chance to be in the cockpit during flight. Ever since I was a little boy, the buttons, knobs, switches and fuses have been a thing of wonder. There’s nothing like standing between the two pilots and having the whole world stretched out below. Or the heavens above during a full moon at night. Yep, being in the cockpit in flight…it’s my favorite.
A view after sunset while the first officer is out of the cockpit.
Posted on

Passenger of the Day: All in the Family

I’ve been very lucky in the arena of medical incidents in my career. The first one I had was within my first few months of flying. It’s one of those things you never forget, like your first kiss, your first speeding ticket or the first time you realized you hate fruit cake.

I was working on a 727 and we were taxiing for takeoff from Chicago. There was a commotion a few rows from the back of the plane; a man was having a seizure and the passengers around him began to go crazy. I heard someone yell for a spoon to put in his mouth, something you never want to do. If anything, too many people already have silver spoons, but never place anything in the mouth of someone in the throes of a fit.
He recovered quickly and was taken care of by medical professionals, who were able to enter the plane via the air stairs in the tail of the aircraft. What a wonderful feature to have, as it saved us from taxiing all the way back to the gate.
On another flight bound for Ontario, CA, we had to divert to Las Vegas for a woman who had the worst panic attack I’ve ever seen. We were only 90 minutes late to Ontario, and could have arrived sooner, except that we came in so fast, we had to wait for the brakes to cool down.
My favorite experience (if you can call it that) was on a flight where I was the purser and a man had fallen ill on our way to Washington, DC. I called for medical assistance and a doctor came forward, as well as a nurse. They tended to the patient and the flight attendants working in the back took over as I returned to first class and continued to communicate with the captain. The captain asked me if it was serious enough to divert. The doctor, upon my asking this question, suddenly went from saying this was serious and the guy needed medical help right away, to saying, no, I think he will be fine to get to DC. Obviously, this doc had an important engagement he didn’t want to miss. It was too late for a good tee time, so who knows…
Mostly, I encounter people who simply need a bit of oxygen. We ask for medical help, and I don’t think I’ve ever been on a flight where there was no one available. The key is to ask for anyone with medical training. If you ask for a ‘doctor on board’, you may miss someone who could be a vital help, as even a veterinarian has the basic skills to assist where no one else does.
The worst we get is the occasional vomit on the floor, which we must clean up. I had one so bad, I worked for half an hour with a beautiful plastic apron and mask on my face, sprinkling lemon scented powder all over the mess, scooping it up with a flimsy scooper and finally placing down a large blanket to cover the mess.
Keeping my skills current, I was recently on a flight home from Lima, Peru. I was working the aft galley and a woman looking a bit pale entered. She didn’t speak English, but we had 2 language qualified flight attendants in the galley. She was not feeling well and clutched the walls. She went down and someone shouted for oxygen, which I obtained. I knelt down, turned it on and began to place the mask on her. She shooed it away and rolled to her side. Someone said she was going to be ill and asked for a bag. I moved back, praying it wasn’t going to be of the projectile variety.
She recovered and I got the oxygen on her and a call went out for medical assistance. Shortly, we had an RN and a doctor, who seemed very comfortable taking her pulse, comforting her, moving her purse out of the way. I had taken gloves from the AED to hand to him and thought it very odd that he refused them. No one refuses gloves when dealing with bodily fluids! Turns out, the doctor was the woman’s husband. He spoke to the language flight attendants and mentioned that she was also a doctor.
Soon, another woman, young, attractive, straight black hair, was hovering nearby, offering her medical assistance as well. I told her that with the doctor and the RN, I felt we had it covered. But this was not just another soul offering medical assistance, it was the couple’s daughter. It was then that I noticed the doctors very nice gold watch and the patient’s leather Gucci purse. I wanted to ask if the daughter was single! Was everyone in their family in the medical field?
In the end, our patient recovered quickly, which was a good thing, as the bag that was delivered for her to be sick in was clear and I could see that, like me, she had the chicken for dinner. The sooner we got that out of the way, the better we’d all be! She soon was on her feet headed back to her seat. Another happy passenger taken care of by a team of well-trained flight attendants who were happy to assist and to do what we do best…take care of passengers.