Cockpit Confessions of an Airline Pilot

I radio ground and tell them that we have to hold position for a few minutes. Captain Sheamus O’Conner sends Jerry Lovell back to take a look.

Five minutes go by very slowly. Jerry finally comes back and reports that there is a cylindrical device with what appears to be wires sticking out of one end, that is submerged in filthy water in a stopped up sink in the aft lay. “ I wouldn’t touch it,” Jerry advises.

“Alright,” Sheamus says, “we are going to taxi to a remote area, tell ground we have a possible bomb on board, get us instructions as to where they want us to go, for remote, and tell them the bomb is only a possibility, we don’t want to panic our passengers unnecessarily. Once we stop,” Sheamus instructs the purser, “start moving people forward, away from the tail, get them up into the aisles, I don’t care if there are seats available or not.”

“Should we evacuate! ‘Easy Victor?’”

“Not yet,” says Sheamus adamantly, “more people get hurt during evacuations then anything else. We’re not ready for that yet.”

As we taxi to remote, it becomes apparent that DeGaulle ground, disregarding our instructions, has called out everybody. It seems like hundreds of fire engines, ambulances, riot-police, sirens and blue flashing lights are surrounding our airplane.

Sheamus moans “Oh shit, those fucking Frogs! We told them to be discreet!” The French, as always, do things their way, they know best, they are French after all… “We have invented Aviation, and the language of Aviation. “…fuselage, empennage, aileron….” All French words, they point out. The Frogs refuse to speak English to each other on the radio within the dense Paris area, creating a hazardous situation for all the English speaking others, who now have no clue where the French planes are, or what they are up to.

Three hours later, the bomb squad has safely removed the device. It was only a toilet paper cylinder, complete with a glop of remaining toilet tissue still wrapped around it. Someone from maintenance had removed the tube, rested it in the lay sink while replacing it. In their haste to get off the plane, the tube had been left behind. Then someone had used the sink, clogging it with dirty, soapy water, submerging the roll, and creating what appeared to be a threatening device.

Most of the passengers were now demanding to get off the plane. We had no choice but to taxi back to the gate. Zeezu, our French-Israeli Station Manager in Paris, well hated for his abrupt manner and demeaning treatment of pilots and crew, has cancelled the flight.

Zeezu, now feverishly dealing with hundreds of pissed-off New York/French/Jewish passengers, tells us that “we are the least of his problems.” Under the circumstances, he is truly not to be envied. Hours later, having found flights or hotel rooms for our former passengers, Zeezu has deigned to get us hotel rooms back at the Sofitel, Saint Jacques. This bag-drag ends eight hours after the bomb threat, as we exhaustedly enter our new hotel rooms.

Dinner that evening became a communal affair. The entire crew of pilots and flight attendants, all nineteen of us, managed to pull a few tables together in the Mussel restaurant. All was going well, huge bowls, heaped full of garlic mussels were delivered all around, all except for Capt. Sheamus, whose placemat was left empty.

Finally, and with great fanfare, a huge covered tureen is placed before the Captain. The table grows silent as the Maitre D removes the silver cover from Sheamus’ bowl. There, floating in soapy dishwater is a toilet paper roll… “Surprise! “…bedlam.

Nineteen shitfaced crewmembers party till dawn, celebrating the rescue effort and our new notoriety. Sheamus and I stagger back through the lobby of the Sofitel, trying to avoid the plague of Japanese tourists in Paris on holiday. We enter an elevator, along with a Japanese matron and her husband, both dressed-to-the-nines, and silent. The elevator remains paused at the lobby level, when I notice that big band music is being piped into my consciousness.

As the doors close and we begin to ascend, I take the Japanese lady’s hand and I start to dance. She is so startled that she automatically follows me through my Arthur Murray routine. Her husband and Sheamus are rolling with laughter, as I time my dip and my bow perfectly to coincide with my exit from the elevator, which as chance will have it, is the first stop.

I replay, and enjoy, my own performance as I drift off to sleep in my room.

“The Rabbi”

During my first year flying the Jeddah Hajj, the Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, the excitement soon gave way to the boredom of routine.

Islam, I am told, is a wonderful religion. One of its tenets decrees that a Muslim must make at least one Hajj, Pilgrimage, during his lifetime, in order to get to Heaven. This requires a visit to the three holy sites. Two of these Holiest Islamic sites, all part of the ritual of the Hajj, are located in the Magic Kingdom, Saudi Arabia. King Fand and his family are the official Custodians of these Holiest of Muslim Holies, located in the cities of Mecca and Medina.

Saudis, by virtue of arbitrary geography, (thanks to T.E. Lawrence and the Brits) play host to two million Muslims a year, all entering and leaving through the Hajj Terminal, a corner of King Abdul Azziz Airport in Jeddah; and all this during a three-month period each year. As the Landlords of Islam’s holy sites, the Saudis look down their prodigious noses at the Foreign Muslims, who travel from all over the Muslim World to make the Pilgrimage.

The deal to enter Saudi Arabia, The Kingdom (The Magic Kingdom to most of us, or The Sand-Box), is that you must be invited, you must obtain a visa, you must be sponsored by a Saudi company… this all requires a lot of time and patience… oh, and you must not be Jewish. I am Jewish…. though most of my colleagues don’t know it.

Each year, when assigned to fly the sandbox, every crewmember must fill out a million forms to have the entry visa stamp affixed to their passports. One of these forms asks for religion, and an answer is required. No answer, no entry visa!

The first year I was a Catholic, the next (off of probation) I became a Druid. This year, feeling feisty, I listed myself as a Pedophile.

A day long wait in an airport holding area in Jeddah is commonplace, while strutting Saudis with clip-boards disappear with your passport. They may only take a few hours, between meals and prayers, and return Inshallah, with your passport and visa.

As hard as it is to enter the Magic Kingdom, leaving is even more difficult. You must first get an exit letter from the Saudi government, before you can even attempt to leave. Think of the movie Casablanca. Ingrid Bergman, her Resistance-Hero husband, and the entire population of the city, it seems, is trying to get exit letters. The letter cannot be obtained until you can prove to the Saudi’s that you owe no money to your hotel or to anyone else, that your sponsor is allowing you to leave, and that you have paid passage out, already in hand.

Effectively, we are hostages in a very hostile land. The majority of the population detests our presence. We are non-believing, infidel devils, here to do their work, yet polluting their culture. Osama Bin Laden, heir to a Saudi fortune, is bent on driving the American Satan ( us ) from Saudi Arabia. He, and other Muslim extremists, have the resolve to kill us, but are still working on the means ( weapons of mass destruction ). We have the power and the means, but not yet the will to fight their kind of fight, at least not yet. Most Americans have no idea to what extent these people hate us, and would do anything to destroy us and our way of life… but we are stuck here, for the money.

Eventually, even these exotic new destinations become mundane….. Jeddah to Algiers and back, Jeddah to Medina and back, Jeddah to Damascus and back….. the problem was the “and back.” We flew to Delhi, Bombay, Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Dhaka, you name it, we went there, and back!

For us flying prisoners of Jeddah, breakfast became the highlight of our days. A wall-to-wall buffet of eggs, beans, rice, fruit, cheeses, and more, was available all morning. The local daily, The Arab News, was read over coffee, each morning. This slanted rag, the Royal Family’s personal Pravda, is so transparently biased, that it became our focal point of amusement, written for our personal pleasure.

One popular feature was “Ask Achmed,” a religious column dealing with the nit-picky issues of Islamic fundamentalism: