Cockpit Confessions of an Airline Pilot

“Holy Shit,” I say, “Sheamus, no business?”

Johnny says he’ll explain to me one day the ‘power of positive pussy.’ For now, he tells me: One pussy hair is stronger than a locomotive.”

Johnny, a big, garrulous man whose mustache makes him look like a walrus, says to the table of ten guys, “Did I tell you I celebrated my 25th wedding anniversary?” His soft, Carolina accented voice carries across the table. “Yeah, I take the wife to a fancy Eye-talian restaurant. Red check table cloth, linen napkins, china, the works. The band’s at our table playing the anniversary waltz, and Francis puts her hand over mine.” Johnny shovels some more steaming nassi goring into his walrus-mouth.

“People at other tables are paying attention to our going’s on. Francis looks soulfully at me through the candlelight and says ‘Johnny, I just want you to know I’ve been just as faithful to you over these 25 years as you have!”

Johnny says, “I talk to the guy at the next table who’s overheard her and say, ‘How’d you like to be married to a slut like that?”

“Johnny, you didn’t,” asks Wayne Cunningham, the 70 year-old-flight engineer, master of the hooey-hooey sticks.

Johnny just grins.

Most of these guys (including me) are married, and I get my daily dose of sex at the breakfast club table, listening to all the details of the previous nights’ action. How much of my fidelity is due to my love for my wife (considerable), my aging, non-hormonality, or my fear of all the life threatening diseases out there, I’m not sure. Only Herr-Lippi and I are the two “virgin holdouts” of the group, subject to a lot of good natured teasing by the rest. I don’t know how these fellas take the risks they do, morality aside. They never use rubbers, so they claim.

“The Tannemore” is a three-ring, Indonesian circus. The entire basement level of a high rise hotel, it consists of a central bar, which branches off to three larger, lounge areas. One of these rooms is for “straights', the other two are exclusive to homosexuals who gather in one, while transvestites frequent the other. Mingling, floating between the three rooms is common, with only good-will prevailing. As vast as the Tannemore is, the establishment is always comfortably full, with a great live band providing dance music, heard throughout.

This bar, and The Tavern, are the two main hangouts for all our cockpit crews. The company is jovial, the language is English, and the conversation is not exclusive to sex, but is worldly and wide-ranging. I’ve been to the Tannemore and the Tavern a number of times, enjoying the comradery of our group, and Indonesia’s great local liquor, Arak I was having a “Arak Attack,” when I noticed our Brit First Officer, Peter Vallie, walk into the place. This was his first Jakarta Hajj, and it was apparent the way Peter was taking in the scene from the entrance way, that this was his first visit to the Tannemore.

Our group sat at the side of the “straight room,” and Peter didn’t notice us. He started heading in the direction of “Transvestite Kingdom.” Pointing him out to Bubba, who was sitting next to me, I started to rise to intercept Peter. Bubba held my arm down, stopping me from getting up… grinning, he gave me a wink. Then he passed the word to the other ten or so of our guys, that Pete was heading for the wrong room. They all stayed low.

The “women” in the transvestite bar are more beautiful than the real thing. Most Indonesians are thin, small-boned, attractive people. The transvestite’s are gorgeous. If you’re not expecting it, you’d never know that you’re flirting with a biological male. An apple-cheeked, single Brit, Peter is a bit dry, does not actively socialize with the guys, and must have come alone, by cab. We forget about Peter, distracted by the progress of the evening.

The next morning, Peter became an accepted member of The Breakfast Club.’ Shyly, he approached the table, joined the group, and told of his “interesting evening.”

“I successfully interested a beautiful young lady in accompanying me back to my hotel room,” he begins. We kiss in the elevator as we ascend.” Peter, blushing during the telling, explains that he found out “rather late in the game,” the true gender of his partner. Ever the gentleman, rather than tossing the T.V. off his Hilton balcony, Peter accompanied the “young lady” back to the Tannemore, by taxi, picked up an “actual” woman, and consummated his quest. Peter’s candor, gentility, and self-effacement actually wins over this rough group, and he was instantly adopted as a charter member. Lynn says “we’ve got to start him off slow, this is the Majors, and he’s still a scrub rookie.” All agree.

Bubba is passing around Polaroids of “Poppa Don” and Larry Kent, jabbing huge dildos into the receiving ends of two Indonesian girls. The girls are side-by-side, doggie-style on a bed in one of their hotel rooms. Flight Engineer George Loman has another stack of Polaroids working their way around the table from the other direction.

“Why, this looks like the weed-wacker’,” moans Johnny Satin, feigning indignation. “I thought she was faithful only to me!” Poppa Don loses his coffee through his nose.

“Salamat Paghee, abaka bah?” I ask the Hilton desk clerks. Good morning, how are you?

“Baiek, Baiek!” they invariably answer, they are well.

My limited Bahasa allows me to go a little further with them. Since I am a short, quite overweight pilot, whose uniform buttons always threaten to explode, I know that they think I am kandut, grotesquely huge, as opposed to gamuck, which is simply heavy. Out of kindness, they hide their mirth at the ridiculous figure I cut. Indonesians are a wonderfully warm, polite people, easy to befriend, genuinely nice.

Used to dealing with Europeans, or Americans of a more serious nature, these desk clerks are not used to any self-deprecating humor. Straight faced, I inform them that “I am not gamuck and I am not kandut. I am a member of the American Nassi-goring Championship Eating Team.” Nassi-goring is their national breakfast staple, eggs over fried rice. They finally cannot contain themselves, they are in love with me, a fat man, with a heart large enough to make fun of himself, all in good humor.

I am waiting in the Hilton lobby for Charlie extra-pickles and Flight Engineer Jerry Lovell. We’ve flown these past three weeks of March, together, making many trips from Jakarta to Jeddah, and back. Today’s flight is the end of the first wave of the Hajj. Meeting up, were all in good spirits, knowing that we will be heading home as part of this

pairing. Today’s flight will be ten+ hours to Jeddah, carrying the last group of Indonesian Hajjis into Saudi Arabia, to start their pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. Upon our arrival, we will be on the ground at the Hajj Terminal for an hour or two, fueling and doing paperwork, then ‘tail-end ferry’ the empty airplane to Singapore (another nine hours flying).

Under other circumstances, the F.A.R.’s would not allow pilots to fly this many hours in a twenty-four hour period. “Tail-end ferry” however, means that as a ‘non-revenue flight,’ (no passengers, no freight and in this case, no flight attendants), the leg from Jeddah to Singapore falls into the F.A.R. Part 91 category, and does not affect ‘duty time rules as apply to F.A.R. 121 carriers. Legally, the flight leg does not exist. In real terms, however, we know that it will be an exhausting day. Were up about it, however, since we know that we will spell each other in a series of sleep breaks, across the entire empty rows of seats in the empty 747.

Also, we know we will be ‘chi-chinging,’ that is making extended duty pay at the rate of $60/hour for every hour of duty over 14 total duty hours. Today we will earn an extra $700 over and above our flight pay. This extra is our ‘chi-Ching’ (the sound of a cash register opening). Finally, upon our comatose arrival in Singapore, we will be checked into a five-star hotel, rest for a day and a half, and fly as business class passengers on Singapore Airlines, heading east towards home. I’m for my scheduled vacation, April 1 — 15.

“April fool,” says Charlie at poolside. I’ve just got a FAX from the company. They’ve cancelled our tickets home, they’re desperate for pilots in Jeddah, and were it!” It seems we’ve just been shanghaied back to Saudi Arabia to fly the Jeddah Hajj until we’ve “timed out,” 120 flight hours, max, in one month. Then we can go home. This is no joke.

We still get our days rest in Singapore, making the best of things at Raffles bar, and at poolside.

The next evening were first class passengers on “Saudia,” heading to Jeddah. Charlie and Jerry and I discuss the progress of the “Lust affair” that Sheamus O’Connor has himself involved in. It is not the first time a pilot has gone off the pecker induced deep-end.

A standing joke in the industry (I’ve been married three times myself), that you are not ready for “Captain upgrade,” if you don’t have at least three marriages.