wanted to she could have reached across the aisle and touched him. “Okay, I can retire now,” she said after the flight.
My Keanu Reeves moment happened when I spotted the CEO at the watch company I used to work for, walking through the airport at LaGuardia. I had just gotten off a flight and made a beeline straight for him.
“Hi! Remember me? I used to work for you!” I said excitedly. I’d been waiting for this day for three years. He looked nervous. “I’m Heather Poole.”
I could tell he had no idea who I was, and he confirmed this when he said, “I… uh… have to catch a flight.”
“Okay, well, here’s my number,” I said, scribbling it on the back of a passenger’s business card. “Maybe after you have a chance to relax you’ll remember me.”
Or maybe not. He never called. So I took matters into my own hands and called him. Being a flight attendant had given me confidence. I’d grown so accustomed to dealing with “important” people, or at least those who thought they were important, so I could handle myself in pretty much any situation, including dating the old boss. Anyway, I had nothing to lose.
I left the CEO a message, telling him I’d show him around New York City next time he came to town, even though he probably knew the city better than I did since his company had a showroom here. One year later, he returned my call. There was never any intimacy other than a little hand-holding and a kiss at the end of the night. But there were black town cars and first-row tickets to Broadway shows, nice dinners at the best restaurants, and plenty of good conversation that revolved mostly around where I’d been, where I was going next, and all the people I’d met in between. Basically I did the majority of the talking, which was fine by me because I like to talk. When he’d leave I wouldn’t hear from him again for weeks, even months until he’d board a flight to New York, pull out his BlackBerry while sitting in first class waiting for the plane to depart and type, “What are you doing tonight?” Four hours later a black car would pick me up and whisk me into the city. He was a successful businessman who was fifteen years older than me, so we didn’t have a lot in common, but what we did share was enough. We were living the dream. We were two lonely people who traveled.
Chapter 11
DATING PILOTS
I’D
Pilots are type A personalities. They’re logical thinkers who must remain calm, cool, and in control as they command the aircraft. There’s no room for emotion when faced with a decision like the one Captain Sully had to make when he ditched an aircraft into the Hudson River. Flight attendants, on the other hand, are nurturing and caring. The issues we deal with are rarely black and white. So if opposites attract, it only makes sense that pilots and flight attendants would wind up together. And maybe it isn’t a surprise to learn that pilots often marry nurses and teachers, while flight attendants get involved with police officers and firemen.
There’s a saying in the airline industry that you’re not a real airline pilot unless you’ve been furloughed, gone on strike, and been divorced. I can’t help but wonder how many pilots have flight attendants as ex-wives, since so many of them are brazen enough to try juggling more than one of us at the same time. It’s not pretty when a pilot gets caught—and they almost always do. This is because flight attendants have a tendency to talk—a lot—and invariably we wind up talking about them. One lucky guy became the subject of jump-seat conversation when his wife and mistress were paired together to work a trip. Imagine how he must have felt when he pulled up that list of crew names! While his wife raved about her amazing husband, the girlfriend shared intimate details of her hot new man. Surrounded by passengers, a midflight fight broke out between the pissed-off mother of two and the young hot mistress who had no idea her perfect boyfriend wasn’t so perfect after all. A different mile-high love triangle went down a little more peacefully when, instead of coming to blows, two flight attendants agreed to confront the wandering groin at the airport. They stood, side by side, arms crossed, at the top of the jet bridge just waiting for the bastard to walk off his flight. I wasn’t there to see the end of it, but I’m sure the passengers seated in the surrounding gate area went home with quite an interesting story to share that day.
While not all pilots end up with flight attendants, many do tend to marry often. There are a few horror stories of embittered pilots who have made the galley gossip rounds. Take, for instance, the San Francisco–based pilot (I hear he’s now deceased) who refused to speak to flight attendants at the end of his career. He made the first officer do all the talking for him. Later he went on to write about “gold-diggers” and the “lopsided” court system in a book,
Pilots and flight attendants usually love or hate each other—maybe a little too much since there’s rarely an in-between. It’s usually the latter for our more senior flight attendants who’ve been there, done that more times than they’ll ever admit. They make it a point to take new hires under their wings and school them in the ways of pilots. One such flight attendant went so far as to write down a few tips in case I forgot:
Tip 1: Don’t do it.
Tip 2: Don’t do it.
Tip 3: Don’t do it.
Tip 4: If you do mess up and do it, don’t do it more than once.
A flight attendant who dates more than her fair share of pilots is referred to as a “Cockpit Connie,” unless she’s someone you really dislike, in which case she’s an “air mattress.” One can assume this kind of flight attendant is familiar with “touch and go.” Pilots, on the other hand, get stereotyped as three things: womanizers, cheap bastards, and horrible dressers. Unfortunately, stereotypes come from a seed of truth and, because I ignored all four points on the list, I’ve dated them all, starting with Gary.
I met him at LaGuardia Airport back when I was still working for the watch company. My fourth flight ever was a trip to New York. A girlfriend at work had scored super cheap tickets to visit her family over the weekend and invited me to come along with her. It was a quick three-day trip that landed late at night on day 1 and departed back to Dallas late in the afternoon on day 3, about two hours shy of the firework show over the city. While we were waiting for our return flight to board I thought it might be fun to ask a pilot to take a photograph with me. I would frame it and give it to my mother as a sort of gag gift for her birthday—she had a thing for men in uniform, which is one of the reasons she married my father, a retired lieutenant commander in the navy.
I had my camera out and ready to go when I locked eyes on three gray-haired pilots heading my way. With my girlfriend egging me on, I was just about to ask, but at the last minute I chickened out. They were too involved in a serious conversation to bother with my silly request. How could I have possibly known they were probably just discussing filing with the IRS after a third failed marriage? Right behind them, walking all alone, I spotted another one, and this one was young and cute and looking right at me.
His name, it turned out, was Gary, and I’m pretty sure I saw him blush when I told him what I had in mind. Now if I had known my mother was going to react the way she did after she unwrapped the gold-framed photo on her birthday, I would never have stopped him to ask if he’d pose in a picture with me. And I certainly wouldn’t have given him my phone number if I had thought my little joke would take on a life of its own, making its way into the homes of my grandparents, who displayed the photograph of a smiling tall, dark, and handsome pilot standing beside me with my big hair and exposed midriff on a bookshelf in the family room for all to see.
I knew nothing about the airline business at the time, so I paid no attention to the three gold stripes circling the wrists of Gary’s uniform blazer. What I didn’t know was that these signaled that he was a first officer, not a
