captain. Captains sit on the left-hand side, wear four stripes, and get first dibs on a choice of crew meal, almost always passing the vegetarian entree off to the first officer. Pilots are never catered the same thing to eat on board a flight as a precaution against food poisoning. My colleagues and I were taught a lot of things in flight attendant training, but landing an aircraft wasn’t one of them. This is why we aren’t allowed to swap out cockpit meals for passenger meals if we run out of choices and a passenger doesn’t get what he wants. If you go to use the first- class lav and catch a flight attendant eating what you think should have been your meal, don’t get upset! Chances are that one of the pilots decided not to eat at the last minute.
Seniority for pilots works pretty much the same as it does for flight attendants. The big difference between pilots and flight attendants is a pilot can move up in rank. You can always tell how senior a pilot is based on the aircraft he’s flying. The heavier the airplane, the bigger the paycheck, with the captain making substantially more per hour than a first officer. When there’s an opening, the most senior first officer or captain will “move up.” When a captain on a smaller plane is upgraded, the most senior first officer has a shot at becoming a captain. From time to time you’ll find the first officer has more seniority than the captain. In these cases, the first officer has chosen quality of life over pay (a life off reserve). Now, if I had worked for an airline the day I met Gary, I would have known immediately that he was pretty low on the employee totem pole—he had three stripes and was working a flight that departed late in the afternoon on the Fourth of July.
When Gary walked away after our picture that day, I thought that was that, end of story. He lived in Florida and I lived in Texas. Where could it possibly go? I figured I’d never see him again, which is why I’d had the nerve to ask him for the photo in the first place! The last thing on my mind was to hook up.
But then I boarded my flight, plopped down into my seat, glanced out the window, and saw a familiar-looking pilot looking up at the wing. “Oh no, he’s our pilot.”
“Wave!” my girlfriend exclaimed, leaning into me. I grabbed her hands and held them firmly down.
“Oh shit!” I exclaimed, sliding way down in my seat when he looked up.
An hour into the flight, just when I was starting to relax, a flight attendant holding a tray of food stopped at my row. “Gary asked me to bring you this. It’s his crew meal,” she said.
“How sweet!” my girlfriend squealed. Stunned, I just sat there. I’d really thought Gary hadn’t seen my shocked face framed in the airplane window. My friend unlocked my tray and the flight attendant placed the first- class cheese lasagna on my table. It looked delicious.
“Umm… tell Gary I said thank you.”
When I myself became a flight attendant, I reflected back on this moment many times and wondered what the heck Gary was thinking by sending the first-class flight attendant back to coach to serve me, a passenger he barely knew, a passenger wearing
I’m not sure which was more embarrassing, Gary’s big-ball move or me ringing the call light after I finished eating so a flight attendant could take away the tray. Because unless it’s an emergency or the seat belt sign is on or you’re stuck by the window next to a sleeping passenger, you really shouldn’t ring the call light. Flight attendants use a chime system to signal different emergency situations, and when we hear it, we assume it’s an emergency. If we get a series of passengers who start using it to order drink refills, there’s a cabin full of flight attendants wondering if they should grab a serving tray or a bottle of oxygen. If you can, it’s always best to get up, stretch your legs, and walk to the back to say hi to the crew. Or just wait for a flight attendant to pass by—we’re each required to walk through the cabin at least once every fifteen minutes. As for that flight attendant who came back to pick up the meal Gary had sent back after I did what I now would never do (
Even though we’d exchanged numbers and I’d promised to mail him a copy of the photo after I got home, I was still pretty surprised when he called, and even more shocked when he asked me out. He had a layover in Dallas and wanted to know if I’d like to meet for a drink, since it’d probably be too late for dinner. But if I wanted dinner, he’d love to take me out, he quickly added. I’d never dated someone like Gary before. At the age of twenty-three I was only used to dating guys who had recently graduated from college, most of whom were still unsure of what they were going to do with their lives, not men in charge of aircrafts. I felt totally unworthy of his attention. I spent my days deciding which lugs went with which dials, mixing and matching different leather straps, while he spent his days flying passengers to their destinations. Handsome, smart, and sweet, he was a total catch. Too bad for my mother, he wasn’t my type. At the time, you see, my type had a tendency to suck.
In hindsight, I realize the problem with Gary was that there was no problem with Gary. The man was perfect in every sense of the word. But I was twenty-three, and at that time in my life, there was one thing that I really couldn’t handle. What bugged me wasn’t that he had a four-year-old son or an ex-wife who lived not too far from his parents’ house. Where he lived. No, what disturbed me were his clothes. I almost died when he showed up for our first date basically wearing his uniform. Because I knew he was on a layover, I let it slide—the first time. No doubt about it, Gary looked handsome standing in front of a cockpit door greeting passengers, but the uniform belt and uniform pants paired with a bright yellow T-shirt just didn’t cut it on the dance floor.
It’s an interesting topic, pilots and fashion. I’m not sure I can even use the two words in the same sentence since they go as well together as orange juice and toothpaste. Ask any group of flight attendants if they can spot a pilot in civilian “layover clothes” and they will emphatically say yes. Don’t believe me? Next time you’re at the airport look for the guy wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses. If he’s also sporting pleated khakis with a powder blue golf shirt underneath a Members Only jacket, nine times out of ten his name is at the bottom of the non-rev standby list. Despite the reality, for so many women the word “pilot” conjures up images of dashing men in uniform. Think Richard Gere (
In the travel section of Barnes & Noble, I once met a guy named Bob. I didn’t believe him when he told me he was a pilot. He looked too good to be a pilot! Not that Bob is conventionally handsome. He’s kind of nerdy. But he knows how to rock the dark denim without the pilot’s trademark running sneakers. When I asked Bob why so many pilots dressed terribly, he said it’s because his coworkers spend too much time looking for tools in the Sears catalog and then accidentally stumble into its clothing section. “It’s not so much that being a pilot causes one to be fashion-challenged, it’s just that we tend to be better at things like engineering, checking the car’s oil, fixing things around the house, and not asking for driving directions. This opposed to fashion design,” he explained.
Too bad Bob wasn’t around to help my roommate Jane’s date, a 767 first officer, pick out something to wear on their first date. Hot Shot showed up dressed to impress wearing golf shoes, skin-tight acid-washed jeans, and a turquoise jacket.
“He looked like such a nerd,” Jane cringed after the date. “I don’t think I would have agreed to go out with him if he’d looked like that when he asked me out.”
Thank God for first impressions. And uniforms.
They spent three weeks getting to know each other over the phone before their first date. They weren’t intentionally taking it slow, but that’s how long it took before they were finally able to coordinate their schedules. In the long run, this was a good thing since it helped that Jane was practically head over heels for the guy by the time they finally went out. Otherwise she might not have been able to overlook the off-duty fashion disaster, and he would have never made it to second base. Two months into the relationship Jane talked her man into donating the shoes and the jeans, along with a dozen or so obnoxious Christmas ties and half a closet full of college clothes, to Goodwill. Then she borrowed his credit card and went shopping. She may have purchased a few things for him, too, because after they broke up two years later Hot Shot was considered one of the best-dressed pilots in the system. Much to her dismay he had no problem scoring another flight attendant who got to enjoy the fruits of Jane’s labor. But don’t feel badly for Jane. She upgraded to an airbus captain.
Gary and I didn’t date for long. In fact we didn’t really “date.” We went out a few times over the course of
