Sunday, Jul 20, 2008
These days, because I am an airline pilot, people want to know if I'm scared. Of course I'm scared. I would be nervous flying with a pilot who wasn't.
Apr 11, 2002 | I junked my car, an old red Hyundai, back in 1993, and started riding the subway out to the airport. With my black case, and sometimes in full polyester regalia, I was, maybe, one of the more interesting curiosities on the Blue Line.
In time I became an expert at gauging the intent of peoples' stares. Businessmen would check out the stickers on my flight bag. College kids would try to decipher the logo on my brass wings. Others would contemplate the number of stripes on my gold shoulder epaulets: What did three bars mean? Four? Now and then strangers would strike up conversations. "My sister-in-law," they would say, for example, "is a flight attendant, too." And with that I'd politely explain I was not, in fact, a flight attendant, but a pilot.
I won't say that people were impressed, exactly, to run across an airline pilot slogging it out with the rest of the commuters, but I was at least unusual. And I was young enough -- still in my mid-20s when I bought my first monthly pass for the Boston subway -- to seem something of a novelty.
But lately, the looks and glances have changed. The precise meaning of these new-style stares is something I can't quite fathom. But they are different, full of some strange uneasiness. Is it sympathy? Is it appreciation, respect for a job and responsibility? Or are people merely happy not to be in my polished black shoes, having to deal daily with the pageant of chaos and automatic weaponry we've come to find in our airport terminals?
The news these days is brimming with stories that in some way touch the lives of pilots: discussions about the armoring of cockpit doors, the controversy about arming pilots with guns, the danger of bombs hidden in suitcases.
And all of us saw the videos of two stolen planes crashing into skyscrapers, something a pilot had no choice but to take, well, personally.
Four on-duty crews -- eight qualified flight officers -- were victims of last September's skyjackings. They were disrespected in the worst way, killed after their beloved machines were stolen from under them and driven into buildings. I didn't know them, never met any of them. John Ogonowski comes to mind, the good-guy captain of the first crashed airplane. Of all the millions of people who would, in the end, be appalled and mesmerized by the happenings of that day, and of the thousands who would be victimized, Captain Ogonowski was, in a way, the first of them. He lived near here; his funeral made the front page, where he was eulogized for his work with Cambodian immigrants.
But while it would be annoyingly melodramatic to say I felt a bond or kinship with these eight men, there's an underlying -- and wrenching -- empathy I cannot avoid. I can understand, maybe, what it must have been like. I can imagine it. For the rest of you, if you've never worked in the cathode-ray glow of an airliner cockpit, you won't quite get it.
What brought Ogonowski and the others to the world of flying jetliners I can't say, though I assume their stories are similar to mine, harking back to that nugget of boyhood fascination you always seem to discover among pilots, including myself. In the fifth grade I could point out the difference between a 727-100 and a 727-200 from the far side of the tarmac.
Whether I consider myself more, or less, cerebral about flying than most pilots is open to debate. My obsession as a youngster was -- and remains -- with workings of the airlines themselves. I have no fascination with the sky. I feel no ecstatic glee at the breaking of any "surly bonds." In junior high I would pore over the system maps of Pan Am, Aeroflot, and Lufthansa, memorizing the names of the foreign capitals they flew to, then drawing up my own imaginary airlines and tracing out their intended routes.
It was all about far-off countries and cultures, and I'd imagine flying to whichever of them at the controls of my favorite airplane, the majestic 747, flagship of the world's fleets. The sight of a Piper Cub meant nothing to me. Five minutes at an air show watching the Thunderbirds do barrel rolls and I was bored to tears.
Whenever the topic of my job comes up, one of the questions I'm asked is: Aren't you ever scared? This always has struck me as both a profound and completely asinine question. "Yes," I answer. "Of course I am scared. I am always scared. And I'd be nervous flying with any pilot who wasn't scared." You can take that with the wink it deserves, but it contains an important, if obvious, element of truth.
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