Follow our Confidential Commercial Airline Pilot, in his fun adventures in the sky...
Life as a
pilot is, in one word ‘luxurious’. It isn’t every day that you turn up to work
and the flying conditions are quite simply, spectacular. The weather? 30°
Celsius and clear skies. My day started off, very ordinary. All the normal
checks were completed. We had arrived at the aircraft early, and it’s not every
day you can sit in the cockpit and soak up the busy atmosphere of one of the world’s
biggest, international airports. It's also not everyday you catch your engineer
having a BBQ for 1 under the terminal platform. Well, this clearly was my lucky
day.
Setting up
the aircraft for departure I noticed the engineer sitting in the shade under
the terminal on a park bench. It's not uncommon for them to take time out and
why not take advantage of the weather? But suddenly Mr. Engineer gets up with tongs
in hand to flip a couple of sausages on the BBQ beside him. That’s right, the
man who was to push back my aircraft was enjoying a little Havana of solace in
the simplest way possible. I suppose he had no idea he was about to be sharing his
lunch.
Leaning
over to the captain sitting next to me, I urged him to open the front cockpit
window. "You smell that?" "Sure can." "Making you
hungry?" “Sure is” was the quick exchange between us. So in a very professional
manner we summoned the engineer to the aircraft. I can see the smile on his
face as he comes to understand the situation. Long story short, 2 minutes
later, we too are kicking back in the shade, eating a sausage in bread with a
can of soft drink fizzing away in the background. The exchange was two happy
pilots and a smug engineer.
That day,
the passengers arrived 10 minutes early, so we were clearly winning. Oh, it
wasn't all one-way traffic; I did gift him with a couple of cans of fizzy
goodness from the aircraft galley. The moral of the story; the same we learnt
at school, bring enough food to share with everyone.
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