I wrote the following years ago as a character study on a Captain I was flying with. I was hesitant to post it then as I genuinely enjoyed working with him and wouldn’t want him to think I was poking fun at him. Had he read it, I’d hate for a future trip with him to be awkward. He has since retired. In all honesty though, I think he would have liked this little story and would have appreciated someone studying him so closely.
My 61-year-old Captain is a former USAirways pilot from Philly. He sounds it too. Real gruff. He looks the part as well. Imagine an aging lounge singer who has played too many empty clubs. He swears a lot in public. On a deadhead with us in the cabin, he held up an memo from our company Ipad that he must have printed from five rows ahead and shouted over all the passengers to me, “Jesus. We can’t call them Check Airman anymore. They are check air persons!”
This is his fifth airline. All the way back to United in the ’80s, I think. He smokes a pipe and smells like cherry tobacco. He broke his neck twice, so he wears a scarf real tight for comfort and dons a neck pillow in the cockpit that is a fuzzy moose. He calls it “Mr. Moosey” in a very charming sing-songy way. As in, “Oh, where did Mr. Moosey go? Where could he be? Oh, there you are.”
He wears some kind of cummerbund under his uniform coat because a horse stepped on him years ago, and he says he broke some ribs in the incident. It’s blue and adds to that aging Vegas lounge singer look when he takes his coat off in the cockpit, like he’s sung his last song for the night. His house got hit by lightning and burned down. He lost two dogs and a cat in the fire and shares the story freely.
On our trip, he came in ten minutes before push on day one because he was buying us lunch though I had never met him. “I got all your stuff done, Captain. Settle in.” I said to no response. “They fucking paged me over the fucking PA for fuck’s sake. I was here. I’ve been here for hours. I had my fucking times all wrong. I was just right there getting us fucking cookies and they paged me.”
He has an old-school leather flight bag. He throws it over his seat like he is saddling up his horse. I get a full view of the cummerbund and waft of pipe smoke as he does so. His bag is full of marshmallow Peeps and gummy bears. All he eats are those Slim Jim/Cheese stick combos. At one point on the trip, I asked if he thought hotel maintenance would have a socket wrench I could use to tighten my suitcase wheel. Inexplicably, he pulled one out of his bag.
He bought me a footlong sub. I politely refused it as I was eating my salad from home. He made me eat the Cinnabon he bought me though. “I was late to work because I was buying you this for fuck’s sake!” I also politely refused the comically large cookie with sprinkles. He said, “Eat the goddamned cookie!” I ate the cookie.
If I ever were to have a Captain die at cruise, it’s going to be on this trip. He warned me he may have a coughing fit because his “throat doesn’t work so well anymore after the neck accident.” He told me it may sound like he’s dying. I’ve been instructed to get a cherry Halls from his bag ASAP if I hear him having a coughing fit, throw it in his mouth, and not declare an emergency. “I don’t have any sick time left for Christ’s sake.”
They gave us a hold into Denver, and he made the old joke… “I blame this on you.” I said, “With all due respect, you got stepped on by a horse and your house got hit by lightning… not to mention all the airlines.” He said, “With all due respect, fuck you.”
I do like the guy though. He keeps me laughing. In retirement, he definitely could do a Vegas act.