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“Is there a doctor on board?” Angie speaks calmly and clearly into the intercom phone as she scans the cabin, looking for raised hands.
Just behind the curtain, Captain Lewis is barely able to keep his eyes open, laying on the fold out bunk with just enough strength to lift his head so he can vomit up bile into the trash can instead of drowning in it. Now, the first officer is in the bathroom retching and coughing up his dinner.
A man just two rows in front of her reluctantly raises his hand and stands after a long fifteen seconds of no one else volunteering. “I’m a hand surgeon, so I don’t know how much help I’ll be,” he demures.
Angie raises an unimpressed eyebrow at him. “Well, if your medical degree didn’t teach you enough to know more than me about the human body, then it wasn’t worth much in the first place, was it?”
The man smiles tightly at her and she wordlessly points him behind the curtain. He follows without meeting her eyes.
“I’m sure it’s just food poisoning, girls,” she reassures her junior flight attendants, both 23 years old, bright eyed and bushy tailed. The two of them are each young enough to be her daughter, Lord help her, and the pair of them are staring terrified at the sight of the doctor checking over Captain Lewis.
No pilot, and now no first officer, and she’s left with two green at the gills, fresh-out-of-college junior flight attendants to help her keep order on a pilotless plane. She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. Run with endurance the race God has set before you.
And, dear God, she prays it really is just food poisoning. The memory of that first flight After is so vivid in her mind, that suffocating paranoia, the inescapable, oppressive fear they all felt stepping onto the plane the morning of September 13th. Pressing her gold cross necklace to her lips and with her TSA training modules playing on repeat in the back of her mind, she can’t help but scan her eyes across the cabin, looking for who might have done something, who she might need to worry about.
Another round of retching noises comes from the bathroom and the violent woosh of air from flushing quickly follows. She turns to Emily and Madison and fixes them with a serious look. “Turn on the ‘fasten seatbelts’ sign and keep answering the call bells. Stay calm. Nothing is wrong and everything is normal. Do not let the passengers think there’s something to worry about.”
Madison raises her drawn-on eyebrows, “Okay, but is there something to worry about?”
Angie doesn’t dignify such a stupid question with an answer, she just gives Madison the disapproving look Angie usually reserves only for her daughter and turns around to walk to the cockpit door. Taking in a fortifying breath, she opens it and steps inside.
It’s empty and dark, just two vacant seats and a couple dozen indicator lights on the unmanned console. At just past midnight, the sky outside is dark and star-speckled. All she can see through the windows are specks of citylight on the ground below. She can’t bring herself to sit in Captain Lewis’ chair, so she sits, stiff and uncomfortable, in the first officer’s seat, hesitantly pulling on the wireless radio headset.
“Hello?” she speaks into the radio, her voice cracking, and squeezes her eyes shut, her face burning immediately in embarrassment at the unprofessionalism. A flight attendant for decades, spent countless hours listening to pilots talk to Air Traffic Control a dozen times a week for the last thirty years, and when her big moment came, her voice cracked and all she thought to say was “Hello”.
“This is Tower, please identify yourself,” crackles through the radio and it makes her jump in her seat.
Clearing her throat, she says, “Uh, this is Delta, uh…,” and then trails off. It’s her third flight of the day and she can’t remember the flight number.
“Is this Delta 8-6-2-2? IAD to SAN?” Tower asks.
Angie blinks, “Yes! It is. How did you know?”
“The first officer notified ATC he was becoming incapacitated and that his pilot was already in the same condition. He flipped to an emergency frequency and stopped responding. Can you tell me your name?”
“Angie. Angela Reynolds. I’m the senior flight attendant on board.”
“Okay, Angie, what can you tell us? Are there any immediate threats on the aircraft?”
“No, no, nothing like that. At least, I don’t think so. Not yet anyway. It looks like food poisoning to me. Really bad food poisoning. None of the passengers are acting strange, no one’s aggressive or agitated. I think it’s just… bad luck.”
“Angie, can you tell me the status of your fuel gauge?”
She looks at the hundreds of flips and switches and dials on the console in front of her and wants to crawl in a hole and never come out.
“I… I don’t know where that is.”
“That’s okay, Angie, I’ll talk you through it. In the middle console above your head, there should be three circular dials and below that, a square shaped screen that says ‘Fuel’ in the top left corner.”
Nodding her head as he finishes describing it, she says, “Yes, I see it.”
“There should be a big red ‘1’ and ‘2’ on the screen and then a ‘1+2’ in the middle. Is that what you see?”
“Yes, that’s it.”
“What number does it say underneath the ‘1+2’?”
“Twenty-five-thousand,” she says.
There’s a quiet crackling over the radio for a moment before Tower answers back.
“Okay, Angie, will either the pilot or the first officer be able to fly within the next 45 minutes?”
Shaking her head to herself, she informs Tower, “No, Tower, I think they’re both done for the night.”
Another long silence passes with radio static before Tower speaks again. “Angie, do you have any experience piloting a plane?”
Her eyebrows shoot up her forehead and her heart skips a beat in her chest. She took her blood pressure medication this morning before her first flight, but it’s doing nothing to manage the thundering pulse throbbing in her temples, the sound of blood rushing in her ears. It takes her a moment to answer stiltedly, “No, sir, I do not.”
“Then, Angie, I need you to go back into the cabin and ask the passengers if there is anybody on board who knows how to fly a plane.”
What an absolutely horrible idea. She already has a pilotless plane, the last thing she needs now is a panicking mob of passengers to deal with as well.
“That…that is not a good idea, Tower. My passengers will panic. If I go on the intercom and ask that? It’ll be chaos.”
“I understand that, Angie, but someone is going to have to land this plane in the next two hours before you run out of fuel, and you’ve just told me that it won’t be either the pilot or the first officer. It might cause panic, but it also might get you someone with some aviation experience in the pilot’s seat. I think that’s worth the risk. Don’t you?”
She buries her face in her hands long enough to take three deep breaths and nods, “Yes, okay, alright, I’ll do it. I’ll go ask.”
Brushing some imagined lint from her skirt, she steps out of the cockpit, walking straight past the groaning captain and the doctor tending to him, past her two frightened junior flight attendants trying to put on brave faces, past the bathroom reeking of vomit, and steps around the curtain.
Angie takes a deep, grounding breath and pulls the intercom phone out of the cradle. She waits for the chime and wastes no more time, just pulls the trigger on the panic she knows is coming.
“Are there any pilots or… or someone who knows how to fly a plane on board?”
The calm, sleepy mood in the cabin shifts on a dime. There’s a long moment of silence while the passengers take it in and then a low chattering breaks out and quickly grows, getting louder and louder. The woman in 17B starts crying and the man in 15C pulls out a rosary and starts to pray. In row 20, a mother starts pressing kisses to her child’s forehead over and over. Angie’s scanning her eyes over the crowd, hoping against hope to see a hand rise from the sea of people.
People who slept through the announcement start waking up at the rising chatter and panic around them, asking their fellow passengers what’s going on and she watches on as the fear spreads further. The bald man in 12D stands up with a grim look on his face.
“If there’s no one else, I took a few flying lessons about ten years ago. I’m no pilot, but I’m willing to try.”
She closes her eyes, straining to swallow against the dry lump in her throat. A few flying lessons ten years ago. It’s better than nothing.
Pressing her lips together in a tight line, she starts to nod when she sees the handsome man in 22A standup and scoot past his aisle mates. He has a neck pillow around his neck, a sleeping mask pushed up to his hairline, and his carry-on bag hanging casually off one shoulder. He looks far calmer than anyone else on board and that calmness gives her hope that just maybe her prayers have been answered. The surety he carries himself with, the relaxed way he walks down the aisle to her makes some of the tightness in her chest unwind.
“You said you need a pilot, ma’am? Captain Pete Mitchell, United States Navy. I’ve been an aviator for 35 years.”
She can feel her eyes watering up in relief. Thank you, God, she sends heavenward, into the clouds even higher than their cruising altitude.
“Can you fly an A320?”
Captain Mitchell smiles at her and, good lord, he really is a miracle.
“Ma’am, as long as this girl has wings, I can fly her,” he winks and adds, “Hell, I might even manage it if she doesn’t.”
The bald man from 12D lets out a relieved, “Thank fuck,” and collapses into his seat as she guides Captain Mitchell up through first class, the eyes of every passenger on them as they make their way down the aisle. She leads him past their incapacitated pilots and into the cockpit. After she steps in behind him, Captain Mitchell puts a gentle hand on her shoulder, pulling her in and admitting, “Ma’am, you seem to be the person in charge of things and in the interest of full disclosure, I think I should tell you I had a drink at the start of the flight.”
She blinks for a second, processing the fact that he’s probably right about her being in charge of things now, God help them all.
“Yes, I remember. Gin and tonic. I made it myself,” she says, and shrugs her shoulders, “Someone needs to fly this plane, Captain, and I’ll most certainly take the pilot who had one drink three hours ago over anyone else on board.”
“I felt the same way, just thought I should make sure we were all on the same page,” he says, as he walks up to the controls and sits down in the pilot’s seat.
“Pretty roomy in here,” he absently notes and then slides the radio headset on. There’s a thick plastic binder attached to the center console and Captain Mitchell flips it open to the first page. From there, it’s all business.
“Delta 8-6-2-2 to Air Traffic Control, this is Captain Pete Mitchell, United States Navy, pilot certificate number 2901986, taking over command of aircraft November 5-9-6-3, ident Delta Alpha Lima 8622, on route from IAD to SAN.”
Angie’s still wearing her radio headset, and she hears Air Traffic Control answer, “This is Tower to Delta 8622, glad to have you with us, Captain Mitchell. We’re running your certificate now, but about how much flying experience are we looking at here, Captain? We have a flight instructor in the room who can walk you through instrumentation if you need it.”
Captain Mitchell laughs. “The FAA can give you the specifics when you run that certificate number but the quick and dirty is an ATP License, 40,000 flight hours logged over 33 years, type rated on the F-14, F-18, and F-35 among quite a few others, did five years as a flight instructor, and I’ve spent the last eight as a test pilot, mostly out of China Lake.”
Leaning back against the back wall of the cockpit, the tension in Angie’s shoulders finally relaxes and she’s able to breathe easy for the first time since Captain Lewis stumbled past her clutching his stomach on his way to the restroom. Pulling her necklace out from beneath the collar of her blouse, she rubs her thumb over the rods of her gold cross. The Lord works in mysterious ways. There’s a long crackling pause over the radio before they hear back a response. “Tower to 8622: that’s one hell of a resume you’ve got there, sir.”
Captain Mitchell flashes a blinding smile as he answers, “And, Tower, you don’t know the half of it. My work is red-taped and black-lined from here to kingdom come, but just know I’ve got type certifications on planes you’ve never even dreamed of.”
Air Traffic Control laughs back over the line, “8622, I believe it, sir. Now let’s get this plane safely on the ground.”
“Sounds like a great idea to me, Tower. And, uh, Tower, be advised, it’s been less than eight hours since my last drink. I had a gin and tonic when we reached cruising altitude about two and a half hours ago. I’m not impaired, but I figured I should tell you now rather than wait for it to come up when the NTSB and the FAA come knocking.”
“Copy that, 8622. We’ll make note of it. Shouldn’t be a problem, sir. Extraordinary times, extraordinary measures.”
Captain Mitchell just nods, his eyes scanning over the console of switches, levers, and dials Angie has no understanding of.
“Delta 8622, we have a heading change for you. We’re diverting you to LAX and clearing you for emergency landing. Turn right, heading 3-0-5, maintain flight level 3,500.”
Flipping a switch on the console in front of him and wrapping his hands around the yoke, Captain Mitchell answers, “Copy that, Tower. Turning right, heading 305, altitude 35,000 ft,” and the plane gently turns right.
“Jesus, it’s like driving a bus through molasses,” he mumbles under his breath as he brings the yoke back to center.
“We have you on radar, 8622, on course for LAX. We’ll start to drop your altitude in about 15 minutes as we prepare for approach.”
“Copy, Tower. I’m not type certified on the A320, but the layout seems pretty intuitive, and I’m reading instrumentation fine. You got anybody around I can ask a few specifics?” the Captain asks.
“Hold, 8622,” Tower answers back and after a moment, a different, deeper voice transmits from the radio, “Delta 8622, Captain Edward Duffy here, I can tell you anything you want to know.”
“Tower, what’s the Vref of this lady?”
“Delta 8622, minimum approach speed for the A320 is 140 knots.”
“Copy that. And how high off the ground am I in this cockpit?”
“It’s 21ft from wheels-on-the-ground to the roof of the fuselage.”
Angie sees Captain Mitchell look up at the ceiling of the fuselage above them and quietly nod to himself.
“Twenty-one feet, copy that, Tower. Weather report at LAX?”
“The sun has set, the skies are clear, temperature is 58 degrees, with 12-knot winds gusting to 16.”
“Copy, Tower. I’m putting her back on autopilot and opening up the maintenance bible. Keep me updated.”
“Will do, 8622.”
Captain Mitchell leans back in the pilot’s seat and turns his head over his shoulder to look at her. She stares evenly back for a moment before stepping further into the cockpit, pressing her lips together before she sits in the copilot’s seat. There’s a wrinkle in her skirt again and she flattens it out with the palm of her hand before pulling the radio headset off her head and hanging it on a hook.
“It’s considered good manners for the pilot to introduce himself to his passengers. Particularly with the… unexpected turn of events, I think it might be a good idea to give the cabin a quick ‘hello’,” she suggests.
A movie-star smile breaks across his face. “A ‘this is your captain speaking’ sort of thing?” he asks, a boyish excitement in his voice and it makes Angie snort unattractively.
“Yes, something like that, Captain Mitchell. People were panicking. If you could project some confidence, I’m sure it wouldn’t go unappreciated.”
“Ma’am, it would be my genuine pleasure. You’ll just have to show me how to start the intercom.”
She reaches over his head and pulls down a wired radio handpiece, passing it over to the captain. “Press that button and hold it for as long as you’re talking, wait a few seconds after you first press it for the announcement bell to chime.”
He gives her an excited grin and a wag of his eyebrows as he holds down the transmission button. The announcement bell chimes over head and he wets his lips with his tongue and starts talking. Even if Angie couldn’t see it for herself, she could hear the smile in his voice.
“Goooood evening, ladies and gentlemen. Or should I say good morning? I think it’s past midnight now. Either way, this is your captain speaking,” he starts and laughs a little at himself, his laughter carrying over the microphone. Angie can see some of the passengers through the open cockpit doorway and they’re all sitting up straighter in their seats, craning to listen to the voice on the intercom.
“This is Captain Pete Mitchell, United States Naval aviator. Captain Lewis and our first officer are both a little under the weather, so I’ll be taking over for the remainder of the flight. We’ll be diverting into Los Angeles, so just a little north of our planned destination.”
“I know this isn’t exactly the smooth, uneventful flight we were all hoping for,” he says, charmingly understated. “And I know that lovely flight attendant threw us all for a loop, asking if there was a pilot on board,” he pauses for a quick laugh and Angie can see his calm is catching, some of the passengers laughing along with him (though mostly in relief, if she had to guess).
“But I promise, you’re in safe hands. I’ve spent 35 years landing fighter jets on aircraft carriers. Landing a jet on a runway that doesn’t even move? Well, that’s just a walk in the park. All due respect to the boys here at Delta, but I’ll land this baby smoother than they ever could.”
Captain Mitchell meets her gaze with a roguish look, a teasing smile on his face when adds, “And for those of you a little less trusting, who don’t want to take my word for it, any of you with in-flight wi-fi are certainly free to look me up. I have a pretty impressive Wikipedia page if I do say so myself.”
“The weather is a cool 58 degrees in Los Angeles, with light winds and clear skies. We’ll be safely on the ground within the hour.” A cheesy smile breaks across his face as he adds, “We want to thank you again for flying Delta Airlines. Please sit back, relax, and enjoy the rest of your flight.”
The transmission ends and Captain Mitchell laughs a delighted laugh, leaning over to confess, “I’ve always wanted to do that.”
Reluctantly amused and unable to fight against his contagious smile, she answers back, “Yes, I could tell.”
The captain just laughs again as he settles back against the chair and flips open the thick plastic binder to a table of contents. He seems to have things under control, so Angie moves to the cockpit door, pausing just before stepping out. “Can I get you anything to drink?”
“Another gin and tonic would be great,” he says with a wink, and she stares blankly at him for a moment.
He huffs a self-deprecating laugh and says, “Tough crowd. I was kidding, sweetheart. I’d love a water if you can swing it.”
She purses her lips, fighting off a smile, and says, “A water I can do. The gin and tonic will have to wait until we’ve landed.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” he promises as she swings the cockpit door shut. Her eyes are burning with unshed tears of relief and she takes a moment to compose herself, taking deep breaths as she braces herself against the drink cart. She drags her hand over her face, feeling haggard and exhausted and every second of her fifty-two years on God’s green Earth. She gives herself thirty seconds to feel exactly as stressed as she wants before straightening up her shoulders and steeling her spine.
As she’s digging through the drink cart for an unopened bottle of water for Captain Mitchell, she thinks back to his message to the cabin and pulls out her phone. She presses the little button in the corner of the screen, the button her daughter always rolls her eyes about when Angie asks for her help connecting to the wi-fi. She clicks on the little compass icon and types “Captain Pete Mitchell Navy pilot” into the bar at the top of the screen.
Her eyebrows shoot up her forehead as the screen loads and half a dozen Google News articles appear across the top, “US Navy Pilot Makes Ace”, “First American Ace Pilot Since 1972”, “Fastest Man Alive, US Navy Declassifies World Record Speed”, and there just below the news articles is the promised Wikipedia page.
Laughing to herself in disbelief, she tucks her phone back into her pocket and shuts the door of the drink cart. A world-class pilot just happened to be on this particular flight on this particular night. Of all the gin joints, in all the world. If Captain Mitchell manages to land this plane tonight, Angie’s skipping the hotel and driving straight to the first church she can find.
Before she heads back to the cockpit with Captain Mitchell’s drink, Angie checks in with Madison and Emily, who look at her like a pair of lost puppies. She tells them to keep the seatbelt sign on and to keep up the good work, that they’ll all be back on solid ground soon, and they nod their heads in stereo, taking her word as gospel, god bless them.
Captain Mitchell is speaking into his radio headset when she steps back into the cockpit.
“Delta 8622 to Tower, you sure know how to make a guy feel special, but that’s really not necessary. There’s no need to fuck up your landing patterns just for little old me. I can wait in a holding pattern for my turn like everyone else. Just tell me which runway is mine and I’ll be there with bells on.”
After a moment, he laughs into his headset, saying, “You know, you’re not the first person to say that about me. You’re not even the first Air Traffic Controller to say that about me. But, copy that, Tower. Delta 8622 will stop with the backtalk and follow my goddamn orders, sir, yes, sir.”
The captain nods over his shoulder with a welcoming smile, tapping his hand on the vacant copilot’s seat next to him to invite her in.
Primly sitting herself in the chair, she hands over the water bottle and Captain Mitchell opens the top and takes a swig. Glancing down at her nametag, he offers her a “Thanks, Angie.”
Angie just nods and stares at him, counting her blessings as she watches him glance over the indicators and switches on the console.
“I’ve always considered myself a lucky woman, Captain, and today just cements that as a fact for me.”
Captain Mitchell just laughs, “Lucky? Both the pilots on your plane are too sick to land her. I think that makes you pretty un lucky, Angie.”
“I’ve been a flight attendant for 30 years, Captain Mitchell. Forty flights a month, every month for thirty years. Thousands and thousands and thousands of flights, and on the one flight neither of my pilots could do the job and bring us home safe, God put you in row 22. You’re a real honest-to-God miracle, Captain, and I was blessed to have you on my flight.”
His smile is warm and he tilts his head in a charmingly boyish way at her. “Well, you can call me a blessing or a miracle all you want, Angie, but when my husband hears about this, he’ll spend the next month calling me a danger magnet.” He leans in, like he’s letting her in on a secret. “He thinks I go looking for trouble, but I swear I don’t, Angie. Trouble comes looking for me.”
Husband? That certainly wasn’t what she was expecting to hear, but she’s a professional and she keeps a straight face. And, honestly, she should know better by now than to be surprised. Thirty years into this job, she’s learned better than to make assumptions.
Husband, though. What a shame. It’s been a long time since she let a pilot take her for a ride after landing, twenty years at least. The last time she was stupid enough to do it, she got a daughter out of it, for Christ’s sake. But she might have made an exception tonight for this pilot.
“You know, I could certainly use a copilot,” he says, smiling like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. The urge to say yes is strong; It’s not everyday you get the chance to watch a plane landing from the cockpit. But she’s still on the clock and she knows she’ll be much more useful managing the passengers during landing, so she shakes her head and politely declines.
And for the rest of the flight, that’s what she does. Answers call bells, hands out cups of water to stressed and nervous passengers, offers Madison and Emily a few reassuring words. And when Captain Mitchell pages over the intercom that they’ll be landing at LAX, she sits herself in her chair and straps her seatbelt across her lap. She braces herself for a rough landing, keeping her eyes clenched shut. A bark of laughter makes its way past her lips when they touch down on the runway with barely the slightest jolt, almost unnoticeable, the landing just as smooth and seamless as Captain Mitchell promised it would be.
Applause breaks out in the cabin when the wheels touch the ground and usually, when passengers clap at landing, Angie has to fight hard to not roll her eyes. But tonight, she joins in, clapping her hands together as she sends up a quick, wordless prayer.
Leaning across her seat, she tells Madison and Emily to keep the passengers seated before unbuckling her belt and heading to the drink cart.
Captain Mitchell huffs out a laugh and smiles a mischievous, conspiring smile at her when she hands him his gin and tonic. “You’re as good as your word, aren’t you, Angie?” Angie just winks at him.
Red and white flashing lights beam through the window from the firetrucks and emergency vehicles waiting a couple hundred feet back from the runway and Captain Mitchell shrugs with a friendly grin, “I guess they didn’t trust me.”
“Better safe than sorry,” she shoots back.
Into his radio headset, Captain Mitchell tosses a, “Copy that,” and flips a few switches and pulls a lever as the plane lurches to a complete halt.
Turning back to her, he says, “They don’t want me to taxi to a terminal. We’re parking her here and we’ll disembark on the runway.”
As soon as he’s done flipping switches on the console, the engines of the plane start to wind down, their whirring slowly quieting until they finally stop and as they do, the emergency vehicles drive out onto the tarmac towards them. Captain Mitchell leans over to dig through his carry-on bag, pulling out a leather-bound book and flipping it open in his lap, clicking a pen before beginning to write inside.
It’s never been said that Angie’s an uncurious woman and she looks over his shoulder to sneak a peek at what he’s writing.
Once she sees it, Angie decides she really should have known. She’s watched airline pilots filling out their logbooks after every flight for decades, and as she peers over his shoulder, Captain Mitchell writes with neat, uppercase lettering, filling in a row of blanks. The most recent five entries all list ‘P-51’ in the ‘aircraft make and model’ column with a single listing of ‘F-14’ right above them. The rest of the column is filled in with ‘F-18’. But at the very bottom of the page, in the last empty row, Captain Mitchell writes ‘A320’.
Snapping the book shut and shoving it back into his bag, Captain Mitchell looks up at her with that charming, boyish grin.
“Hey, Angie, can I ask for one last favor?”
Angie can’t think of a single thing she wouldn’t do for this man right now, so she just raises her eyebrow, urging him on.
“You think you could snag me a set of those little plastic pilot’s wings?”
It takes Angie a second to understand before she breaks out laughing. “You mean the ones we hand out to children?” she clarifies.
“Yeah, those are the ones,” he grins, knowing exactly how ridiculous he’s being.
“I think I can manage that,” she tells him indulgently.
She finds the little plastic bag filled with plastic pilot’s wings in the restock cabinet just outside the cockpit and Captain Mitchell beams at her as she pins them to his t-shirt, toasting her as he tosses back his gin and tonic.