Writings By Phil

After 13 years doing Uncle Sam’s bidding, our daughter, Heather, decided to leave the Air Force and begin flying the “Friendly Skies of United Airlines.” Her official severance date from the military is in April, but she had enough “leave time” to return home from Germany in January and start training for her lofty objective of becoming a civilian airline pilot.

Last week, on Friday, she got her Wings and officially became a First Officer (co-pilot) with the airline. She invited Jackie and me to fly out to Denver to watch the ceremony, so we flew out on Thursday. Our assigned seats were 27 A and B. For my tall lanky frame, my seat was cramped, not allowing much room for me to move my feet. I did my best not to let my knees poke into the back cushion of the passenger in front of me for fear of giving her a miserable flight, as well. It was a three-and-a-half-hour flight, and the plane was not equipped with movies or music, so I did my best to kill the time by playing solitary on my phone or dozing for short intervals. Sleep was a good opiate against my discomfort, but I kept waking up because I was uncomfortable!

To get to the hotel, we took our first ever ride with Uber and made the journey in a Tesla, also a first. For all the rave I’ve heard about the car, I was surprised at how small they were. Had the driver not pulled his seat forward to give me more leg room my knees would have been kneading his back on the ride into the city. The only thing that impressed me about the Tesla was the large information/GPS screen that not only showed the route but showed the position of the cars around us. I wished I had a GPA screen that big in my pickup truck so I could read the next turn or highway change without putting my reading glasses on first.

Our Tesla driver was a super nice man. I noticed that he was playing Christian music on the radio. “Are you a believer in Jesus?” I asked. He looked back, his face lit up in a big smile, and he praised and thanked God that he knew Jesus as his Savior. We learned that he was from Ethiopia, that he had a big chicken farm over there, that he considered California his new home, and that when he came to Denver to visit his brother, he drove Uber to earn extra cash.

Friday morning, we attended the wing ceremony. There were forty-one new First Officers receiving their wings to fly for United. A few, like Heather, were from the military. Most of the others had been pilots with smaller airlines but were making the move to United. Heather and one other woman were the only females in the class.

Our return flight to Orlando was to leave at night with an arrival time of 12:30 am in Florida. I was not keen on those hours, especially since I had to get up early and do one of my side jobs. However, Heather decided to travel with us on the plane, but not in economy class. Instead, she would be up in the cockpit flying jump seat! In making that happen, she got us on an earlier flight, but could not get two seats together for Jackie and me. One seat, with more leg room, was just behind the divider separating first-class passengers from the rest of us peons. The other was back on row twenty-six, seat A. I choose to sit in 26A and give Jackie the more comfortable one up front.

Because Jackie had trouble walking, she used a wheelchair to get to the plane door, and we got to board early. There were already two men sitting in Jackie’s row, her empty seat between them. The man on the aisle stood up to let her sit down. I put her backpack in the overhead bin and told the man he could sit down because my seat was farther back in the plane. He looked up at me, he was at least six inches shorter, and asked what my seat number was. I said, “27A.” He told me to take his seat and he would sit in mine. Before I could protest, off he went down the aisle. I shouted a “Thank you!” after him and thought, How nice!

As I hefted my bag into the bin above the seats, I remembered I sat in 27A on the way to Denver, and on this homeward bound plane my seat was one up on 26A. I told him the wrong seat! The plane was still pre-boarding with few people in the aisle stowing their baggage, so I quickly walked towards the back of the plane until I found 27A. The man was not there! When he saw me, he stood up from sitting on the wrong side of the plane and asked again what my seat was, so I showed him my boarding pass. He moved in the right direction. Again, I thanked him profusely.

It was only as I ran the gauntlet of people and carry-ons rushing towards me, impeding my way back to Jackie that I realized that the man who gave up his seat for me, had paid extra money to have extra leg room. I was so humbled!

Back in my aisle seat I could straighten my bad leg all the way. In fact, I could sneak it past the divider and put it under the seat in front of me and not impede the aisle in any way. My right foot got to ride in the first-class cabin most of the way back to Florida. Oh, what luxury!

In this day of lawlessness, smash and grab, drive by shootings, road rage, and of elected officials who are only in it for what they can get with no interest in helping their constituents, or of protecting the Constitution and our country it is so easy to become cynical. I know I have! There seems to be so little kindness left in the world. I got to be the recipient of kindness undeserved on this trip! It was a reminder that I need to show kindness and grace to others even if they don’t deserve it!

FIN