Returning from a X-Mas Holiday in Florida . . .
. . . we were settled into our seats in the Southwest Boeing 737 for the ride from Tampa to Manchester, NH. Listening to the sounds n the cabin, I could hear that we were surrounded by fellow residents of our fair city all returning home at the end of our stay and planning on our return to our work-a-day lives in the morning. Southwest is a fine low-cost airline, the stewards are courteous and have always been helpful with the things we can no-longer do for ourselves so I am sorry for what I did to get us home that night. I bullied the flight crew with a threat of bad press. I lied to the captain of our ride home when I told him that I was the Travel and Leisure columnist for the tabloid published by Jody Reese et c The Hippo. I lied when I told the captain that I was going to write my column on how Southwest Airlines placed profits above their passengers schedule. I wanted to go home. We were tired and had business to attend to the very next day in New Hampshire. I also thought that some of my fellow citizens might not be prepared for a last minute hotel stay near the airport with one or more tired, cranky children. I also thought that some of them would have to explain to their employer they needed to take another day off at the end of their vacation time. What did I see? What did I know? What did I do? As the ever faithful Sargent Schultz says: I know nothing! But I am willing to stick my neck out on an educated guess.
The seeds of my deception began when the first officer of our fine aircraft came back to look out one of our windows when I know he’s got two perfectly fine windows of his own in the front of the aircraft. Then he came back with a flashlight and looked out at the right wing. O-kay I thought. Maybe he’s checking the fuel caps but don’t these things re-fuel from underneath? I know you don’t need a flashlight to see if the navigation lights, those red, white and green marker lights that help on-lookers orient the aircraft at night, are working. Then the captain came back, with the flashlight and proceeded to look out the windows at the leading edge of both wings. Uh oh. I’m tired, I’m cranky. I want to settle back in my seat with my thoughts for the ride home. I don’t want to be up half the night renting a car, finding a motel and dealing with the airline for a ride home tomorrow. I want to sleep in my bed tonight! So I wave over the stewardess and ask her to tell the captain “that I know what’s going on and he’ll want to speak to me.” This is a Hail Mary Pass if there ever was one but what do I have to lose? Today I’d be arrested and interrogated, jailed and labeled a terrorist but in the late 1990s I was probably labeled as a concerned passenger. So the captain comes back and I tell him that I’ve got a pretty good idea what’s going on and he’ll probably do the right thing by South West. So now I’ve got him confused and I lead with what I know as fact, that his first officer and he himself have been out looking at the wing with a flashlight. And now I go off on my little fantasy. I tell the captain that I think he’s got a plane with a blown de-icing boot and that he’s about to cancel our ride home. I calmly and quietly tell the man that will soon have my life in his hands that I can write one of two stories, one that tells how Southwest puts profits above the schedule of their passengers or a story about the blown icing boot and how the captain called for a fuel truck, and added enough fuel to get us all back to Manchester, NH by flying below the icing level. I don’t know how much extra that flight cost Southwest and I really don’t care. I didn’t right this back then — and I should have because when I told this story to Jody years later his comment was “I should have thought of you when Southwest asked for a copy of the story and all I could say the them was it wasn’t us.”
The ride home was magic. About the time when everyone was really bored we were over New York city. right over New York city and people moved from side to side in the cabin to look down on the city below and the Boeing made the necessary turns to navigate between the three airports. Even better, the captain heeded my suggestion that he fly the glide slope into Manchester’s Grenier field or MHT as the aviation world names our home airport “a couple of dots low and to the left.” I sat quietly and listened as people said “Those are the WFEA towers!” “Look there’s Elm Street!”
Companies are made of people and people will do the right thing if allowed to do so. That nameless captain and Southwest airlines did just that.
