Chapter 1

I had, I think, the best job in the world. Most people look at an airline pilot and think, “Overpaid layabout, sitting in an armchair surrounded by beautiful air hostesses while a computer takes the controls.”

Of course, with the problems Boeing have had with computers you would expect that we spent our time looking at the gauges and worrying. Real life is somewhere in between and the two of us at the pointy end took it in turns to make things happen on time and correctly. Usually, the time between getting off the ground and getting back down again is fairly boring. I don’t mind because, when you’re high in the sky there is no room for unexpected frights.

Flying a plane, it doesn’t matter what age or sex you are as long as you have the hours in the seat and the training on the ground. There are big and small men behind the controls as well as good looking ladies and some that aren’t. The other thing that people don’t realize is that it takes many years to be able to even sit in the second seat, probably longer than it takes to be a doctor.

It makes me laugh that you can become a politician without any training whatsoever and have the power of life or death over the populace. No, don’t let me go there, I’ve ferried many a pollie across the heavens and ninety percent of them made me dream about a scenario with ejector seats.

I cut my teeth in the usual way, flying school, private license, light aircraft, twin-prop and then onto small jets. I was lucky to get a job with a regional airline that flew Islanders in New Guinea, sitting in the second seat while I got my full commercial license. Following that I was with a company in South Africa flying Fokker Friendships.

My first foray into passenger jets was in South America piloting Boeing 707’s. Now that was a real plane, a joy to fly but too noisy in the end. I also had some time on Lear jets and the early Airbus 300 series in and around Italy, the plane that led me to the job I now have.

I fly the Airbus 320, one of the more successful planes in the sky now, behind the 737. The airline is one that can hardly be called that. It was started by Terry, my boss, back in the late sixties. He saw the need for celebrities to get around without being bothered by the general public.

Even the Beatles had flown in commercial jets prior to that. He leased a couple of Lear Jets and advertised that he could supply a ‘discrete service’ to wealthy entertainers. At that time the service included on-board weed supplies and I had heard stories from the older pilots about having to fly with dedicated oxygen as they may have ended up trying to fly into the sun if they had breathed in the cabin fog.

The business, when it became a proper company, was named ‘Eight Miles High – Over The Edge’ or EMH-OTE for short. He had taken the name from the Byrds song of 1970 which had two meanings. The first, as written, was about landing in the UK for a tour to find that it really is another country that spoke a similar language to your own. The second also comes from the same lyrics and could mean that when you come down from a high, everything seems different. No matter how you take it, the business boomed.

We still ferry the stars about, and we have a small fleet of dedicated planes for them, discrete paintwork, big settees and beds on board as well as well-stocked bars. One thing that has changed is that the customer now has to bring their own drugs as we do not supply any more.

We do some business with special groups of like-minded passengers who want to tour the world, such as gardening clubs, craftswomen and art lovers. They generally have enough money to hire us and enough time to enjoy the trip. We have links with tourist companies that plan all the stops.

We also have a couple of planes that bring in the real money. These get painted in band colours and we take them on their tours, sometimes for months on end. We have a separate organization for the transport of equipment and roadies so that the band members can relax in as much comfort as they want.

One aspect of our specialized business is that sometimes the band wants everyone on the plane to follow the band ‘look’. It doesn’t do the image any good to have a punk singer in an interview when a suited pilot walks behind him. I have spent months as a hard rocker, sometimes a Goth, and even several weeks in a blonde wig, pink shirts and bell-bottoms with a certain boy band.

Once the look is decided, the company makes sure that there are fresh clothes at all the stops for us crew so that we are not bothered by lugging heavy cases of our own. This started back in the earliest days when the cabin crew would often reek of weed and did not have time to get things properly cleaned. It usually works well, and I have spent years travelling the world with just a backpack of personal items; everything else supplied.

My ‘residential address’ is a room in the company hotel in Sacramento with a small supply of better suits and flight uniforms. When I get holidays, I usually spend them in sunny places where the only things I need to buy are shorts and lurid shirts which you get cheap in the market and drop in the bin as you leave, no washing required.

I have read a few of the Jack Reacher books and there were some comparisons there with the lifestyle, except I went by plane rather than Greyhound. I wasn’t called Reacher, either. No, my parents, in their infinite wisdom, called me Chris. Not Christopher, no, just Chris. My backpack had C.C.C. on it and my official company badge read Captain Chris Culver.

The other thing I didn’t share with Reacher was that while he was built like the brick shithouse, I wasn’t. Tom Cruise wasn’t in the movie either, but he did nail the attitude. I suppose that I shared the same height as young Tom but was not quite as rich, buff, famous or crazy.

I had a decent bank balance though, years of having food, accommodation and clothing supplied helped, as did company supplied transport and health care. It would be a wrench when I retired to have to buy a house or apartment and actually stay in one place for long periods. I already had one avenue I could follow which didn’t include a house.

I looked after myself, though. I tried to run every morning and ate good things like ice cream and chocolate, both made from fruits or nuts. I was eating a very healthy ice cream when my boss, Terry, rang me. I was on a short holiday, having spent six weeks with a bunch of very aged rockers who defied the calling of Saint Peter by having the very best doctors.

I was in my room in San Salvadore in the Bahamas with a beautiful and fit late-middle-aged lady called Lynda sitting across from me wearing nothing but a few bits of strategically placed string. She had told me that she was getting over the grief of having her third husband pass away and I, at the end of my fourth day with her, was starting to wonder if they had all been sucked dry.

Terry told me that my plane was in the main hanger being refitted and painted for an extended tour around the world. He said that he wanted me in at the head office when I had finished my holiday as there were certain aspects of the tour that he wanted to discuss.

The interesting part was, “Chris, you have been with the company a long time and I think it is time to bring you into the Head Office as one of the higher executives. If you do this tour, you can hang up your wings in my chair as I want to just relax in my twilight years.”

Now that was an interesting proposition. My lady friend saw the thoughtful look on my face and then took my mind off the call with a proposition of her own, plus a couple of positions she must have read about in a book.

She must have heard some of the conversation because, as we lay on the bed in sweaty disarray, she said “That man said you can hang up your wings, are you some sort of angel?”

I laughed and told her she, of all people, would know now that I am certainly no angel and then added that I was a commercial pilot. She then asked me if I was in the mile-high club and I told her that I was, also the two, six and eight mile high one. That made her think and she then asked if I would take her up and shag her a couple of miles in the sky.

She had been saying that there were some items she had forgotten so I suggested that we get a plane, and I will fly her to Miami so she can go and get them. That really made her smile, so I organized an older Lear 29 with the big fuel tank and good autopilot.

We left the Bahamas, and I took it up to fifteen thousand feet, under the commercial air routes, put it on computer and spent a lovely hour horizontal jogging before I needed to get back in the seat to put us on the right heading for Miami.

When we landed, we had a limo waiting which took us to her mansion where she proceeded to suck more of my life out of me. The next day we went east again with the only difference being that she wanted us to do it with our feet facing the front of the plane and she was sure that travelling at a high rate of knots created a force which made me go deeper in her than ever before.

When we had landed and given the plane back, she was suddenly a bit too interested in me as husband number four and it was with relief that I read a message from Terry that was at the reception for me when we got back to the hotel. It said that there was an Airbus 320 sitting on the ground in Guatemala City that he had bought and that it needed to be ferried to the Head Office in Sacramento.

He was sending someone down there by commercial airline to be my co-pilot on the way north. I needed to be in Guatemala in three days. I told Lynda that I was sorry, but my holiday had just been shortened and we slept together for the last time that night. I must say that it was very nice and if I was one of the marrying kind; I may have taken her up on her offer. I was, however, already feeling thinner and had no desire to test my theory.

The next day I made arrangements to get to Guatemala City. It was a bit circuitous and would end up taking me two days, stopping overnight in Puerto Rico. My flight to Puerto Rico left that afternoon so I checked out of the hotel, settled up, kissed her and told her that I loved her one more time before I headed to the airport and my escape from the bondage of marriage.

When I finally arrived in Guatemala City, I checked into the hotel chain we always used to find a note for me at reception. It was from Molly Edwards, a pretty good pilot in her thirties and destined to be a good captain one day. That made me happy as she could fly quite a lot of the trip back to Sacramento.

She told me to ring her as soon as I arrived, so I did so, making arrangements to have dinner together after we had seen the plane. We met in the lobby after I had put on plain slacks and a white shirt, slightly more suitable as a captain inspecting our latest purchase and we took a taxi to the airport, this time to the hanger side. The Airbus was sitting there and looked all right, but you never can tell with a plane until it is, usually, far too late.

We chatted with the ground crew and learned that it had actually been well looked after, an unusual situation for this part of the world. We filed a flight plan for early in the morning and went back to the hotel for dinner together and then an early night in our separate rooms.

Next day we checked out early and went out to the airport again. We did the visual walk around together to make sure we didn’t miss anything. The fuel truck was there filling us up from the underground tanks and a representative of the sales company was on hand with all the forms we needed to sign to make it ours.

When we were cleared to go, we went up to the cockpit where I got Molly to go through all the start-up procedure while I checked the gauges, especially the engine temperature and fuel pressure ones. We finally were happy that it would get us home, so Molly took us off and we headed north.

On the way we talked, and she told me about the recent trips she had been on. She had been co-piloting for the craft and gardening tours for a couple of years and told me that Terry had sent a memo to say that she would be in the second seat for the next band tour that I took out. She was very excited about this as it would be a big step up in responsibility.

When we landed at Sacramento, we taxied to the company hangers and were parked in front of one to shut down. I told Molly that I was impressed by her flying as I had not touched the stick all trip, just monitoring the gauges and making notes to give to the ground crew. We handed the plane over for a full check before we started using it and put our bags in the back of a jeep to head for the office building.

As we passed the next hanger, I hit the brakes as I saw my plane. I call her Betsy because her number is BTSY. What made the blood drain from my face was that Betsy was painted in a lurid pink and I could just read the band name written on the side.

It read “Les Lee and the Lessos’ and, all of a sudden, I had a very bad feeling about my upcoming talk with Terry.

Molly saw me look startled and asked me what was wrong.

“That plane in there is Betsy, my responsibility for four band tours. She will be ours to fly soon. Can you read the name on the side?”

She peered past me and then started to hyperventilate.

“You’re kidding!” she gasped, eventually. “We are going to fly them around the world. I’ve been reading the magazines and they have said that it will be the farewell tour and could last a year.”

“That’s not the half of it. Terry has told me that he wants to have a chat with me before we leave the airport. I suggest you come along as well. There may be some things that I suspect that will turn my life on its head, not even thinking about how it will leave me after the tour. He already told me that when I get back I may be taking over his seat.”

Marianne Gregory © 2022