Flying with Bernie

Jason was at the airport last Friday morning, getting ready to board a flight to SoCal, when a number of crew personnel started running toward the gate.

This is never a good sign.

Those of you who know Jason probably know that he's not a great flyer. He's too nervous to take the xanax his doctor gave him because he's afraid that when the plane starts going down, his impulses won't be sharp enough to pull the plane out of its nosedive. So he white knuckles it, repeating the mantra, "Millions of people fly millions of miles every day."

Jason looked out the window and though his view was partially obstructed by the plane, he definitely saw the legs of a man who was lying face down on the tarmac. Again, never a good sign.

A team of people surrounded the man and one of them opened a suitcase that contained a defibrilator. Jason watched as they worked on him for about twenty minutes. Meanwhile, crew members were walking in and out of the area, crying. Some downright sobbing. They finally loaded him up into a vehicle and drove away. Slowly. Not a good sign at all.

Jason went up to this one guy at the gate and said, "Sorry, man. So who is that, a crew guy?" The guy looked at Jase and practically whispered, "No. It's the captain."

Yes. Jason's pilot died as he was making his final checks of the plane. As first class was loading.

He called me at 6:30am. I was asleep, so I was hot pissed until he told me that his pilot died. My thought then went to that guy's wife, and how she was getting a phone call right about the same time. Except it wasn't her husband saying his pilot died. It was some administrator saying her husband died.

He decided not to go that day. Even though I told him the odds of the second pilot dying would be very very slim and even if he did that's why they have co-pilots and it could have been worse - the pilot could have died in the air. But as I told him all this, I hoped he'd come home early as well. And when he came home, I was just a little bit nicer. I felt lucky - my husband came home.