Catch Me If You Can

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.You might fly with different captains or different flight engineers and run into them again if you’re transferred, but you’d never fly with another co-pilot.There’s only one to a plane.“There’re so many pilots in the system, in fact, that no one pilot would know all the others.I’ve been with the company eighteen years, and I don’t think I know more than sixty or seventy of the other pilots.”The captain’s verbal pinballs were lighting up all the lights in my little head.“I’ve heard that pilots can fly free, I mean as a passenger, not as a pilot.Is that true?” I prompted.“Yes,” said the captain.“But we’re talking about two things, now.We have pass privileges.That is, me and my family can travel somewhere by air on a stand-by basis.That is, if there’s room, we can occupy seats, and our only cost is the tax on the tickets.We pay that.“Then there’s deadheading.For example, if my boss told me tonight that he wanted me in L.A.tomorrow to fly a trip out of there, I might fly out there on Delta, Eastern, TWA or any other carrier connecting with Los Angeles that could get me there on time.I would either occupy an empty passenger seat or, more likely, ride in the jump seat.That’s a little fold-down seat in the cockpit, generally used by deadheading pilots, VIPs or FAA check riders.”“Would you have to help fly the plane?” I quizzed.“Oh, no,” he replied.“I’d be on another company’s carrier, you see.You might be offered a control seat as a courtesy, but I always decline.We fly on each other’s planes to get somewhere, not to work.” He laughed.“How do you go about that, deadheading, I mean?” I was really enthused.And the captain was patient.He must have liked kids.“You want to know it all, don’t you?” he said amiably, and proceeded to answer my question.“Well, it’s done on what we call a pink slip.It works this way.Say I want to go to Miami on Delta.I go down to Delta operations, show them my Pan Am ID card and I fill out a Delta pink slip, stating my destination and giving my position with Pan Am, my employee number and my FAA pilot’s license number.I get a copy of the form and that’s my ‘jump/ I give that copy to the stewardess when I board, and that’s how I get to ride in the jump seat.”I wasn’t through, and he didn’t seem to mind my continuing.“What’s a pilot’s license look like?” I asked.“Is it a certificate that you can hang on the wall, or like a driver’s license, or what?”He laughed.“No, if s not a certificate you hang on the wall.If s kind of hard to describe, really.If s about the size of a driver’s license, but there’s no picture attached.It’s just a white card with black printing on it.”I decided it was time to let the nice man go back to his comfortable seat.“Gee, Captain, I sure thank you,” I said.“You’ve been really super.”“Glad to have helped you, son,” he said.“I hope you get those pilot’s wings, if that’s what you want.”I already had the wings.What I needed was an ID card and an FAA pilot’s license.I wasn’t too concerned about the ID card.The pilot’s license had me stumped.The FAA was not exactly a mail-order house.I let my fingers do the walking in my search for a suitable ID card.I looked in the Yellow Pages under identification, picked a firm on Madison Avenue (any ID company with a Madison Avenue address had to have class, I thought) and went to the firm dressed in a business suit.It was a prestigious office suite with a receptionist to screen the walk-in trade.“Can I help you?” she asked in efficient tones.“I’d like to see one of your sales representatives, please,” I replied in equally businesslike inflections.The sales representative had the assured air and manner of a man who would disdain talking about a single ID card, so I hit him with what I thought would best get his attention and win his affection, the prospect of a big account.“My name is Frank Williams, and I represent Carib Air of Puerto Rico,” I said crisply.“As you probably know, we are expanding service to the continental United States, and we presently have two hundred people in our facilities at Kennedy.Right now we’re using only a temporary ID card made of paper, and we want to go to a formal, laminated, plastic-enclosed card with a color photograph and the company logo, similar to what the other airlines use here.We want a quality card, and I understand you people deal only in quality products.”If he knew that Carib Air existed and was expanding to the United States, he knew more than I did.But he was not a man to let the facts stand in the way of a juicy sale.“Oh, yes, Mr.Williams.Let me show you what we have along that line,” he said enthusiastically, leading me to his office.He pulled down a huge, leather-bound sample catalogue from a shelf, leafed through the contents, which ranged from vellum to beautifully watermarked bond, and displayed a whole page of various identification forms.“Now, most of the airlines we serve use this card here,” he said, pointing out one that seemed a duplicate of Pan Am’s ID cards.“It has employee number, base, position, description, photograph and, if you wish, a company logo.I think it would do very nicely.”I nodded in complete agreement.“Yes, I think this is the card we want,” I said.It was certainly the card I wanted.He gave me a complete cost rundown, including all the variables.“Can you give me a sample?” I asked on impulse.“I’d like to show it to our top people, since they’re the ones who’ll have the final say.”The salesman obliged in a matter of minutes.I studied the card.“This is fine, but it’s blank,” I said.“Tell you what.Why don’t we fix this up, so they’ll have an idea of what the finished product looks like? We can use me as the subject.”“That’s an excellent suggestion,” said the salesman, and led me to an ID camera that produced ID-sized mug shots within minutes.He took several photographs, we selected one (he graciously gave me the culls) and he affixed it to the space on the card, trimming it neatly.He then filled in my phony name, adopted rank (co-pilot), fictitious employee number, height, weight, coloring, age and sex in the appropriate blanks.He then sealed it in a clear, tough plastic and handed it to me with his business card.“I’m sure we can do a good job for you, Mr.Williams,” he said, ushering me out.He already had done a good job for me, save for one detail.The lovely ID card lacked Pan Am’s distinctive logo and firm name.I was wondering how to resolve the problem when a display in the window of a hobby shop caught my eye.There, poised on gracefully curved mounts, was an array of model planes, among them several commercial airliners.And among them a beautiful Pan Am jet, the firm’s famed logo on its tail, and the company legend, in the copyrighted lettering used by the airline, on the fuselage and wings.The model came in several sizes.I bought the smallest, for $2.49, in an unassembled state, and hurried back to my room.I threw the plane parts away.Following instructions in the kit, I soaked the decal and lettering in water until they separated from their holding base.Both the logo and the company name were of microscopically thin plastic.I laid the Pan Am logo on the upper left-hand corner of the ID card and carefully arranged the firm legend across the top of the card.The clear decals, when they dried, appeared to have been printed on the card.It was perfect [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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