days when flight attendants were Stews, had to weigh in before each flight, and were fired if they got married?”
“Okay, it wasn’t flawless, but—”
“And the airplanes didn’t have carts and the Stews carried their five-course meals on trays, up and down the aisles in their straight skirts and high heels and precious little hats?”
“Well…”
“And don’t let us forget about girdles. Any decent woman wore a girdle then.”
“Everyone?”
“It was required. And if you weren’t bosomy enough, a little padding could be issued with the uniform.”
“Nah-uh!” Nikki protested.
“Yes, ma’am. Got to have your girls right up there on your chest so Mr. Passengerman could appreciate the flight. And you better not bend over to pick up an olive off the floor because Mr. Well-Mannered Traveler would definitely put his hand right up your skirt.” She blew on her coffee again. “He probably threw that old olive on the floor to start with. Mmm-mmm, those were some fine old days.”
“You have to admit that the passengers were a lot less rude and demanding,” Nikki said. “With the occasional exception.”
“And the pilots were a lot more accommodatin’. They used to carry bags and pay for dinner, and…Well…They were much more accommodatin’.” Dixie smiled suggestively.
Nikki grinned back at her. Dixie had been accommodated quite a few times. And vice versa. “So were the Stews,” she said.
“Coffee, tea or me?” her friend replied, smile dazzling, lashes fluttering. All of Dixie sparkled. She could easily have been one of those airline beauties back in the sixties. Five-eight, blond, blue-eyed, slender as a reed except for “her girls,” which were full and high and elegant. She had the kind of looks that had men crossing the room to ask if she was attached.
A very pregnant flight attendant pulled an overnight bag on its rollers toward a podium on the other side of the concourse.
“Now, there’s something else you wouldn’t have seen twenty-five years ago,” Dixie pointed out. “In fact,” she said, looking Nikki up and down, “it would’ve seemed pretty unladylike to ask to fly the plane.”
“My God, she looks ready to pop!”
“She told a little fib about her due date. She can’t afford to go on maternity leave, she needs the overtime. Her husband was activated reserve—Navy—gone to Kuwait. The family took a huge pay cut.”
Almost everything about the industry had changed, all right. Back in the glamour days there was no real competition. Enter deregulation of the airline industry and the entrance of low-fare carriers. The large and established airlines found it increasingly difficult to compete. The new entrants, often nonunion start-ups, had low costs, but the big guys had been around long enough so that with every union contract, the cost of labor went up, then up, then up some more. The cost of fuel kept rising, but competitive pricing meant ticket prices plummeted, and the business traveler took advantage, went global.
Before long the big airlines were making almost half their profit from the last-minute business traveler whose company paid the premium price. As for the rest of the travelers, they were no longer just the well-to-do. After deregulation it was cheaper to fly from New York City to Miami for the weekend than to go to a good restaurant and see a Broadway musical. It was frequently more expensive to travel by bus. Now the people waiting to board the airplanes were not wearing their hats and gloves, politely waiting for their flight, but clad in beach clothes or ragged jeans, complaining loudly about the degradation of the service.
The major airlines were losing millions a year, a month, some losing millions a day as they tried to compete with the start-ups. The start-ups would fail and disappear, but that did not put the money back in the coffers of the legacy carriers, and another start-up would appear with bargain-basement tickets, starting the whole process all over again.
Then the unfathomable happened.
Everyone remembered where they were that morning. Buck was hosing down tarmac outside the largest hangar at Burgess Aviation when one of the young maintenance techs came running, yelling for him to come to the office and see the TV. Carlisle was in New York on an overnight, due to fly out later that day. Dixie was in D.C., on the treadmill in the hotel’s fitness center, watching CNN. At first, she thought she was seeing an Aries plane and she ran to the nearest phone and called Aries dispatch.
And Nikki was in Boston, sitting in the cockpit of an Aries 767, full of passengers, ready to push back. She was turned around in her seat, talking to a Delta pilot who was hitching a ride on an Aries jump seat.
An operations agent came aboard, stuck her head in the cockpit and said, “Did you hear what happened? An airplane hit the World Trade Center.”
“What kind of airplane?” Nikki asked.
“A big airplane. Like a 737 or something.”
“Whoa. How do you get that far off course?”
She shrugged. “Sit tight till the airport clears us,” the agent said, and left.
Less than a minute passed when her first officer said, “Did you hear that? They closed the airport.”
Nikki looked outside. “Why?” It was a beautiful morning. The sky was crystal clear.
Some other pilot at the airport keyed his mike and asked why the airport had been closed.
“The airport is closed for reasons of national security,” came the reply.
The deafening silence that followed lasted for perhaps two full minutes. Alarm filled the air like static.
The operations agent came back a few minutes later. Her face had bleached so white that her lips were indistinguishable from her flesh. “Another plane flew into the second tower. Another big one.”
“Holy Jesus,” the copilot muttered.
“They’re saying the airplanes are U.S. passenger planes. Hijacked,” the agent said. She was visibly trembling.
The next announcement ordered all planes back to the gates. Passengers were deplaned, pilots and cabin crews were informed there had been several hijackings from Northeast airports and flights were canceled pending investigation. The airport was swiftly evacuated.
The unprecedented response was that every aircraft in the United States was grounded for several days. Nikki learned she had been sitting next to one of the planes that had been hijacked out of Boston.
That morning, trying to reach the kids on her cell phone, she couldn’t get a signal. When she did get through, she found that the kids were with Buck, terrified for her safety because they couldn’t reach her.
Her first reaction, like the rest of the world’s, was shock and horror. But she had a bigger mission—she had a plane to get out of Boston and a crew that was shaken and needed her leadership.
They were put in a hotel where they sat glued to televisions, watching an unbelievable
