One year on…
Today it is one year since I last operated an aircraft as Captain, 365 days on the ground. This is the longest I have been on the ground since I was a child as far as I can remember.
As Covid started to spread around the world last spring, it was becoming more and more obvious that at some point, flights would be grounded and now, looking back, I feel as if I was standing on a beach watching a tidal wave coming towards us all with nowhere to run to.
In October of 2019 I had dropped from working full time to a 75% roster which meant that instead of the 5354 pattern (5 days working, 3 off, 5 days working, 4 off) I was now working 465346 (4 days working, 6 off, 5 days working, 3 off, 4 days working, 6 off). I loved this pattern because it allowed me to spend a lot more time at home and coupled with Inverness nightstops, sometimes it felt as if I was based at home with only the occasional nightstop in Gatwick rather than the other way around.
On this particular day in 2020 I had found myself with the rare opportunity to visit my brothers in law and stayed the night with them in London so that I could spend some time with my nephews. We had a lovely evening with lots of cuddles. Something I have missed so much over the last year!
One of my brothers in law is asthmatic, and that night he wasn’t feeling well. Just in case it might be “this mad virus” that we knew very little about, he stayed clear of everyone. The next day, I hugged my nephews goodbye and left for work as I was scheduled to fly to Luxembourg – a destination I was really looking forward to as I had not been there before – going somewhere new is always exciting!
When I arrived at Gatwick I had a message to say that my brother in law had woken up feeling worse and subsequently tested positive for Covid….I was obviously worried about him but was assured that he was ok and had gone to back to bed (where he stayed for 2 weeks). I now needed to tell my line manager that I had been in the same house as someone who had tested positive and didn’t know if I would be allowed to operate the flight….or fly home the next day.
After checking with operations I was told that the risk was minimal since I had not been in close contact with him and according to the rules at the time this meant that I was still permitted to fly.
I can say quite happily that every day I flew with fantastic crew members, but on this day my crew was particularly lovely. To get from the crew room where we check in to the aircraft we would either walk through the terminal (I used to really love this because people would see us approaching and just move out of the way like some magical unspoken rule!) or take a bus to what’s known as a “remote stand”. On this day we took a bus so I didn’t yet know how empty the terminals had become.
Our flight was uneventful – and relatively short! It doesn’t take long to get to Luxembourg from Gatwick and we were blessed with lovely passengers (although the numbers were drastically lower than we were expecting), clear skies and amazing views of northern France, the Channel and the south of England as we made our way back to London.
Landing back at Gatwick that night felt momentous. There was just something in the air that made us all feel that the flight we had just operated was significant – and of course for me, it was, because it turned out not just to be the last flight I operated for a while, but potentially forever.
We all felt quite sad as we said goodbye to our passengers, and many of them wished us luck as they left – not something you normally hear and we were left feeling deflated as we shut down the aircraft, and I closed the doors and walked down the steps for the final time.
The following day I drove on an empty road to and empty Gatwick, caught an empty train to an empty Luton, and took an almost empty flight home to Inverness, and I have only left Scotland once since then, and only left my county 5 times. For someone who used to fly up and down the country several times a week without even thinking about it, that’s a long time to stand still, and notwithstanding everything else that has happened this year, it hasn’t been a bad thing.
Whilst I still feel sad at times that the career I loved so much and worked so hard for has come to an end, there are so many other things to be grateful for. Regular sleep is one of them!!
I look back on my last flight not with sadness but with a grateful heart that I had such a fantastic crew to share it with and who always made me laugh when we were on duty together (Peter that’s you!) – and also that I have so many brilliant memories (helped by the approximately 20,000 photos I took over those 11 years) to look back on with pride.
I may not be flying now, and I may not fly again (who knows – I hope I will but I’m not hanging anything on that!) but I am still a pilot, I am still a Captain, I have had an amazing career so far, and in the words of William Ernest Henley at the end of Invictus, “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul”
