Thought of the Day - September 28 2021 - A Pilot's Message

It has been a while since we talked about pilots ( Thought of the Day - February 9 - COVID Hangover ) and the impact that the significant reduction on passenger flights has had.

I recently came across a story concerning a note left by a pilot on a plane that hadn't flown since the spring of 2020. It is an interesting look back to those naive early days of the pandemic.

In March, Captain Chris Dennis parked Delta's aircraft 3009 at Victorville Airport in the California desert. Like so many, he imagined this would just be a two-week lockdown before the world opened up again. He had no idea that plane wouldn’t take to the air again for another 435 days.

Dennis wrote, “Hey pilots—It’s March 23rd and we just arrived from MSP (Minneapolis-St. Paul). Very chilling to see so much of our fleet here in the desert. If you are here to pick it up then the light must be at the end of the tunnel. Amazing how fast it changed. Have a safe flight bringing it out of storage!”

The pilot assigned to ‘wake up’ the aircraft more than a year later found the note tucked away on a tray table in the flight deck.

“Those 57 words, which captured so much of the uncertainty and emotion we all felt in March 2020, underscored the gravity of the trip, and how optimistic he now feels about the direction we’re heading in,” Delta posted “Ship 3009 is now prepared to take the skies once again. While the world certainly has changed over the past year, one thing is for certain: we won’t be taking that open runway for granted anytime soon.”

Cheers

Cliff