Stephen Keshner - Cockpit Confessions of an Airline Pilot

When the expected letter arrived, on the “take no prisoners” embossed Senatorial stationary, Wanda Decker was summoned before a Company review board. The letter was read to her, and the story was rehashed to determine exactly what had happened. She was asked for her comments, and she agreed that, “yeah, that’s exactly how it happened, but I don’t know why he’s so upset…I turned that piece of shit back into a person before we landed.” She kept her job.

Six months after the John Tower incident, I am to meet up with Wanda Decker again.

“Who’s working the upper deck?” This from Captain Bob Lipton (The Godfather). He wants to know which flight attendant would be our cockpit queen on this trip from Honolulu to Guam.

“Wanda Decker,” volunteers our First Officer, Billy Chowder.

“Great deal,” says Bob, now satisfied he’s going to get all the coffee he wants, and that we’ll be able to smoke in the cockpit without getting turned in.

“Hey Godfather,” I ask. “How did Wanda get the handle Thunder Pussy? ”

“Keshy, you don’t know?” Bubba and Chowder both laugh. “I’ll get her to show you, once we’re underway.”

Halfway to Guam, Bob calls Wanda up to the flight deck. “Linda, show them your act.”

“No, Bobbie, I don’t want to.”

“Come on Linda,” gruff now, “I said show them your act!”

“Okay, fuck it, give me your flashlight and turn off the lights.” Chowder hands Wanda his flashlight, while Bob turns off all the lights in the cockpit. We barely see Wanda lift up her skirt, pull down her pantyhose, and squatting slightly, I watch, amazed, as the now lit flashlight is inserted up her vagina. Her pussy is glowing in the dark, the outline of some internal tubing showing through, like an x-ray photo. “Satisfied now,” she asks, now smiling?

“Damn Linda, they should call you Lightnin Pussy, not Thunder Pussy, by God,” says Bob.

For one of the few times in my, life I’m speechless. “What’s the matter, Stevie, pussy got your tongue,” asks the Godfather?

During the long night, Wanda has darkened the cabin, putting the passengers to bed as soon as the food service is completed. Six hours later, with an hour to go before descent, Thunder Pussy turns the lights on in First Class, as she and her Flight Attendants prepare the First Class breakfast service. One deeply sleeping gent opens an eye, and screams “Shut out that fucking light!”

Wanda, quick as a flash, advises him, “Sir, this is the ‘breakfast light,’ the ‘fucking light’ was two hours ago.”

A pesky cabin temperature control problem plagued us, causing all kinds of interruptions in our attempts to read our Penthouse, Playboy, or Forum’s Letters. Flight Attendants calling up, all the time bitching about the damn cabin temperature. Every five minutes an irate call, Its too hot back here! Its too cold back here.” This unhappy situation would go on for the duration of these six-hour flights, seriously hampering our discussions of pussy. A maxim in aviation is you talk airplanes on the ground, and pussy in the air!

After suffering through several of these trips, I came up with a solution. I went to a local hardware store and bought a conventional thermostat, like those used in most homes, and glued four small suction cups onto it’s back. I went out to the aircraft early next trip, before the crew arrived, and mounted my device prominently in the serving area of the Flight Attendant’s galley.

When the Cabin Crew showed up, I brought them into the galley, showed them the thermostat, and explained “the trial modification,” implemented by our maintenance department in an attempt to solve the aircraft’s temperature problems. I did fail to mention that the thermostat was not connected to anything.

“Temperature control is now the responsibility of the Flight Attendants,” I told them. We pilots then went through our normal departure procedures. We set the actual cockpit temperature controller to some “midway” position, and forgot about it. After take-off, we started to time how long it would take until we received the first temperature complaint. Fifteen minutes go by, then thirty minutes, nothing. An hour into the flight and not a single gripe!

I cracked the cockpit door to see what was going on. Every couple of minutes one of the girls would reach up and turn the thermostat control higher or lower; then about three or four minutes later, another of the girls, on her way in or out of the galley, would make another adjustment.

In the course of that one day, the thermostat in the galley was used more often than a real one during it’s normal lifetime.

In the crew van on the way to the hotel, I casually asked the Lead Flight Attendant if she noticed any improvement in the quality of the aircraft temperature? She told me “that problem is unequivocally solved.” The temperature on that flight was perfect for the first time since they started working this aircraft, totally and completely satisfactory,” they all agreed.

My bogus unit remained on that one aircraft, undiscovered, for another four weeks. The shit hit the fan, however, when one of the very senior F/As asked her boss when could they look for this great fix to be installed on the rest of the fleet?”

For the next few weeks, whenever I called back for a cup of coffee, I invariably found one or two cigarette butts taped to the bottom of my paper cup. My next few coffees had a few choice words written inside the bottom of the cup with eye liner. I started carrying a thermos with me on trips, not wanting to be “Visine’d.” Visine in the coffee is the favored manor of retribution by Flight Attendants towards asshole pilots or passengers considered to be pains in the asses… Visine supposedly causes severe stomach cramps and diarrhea.

When I think about that whole thermostat gag routine, I realize just how powerful perception can be, that whole mind over matter trip.

When I was first became a Second Officer-Flight Engineer, the third man in the cockpit, it was on the DC-10 based in Honolulu. We flew the international turns from Hawaii to Guam, Saipan and Narita (the new Tokyo International Airport), and back. The ground time was usually about an hour or so, just enough time to get an ice cream and a walk around the terminal.

This one month I was flying with Lee Edmonds, a quiet, unassuming Captain. The Co-pilot was Roy Steele, a face that only a mother could love, and a more successful swordsman then Warren Beatty is reputed to be….go figure. We land in Tokyo, and are parked at the gate.

Japan has a very popular TV show that airs live. A female journalist, Japan’s Connie Chung, takes a camera crew to different places of business, restaurants, fishing boats and such. She interviews ordinary people about their jobs. The Japanese love it.

Our Tokyo Station Manager advises us that this Celeb is here now, and she wants to interview us in the cockpit of our DC-10. Captain Edmonds is taken aback. Although he gives his permission, he’s shy, stilted, not knowing what to do or say.

The cockpit is now stuffed with the Station Manager, a camera man, “Connie Chung,” the lights, and our crew — quite a crowd. I am Cinderella, sitting at my engineer’s table in the corner, out of the limelight.

I pull on the sleeve of the interviewer, as she chatters away in Japanese, “Excuse me….excuse me, do you know what I do, what this table is for?”

Suddenly, the camera and lights are focused on me, the Station Manager rapidly translates my English into Japanese for the interviewer. She wants to know what you do?” Now I am the focus of the interview.