Over The Fly Overs

Pilots hold this sort of mythic status I think. They’re kind of like lame super-heroes, they wear these special uniforms and can fly. They get locked away in special rooms, they speak in calm and soothing and slightly southern tinged voices, they seem vaguely untouchable.

And then there are freight pilots.

Freight pilots are the blue collar version of passenger plane pilots, they are the truck driver equivalent in the pilot world. They seem unkempt even in a snazzy uniform. They seem, I don’t know, seedy. It wouldn’t be surprising to learn that a freight plane crew had spent the evening before in a Bangkok brothel and will be breakfasting at Bill’s Rendezvous Room Bar and Grill that morning.

I used to work with freight, I got to know way more about moving pointless shit around the country by plane than I had ever hoped to know. I used to work closely with the flight crew of freight planes because I mapped out their load, making sure weight was distributed correctly throughout their airplane.

A mechanic took great delight in sharing a freight pilot’s dirty little secret with me. Porn. And not just magazines, which there were many hidden about those cockpits, but pictures cut out of magazines and pasted onto the undersides of panel parts of the cockpit.

Magazines I can understand, I mean those are long flights and once you get in the air those planes essentially fly themselves. It’s easy to slip into the cargo hold and take care of a little business… But these isolated money shots pasted into the plastic seat belt covers and ash tray lids just seemed a little too desperate, perverse and well, dumb. It’s like some guy could just flip a piece of plastic and get a quick glimpse of somebody taking it in the face; just for a quick pick me up on those long stretches over Kansas.