Vivid Memories

Some moments just stick out in the mind.

On the last flight of our Sun Destination charter in the winter, we ferried the aircraft known (to me) as Lettie down to Cancun to "repatriate" 158 Canadians.  I was sad and stressed out, worried that it was going to be my last flight ever.  Thank goodness it didn't turn out that way, but still, I was a little upset.  The other FAs were using the empty plane to stretch out and sleep.  I chose to stay in the Flight Deck with the boys and enjoy what I thought could be my last trip.  At this point, I still didn't know that I was going to follow my new path towards becoming a pilot, so I was really just enjoying the view and the company.

The Captain was agitated.  It was the day of the gold medal hockey game of the Olympics, and we were officially missing it.  After mumbling and grumbling about it, and using lots of choice curse words, he finally decided to send the First Officer hunting on the AM radio waves to see if we could pick up the game.  Sure enough, some random Mexican station was broadcasting it!  The Captain put it on the speakers in the flight deck so that all three of us could listen in.  There was cheering, there was yelling, and many more curse words.

We almost managed to listen to the entire game, and had it not gone into overtime, it would have been no problem.  But we were almost in Cancun, and the guys had to start our descent.  The Captain schemed; 'Maybe we can do a go-around or something and catch the end of the game before we have to land...' but it was no good, and descend we did.  All was going well, but it was a race against time.  The overtime period began - we listened.  We continued to descend.  The announcer started to sound very excited, this was it, someone was going to the net, something was going to happen, Crosby had the puck.....

We hit 10,000ft and lost the signal.

The resulting screams of 'NOOOOOOOO' brought two of the other FAs to the flight deck looking extremely panicked.  Apparently hearing screams and cries coming from the flight deck isn't so re-assuring.  Who knew?

The second we landed and the engines were shut down, the first thing the Captain did was get out the Blackberry and call head office.
'What happened?!  No, the score!  What do you mean you aren't watching the game, turn the damned TV on and tell me the f***ing score!!!!'