My Little Christmas Miracle

A chief pilot's favor, at Christmas, made all the difference

Early in each trip, we go through “the big three,” the questions from which all other questions are spawned for the storytelling that fills the quiet moments of a trip. Sometimes it happens at the gate, sometimes it is midway through the first flight - it all just depends on how hectic things are that first leg. “Where’d you come from,” meaning the career path that led to this current place, “Where’s home?” And then the family situation. “Wife? Kids?" Once the questions get turned back at me, I tell the highlight reel version of the meandering career path that wound up here, how I’m deeply rooted in Georgia, and I tell them about having known my bride since we were 15. I usually leave the kids thing hanging.

Until they ask “….And kids?”

“Not anymore.” I leave that one hanging until the suspense is taut. “We fostered for a while. All our kids are back with their birth parents.”

The two girls who introduced us to parenting never fully left the picture. They come for occasional visits, as they did just before Thanksgiving this year. They came to us aged 2 and 5, and nearly a decade later, they’ve grown into incredible young ladies. I’m beyond grateful their parents allow us to maintain contact, and getting to be like an aunt and uncle to them as they grow has been the greatest benefit Amy and I gained from fostering. As we roll into the Christmas week, I’m flying a heavy schedule: I’ve got three trips stacked against one another to have me flying from December 20-31 with only the 27th off. It’ll be a grueling week but my Christmas Eve layover is within driving distance of family. Hopefully I can snag a rental car for a few hours of visiting and a chance to stuff my lunch bag full of leftovers made with love before I get stuck in Newark on Christmas Day.

That said, this week would have been pretty hectic for me to thrash out a brand new column, so please enjoy this retread, from events that happened almost a decade ago. It’s one of my “timeless” stories.

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“So tell me, Jeremy, what would you do? It’s the end of a trip, and you’re itching to get home for your kid’s soccer game. You bid this trip specifically so that you’d get home with just a few minutes to spare before it begins. But, on landing, your phone rings. It’s scheduling, and they want you to do a round trip to Jackson, Mississippi. You’ll miss your kid’s game.”

The man doing the asking was Danny Robertson, a former chief pilot who had moved into his sunset posting as a pilot recruiter and interviewer for the regional airline that he’d poured decades of his career into. It was the final question of the interview for my first real flying job.

“Sir, I am 27 years old. I don’t have a wife or kid, and I can’t answer this question with the full understanding of being in that spot. Right here and right now, though, I’d say that if the contract said I was obligated to fly that turn to Jackson, I’d do it. My job is to fly airplanes, and the contract guides me on how to do my job.”

It’s mighty easy for an airline to take shape in one’s mind as a giant, uncaring machine that rolls on 24/7/365 with no consideration for employees’ home lives. Holidays and anniversaries get rescheduled around the month’s awarded trips, and life goes on. I’ve celebrated Christmas before leaving on a trip where I spent the actual holiday in a Detroit casino. Valentine’s Day, when celebrated a few days later, is much more affordable—the flowers are cheaper and the restaurants don’t have jacked-up prices for “Valentine Specials.” For years, I fell into thinking that the company’s needs were supreme, as I had nobody counting on me to be anywhere at any time.

But, in a decade of working for the company, my home life changed drastically. I went from living on an airstrip where I ran a crash pad that was about as active and rowdy as a fraternity house to a quieter apartment in Atlanta, and then into a home with Amy when I married. We became foster parents, and our first placement was a pair of sisters, ages 2 and 5. I was in northern Tennessee packing up airplane parts in a dusty old barn when we got the call that they were coming into our lives. It took me a whole day to get home to them, and then only 30 seconds for my heart to latch onto them when I walked through the door. “Mister Jeremy, Mister Jeremy,” they screamed as they ran and leapt into my arms.

Instantly, I was a father. I woke up, fixed breakfast and hauled the girls off to preschool. Every day was filled with the full range of emotions—theirs and mine—while we bonded as a family. If parenting is comparable to swimming, our first lesson started in the deep end of the pool. With help from friends, family and the North Georgia United Methodist Children’s Home (now branded Wellroot) we learned and grew together.

I loved almost every minute of it. Every day brought different set of challenges. On a trip, one of our crew asked how the process was going. “Well, it’s kind of like any challenging day at work. Invariably, someone seems to be upset despite our best efforts. Sometimes we can fix it, and sometimes we can’t even figure out what’s wrong.”

I’d leave out on a trip with more hugs and kisses than I was accustomed to, and then I’d return to screams of “Mister Jeremy! Daddy Tiger!” Just as suddenly as it began, our first placement was over. The girls were part of a very big family, and the siblings had been split between several homes initially. Another set of foster parents wound up with three beds available, and they were able to move under the same roof as their older brother. The goal of fostering is to reunite the families, and so off they went. We got the call on a Monday night that they’d be going home Friday afternoon. In a normal home, that’d be plenty of time for goodbyes and packing up their stuff. Homes of airline families are not normal. I had a trip leaving late Tuesday morning, and I wouldn’t get back until well after the girls had left on Friday.

I sat with the girls at breakfast and tried to explain the logistics of how everything had panned out, that this was our last time together. At ages 2 and 5, they really didn’t understand. It was almost Christmas, our first Christmas with children in our home. The presents were piled up, the tree decorated even more festively than in years past. The girls had commandeered the audio playlist every morning on their way to preschool, demanding Kacey Musgraves singing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” on repeat. Mercifully, our drive to school was two blocks long, and there was none of the carpool line antics other parents have to contend with at our preschool. Amy and I had debated having an early, spontaneous Christmas morning, but decided we’d just send the presents with the kids for wherever they wound up. The presents wrapped up were for the girls, after all, not for us. There were a lot of emotions in play as I brought them to school, then drove to the airport for my trip.

At work, I relayed the story about the girls to the crew I was flying with, how we’d gotten so attached in our time together, and how the separation was so sudden and difficult for the girls to process. As I told the story, it was apparent how difficult it was for me to process as well.

“You really should call one of our chief pilots,” the captain told me. “I bet they could work something out.”

I really didn’t want to make a fuss. I had posted the last round trip for other pilots to pick up, but there were no takers. In almost a decade at my airline, I’ve been in the chief pilots’ offices maybe four times. Flying for an airline is one of those rare jobs where you can work for years with almost no interaction with your boss. After the hundredth time I heard the captain ask whether the chiefs had taken my last day away, I sat down and wrote out my official request for a favor. The only other time I’d begged off a trip was when my grandmother was on her deathbed—I don’t take these things lightly. I shot an email to the assistant chief pilot I’d contacted to get my proof of employment from when I was in foster parent training. At least he might recall that interaction and know I wasn’t making the whole story up.

The trip was supposed to wrap up with an overnight in Greensboro, a deadhead to Atlanta, and then a round trip to one of our Mexican destinations. As we prepared to fly from New York to Greensboro, a text message popped up on my phone. “Jeremy, it’s Robert Banks. Got your email. Don’t worry about the last round trip. Even if it’s still on your schedule tomorrow, don’t fly it. I’ve got it taken care of. Go hug those girls goodbye. You’re doing a great thing.”

Being as that the flight from Greensboro back to Atlanta was a deadhead, I was able to waive my rest, catch an alternate deadhead, and I wound up back home in time to wake the girls up for a busy day of breakfast out and some quality time together before the transporter came to get them. The hugs and kisses they gave this time when we said goodbye were a lot more meaningful.

The chief pilot’s favor got me home 12 hours early. It was my little Christmas miracle, delivered a few days before everyone normally celebrates the holiday.

In talks with current and former chief pilots since, they’ve made it clear that getting to help people out is one of the biggest perks of the job. In fact, one chief pilot from the next airline I flew for delighted in telling the first favor he did for a pilot with his new job as a chief pilot. “I gave a pilot the day off for an adoption — adopting a dog! I figured I’d catch grief for it, but I kind of wanted to see what I could do, to figure out the limits I had. I never heard a peep out of it.” Other stories abounded about pilots dealing with stressful events at home, ranging from burying a pet to dealing with the fallout of a recently discovered affair. All the chiefs I spoke to agreed that giving the pilots the time they needed certainly made for less trouble than dealing with the fallout if that stress combined with a workplace challenge that resulted in any sort of mishap.

“We can tell when folks are trying to scheme the system,” a former chief pilot said as we worked our way through a trip. “The rules are there for those guys. We know most of the pilots bend over backwards to keep our operation on track. Being able to help them out was our way of saying thank you.”

Barely even into the New Year, the girls came back—housing them and their brother in the same home didn’t go to plan. This time around, though, I’ve emphasized how my trips work. They understand a little better how things go, and I hope I won’t have to beg for a similar favor soon. But, knowing that the airline is made of thousands of pilots—and that our leaders acknowledge our need to deal with home life—certainly makes saying goodbye a little easier at the start of each trip.

Postscript: The favor in question happened in 2016. The little girls are a lot bigger now. They’re doing great, and despite the foster care system’s failures and shortcomings, they remain solid evidence that our time and involvement wasn’t for naught. If you’ve got the space in your home and in your heart for fostering, I strongly encourage you to entertain that thought. It was hard work, but 100 percent worth it.