YOU NEVER KNOW WHO'S GONNA BE ABOARD

On January 12, 1999 I had a trip aboard N225CC, a Falcon 100, from ESN-MTN-LEX-MTN-ESN and our prime customer was Senator Mitch McConnell. This was an insane time for Senate travel because it was at the peak of the Clinton impeachment trial. Senators had obligations after the hearing adjourned for the day, but had to be back in chambers by the next morning. So, they had to leave the chamber, hustle to an airport, board a private jet, make their appearance and then hustle back to DC. DCA was slammed every night so Senator McConnell and his aids limo'ed to Martian State airport just north of Baltimore where we picked them up and headed for Lexington, KY.

As we flew out, we could hear them talking in the back of the aircraft, but could not get all of the conversation because much of it seemed to be about the closed-door evidence so it was in hushed tones. What we could pick out was something about tiger stripe panties and it was apparently quite funny.

Before we left LEX they told us that we had one additional passenger. Didn't matter to us, we had 3 empty seats and no weight issues. The young blond lady extra passenger said that her airline reservation back to DC had gotten screwed up and she was about to get stuck in LEX. When the senator heard that, he told her she could hitch a ride back with us. I immediately recognized her as one of the news show "talkin' heads" that I'd seen on all of the networks, but I couldn't remember her name. We got them back to MTN and they caught their limo back to DC without as much as a bump. It was a an easy trip with good weather and we re-positioned back to ESN.

About a week later I was channel surfing the news and there she was! I read her name it was Kellyann Conway. Today, January 20th, 2017... 18 years later... the man whose campaign she brilliantly managed was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States and she became the first woman in history to successfully manage the election of a United States president... and I transported her when the airlines couldn't... thanks to Senator McConnell, or course. Congratulations Kellyann, even though you never knew who I was, you are now in my file of fun pilot's stories.

WHAT'S IN A NAME

At a recent doctor's visit the office staff were shuffling my paperwork around and the new office manager looked at mine and asked her co-worker, "What'll we do with Mr. Oleszewski's?"

That caught my ear because she pronounced my name exactly RIGHT! That's VERY rare and so I exclaimed, "You said my name correctly! How in the heck did you do that?"

"I'm from Ukraine." she replied with a smile and slight accent.

Growing up on the East Side of Saginaw, Michigan names such as mine were like "Jones" they were so common. Yet, out in the real world I found that many people have a real tongue-twister with names that are not actually Jones... especially flight attendants, or "FAs" as they are often called.

At one of my airlines, in the days prior to 9/11 when civilization actually existed in air travel, the company required that the FA making the pre-takeoff announcements had to greet the occupants of the fart thrones in the back of the aircraft by saying the cockpit crew's full names. This led to a lot of comedy in the cockpit as we listened in on the PA waiting to hear how they scrambled my last name. For the poor FA's, however, it was a frustrating and somewhat embarrassing way to start a flight. One FA actually had me spell it phonetically and then she sat in ops. and practiced it, yet still got it wrong as we taxied out, much to our giggles in the cockpit.

In order to help fix the problem I did a bit of research in the company manuals and found that nowhere did it state that the FAs had to give the passengers your ACTUAL name. So, from then on when the crew card that they read from was handed to us in the cockpit before the flight, I'd give them easier and more fun names in the "First Officer" blank:

"Roy Flemming"
"Frank Gifford"
"Max Peck"
"Anson Harris"
"Joe Patroni"
"Dan Roman"
"John Sullivan"
"Luther Higgs"
"Carl Griffin"

and so on.

Often the FAs would come back into the cockpit with the card and say, "This isn't your real name."

To which I'd reply, "No, but you can pronounce it."

They'd just sigh, or snicker, shake their head and return to their duties.

Then one day after a perfectly smooth and uneventful flight into MSP, the passengers were de-plane-ifying and I had my head down in paperwork when one of them stuck his head into to the cockpit, looked right at me and said,

"Please tell me that your name is NOT really Ted Striker,"