I was aboard an Eastern Airlines 727-200 from Atlanta to Washington, D.C. to visit a friend. It was forty-eight years ago - 1977. (I was twenty-eight and had just earned my PPSEL.) I was seated next to a very attractive and vivacious thirty-something young lady. More on her later.
As we approached our destination, Washington's National Airport, I noted that as we should have turned right base to 19, we turned north instead, following the Potomac River. Several minutes later, the Flight Engineer appeared. He half-smiled as he walked through to mid-cabin, where I was seated, wielding a large brace wrench. He rolled back the carpet, opened an access hatch, and dropped into the small foxhole where he proceeded to crank down the main gear! He lost some weight and built some muscles that day; he must've given the task at hand over one hundred turns!
It was the first flight for the poor woman seated across the aisle from me. I had tried to reassure and comfort her, but to little effect. She stared straight ahead. She could only converse by issuing a series of grunts and growls.
The Pilot addressed the passengers in a less-than-cheery voice: "Uh, Ladies and Gentleman, we uh have had uh a little ah trouble with the landing gear. We're gonna fly this ah bird by the tower and uh get 'em to tell us if ah the gear is uh down!" Thus did we reverse course, and with flaps 30 flew down all 7,169 feet of runway 10/190. Slowly. As we approached the threshold, the Captain poured the coal to three JT8D-17's as he retracted flaps; we climbed to ~3,000 feet, once again turning to starboard and taking up a northerly course. Our brave Captain's calm voice once again filled the cabin: "Uh, the uh tower ah says that those wheels are down, but ah we don't have those little green uh lights that show us that the gear is ah locked in position so we are uh gonna divert to Baltimore Friendship where they have uh longer runways and better ah emergency equipment." Throughout the cabin Rosaries were deployed and fiddled with, alcohol was being chugged, and quiet prayers were being murmured. Deals with God abounded! Would He listen? The woman across the aisle presented with the only clinical case of catatonia I have ever witnessed. She was motionless, a drink halfway to her mouth. Completely paralyzed! I was able to extract the plastic cup from her vice-like grasp and bend her arm down to the armrest. She growled at me, but not too loudly.
The flight to "Balmer" was less than ten minutes. During that time, the head flight attendant (they were still called stewardesses back then; she was absolutely gorgeous) came down the aisle, instructing passengers to tighten their seat belts, showing us how to assume the brace position and asking for volunteers to man the emergency exits. Being the kind, courageous, altruist that I was - and am - I gladly offered my services. It didn't hurt that I wanted to impress that proud beauty and that if I opened the emergency exit I could be first out of the horrid crash/conflagration!
We set up for a long final into Friendship. Full flap and slats, spoilers, bleeding altitude, on glideslope, then, suddenly, the runway! The Captain must have been a Navy F-4 pilot - he put us down on the first set of piano keys. Firmly. (He was trying to lock the mains.) We went airborne again for perhaps two-hundred feet, then he put her down like a feather landing on whipped cream. More than one-hundred-fifty souls exhaled an immense collective sigh of relief. The gear had held! God had been listening! We passed emergency apparati arrayed on the runway's side, and rolled to a stop in the middle of the runway, several thousand feet down. Captain Amazing's voice permeated the cabin once again: "We uh are gonna sit here ah for a few uh minutes while the uh ground crew come out to uh pin that gear. We are sure sorry that you ah had to go through that and we are uh sorry for any ah delay and inconvenience! Thank you for flying with Eastern!"
I was unbuckling my seat belt when the previously- mentioned goddess, er stewardess, stopped by my seat. "May I speak to you in the galley, please Sir?", she said in her sultry contralto voice. How could I say no? I followed her rear to the rear of the aircraft; we stepped into the galley. She pulled the divider curtain closed. We were alone! Was she going to stab me or give me a very happy ending to a very stressful day? She opened a drawer. It was full of pony bottles of every whiskey known to modern man. "Name your poison!", the lovely lady said, wrapping her velvet voice around my surrendering eardrums. "Bourbon, please!", I croaked, doing my best Humphrey Bogart impression. She poured me a double Jack Black and intoned: "This is on Frank Borman!" (The Mercury/Gemini/Apollo veteran astronaut who was President of Eastern Airlines at the time.) I killed that elixir in two gulps. She poured me another. Just when I was going to ask for name, number, and marital status, she was paged to come forward to the cockpit. Another dream consigned to the ever-burgeoning smouldering ash heap of what might have been but was not to be.
As we deplaned, I was able to thank the flight crew for their expertise and to give them compliments on the pulchritude and kolpygyny of the cabin crew. I stepped onto the air stairs and my newest best friend appeared with an Eastern Airlines flight bag. "You forgot this, Sir!", she said with a wink. We gathered in the terminal. I checked the flight bag. It was full of whiskey pony bottles. A hundred or more. We awaited the bus which would take us back to National. A black limousine pulled up in front of me and glided to a stop. A back window rolled down. It was my very attractive seatmate. She offered me a ride to D.C. I accepted without hesitation. It turned out that she was Henry Kissinger's lady friend du jour! A day to remember. All's well that ends well.
- Ed
Last edited by cavuman1; 22nd May 2025 at 21:51.
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