PIA Over the Atlantic

During the summer of 1979, prior to my sophomore year in high school, I started working at Ken’s Donut and Ice Cream Shop located on Highway 90 and down a little ways from the Kool King. My friend, Ken Cadwallader opened the donut shop, along with a laundromat in a building that used to be a convenience store. Mr. Ken is the man who gave me my first job at the Kool King several years earlier. When he opened the Laundromat, all of us kids in the neighborhood were excited because Ken brought in a pinball machine. I spent hours and hours playing pinball and pushing quarters into the slot of that machine. When he asked if I would like to work at the donut shop, I quickly said yes and began learning about donuts.

I worked all year, working after school Monday through Friday from 3:30 to 7:00 and on Saturdays from 7:00 to 2:00. I don’t remember what my hourly wage was but I remember saving as much as I could. I was saving my money to go to Europe between my sophomore and junior years of high school. If I was able to save $1,895.00, I could take part in a month-long educational trip through six countries in Europe. As one of the sponsors of the trip, Miss Carlino, my English and Speech teacher, had encouraged me to go and said it would be a trip of a lifetime. My parents agreed to let me go and so I worked as many hours as I could and saved my hard-earned money. In the process, I learned how to make donuts, shakes, malts, sundaes and I had a lot of fun. There are other things I could share about the time I worked at Ken’s but this story is more about my trip.

Fast forward to the day we were to leave for Europe. My mom and dad drove me to the airport in New Orleans to connect with the other 250 travelers. From there we would fly to JFK airport in New York and then on to Frankfurt, West Germany. (This was prior to the Berlin Wall coming down and Germany was still divided.) I was excited to learn my American History and Louisiana History teacher from 7th and 8th grades, and my all-time favorite teacher, Sherry Spivey, was also going to be on this trip. She was excited about going to Europe but also about taking pictures with her brand new Canon AE-1. I on the other hand, was still shooting 110mm film with my Instamatic and had not yet moved up to 35mm photography. But hey, my camera had a built-in flash. So what if Canon AE-1 was so easy to use that even Stevie Wonder could take pictures with it. (Think early Saturday Night Live skit.)

On trips like this, the sponsoring tour company tries to get the best deal they can on airfare, tour buses, hotels, etc. Our tour company must have been trying hard to make a buck because the airline chosen to fly us from New York to Frankfurt was Pakistani International Airlines, other wise known as PIA. At the time, my older sister, Sheila, was living overseas in the Middle East and quite familiar with foreign airlines. When I told her the name of our airline, she  was not impressed. I asked, what’s wrong with PIA? Sheila told me that in the Arab world, PIA did not stand for Pakistani International Airline but rather for two other names: “Panic In Air” and “Please Inform Allah.” This was going to be an interesting flight.

Although there were over 250 of us in our group, there were only a handful of us from Patterson. One of the other students from Patterson High School was a soon-to-be senior by the name of Bonnie Martin. I don’t want to get in trouble here, but think Farrah Fawcett hair and beauty, Goldie Hawn outgoing personality and did I mention, about to be a senior? Welcome aboard my PIA 747, Miss Martin. By the way Bonnie, did the travel agent mention who you would be sitting next to while flying across the Atlantic Ocean? I don’t want to get your hopes up, but think Frank “Ponch” Poncherello’s (Erik Estrada) good looks and Thomas Magnum’s (Tom Selleck) charming personality and athletic physique. Window or aisle seat, Mr. Achord? Okay, okay, so Bonnie had to sit next to Steve Urkel the entire trip? Moving on….

This was the first time I had flown on a 747 and I was very, very excited. This was the Big Daddy of airplanes and because I had seen every airplane disaster movie up to that point, I was a 747 guru. Well, maybe not a guru but I knew it had a hump-like upper deck where the cockpit was located, along with additional seating. As darkness descended upon New York City, our jumbo jet climbed into the sky and headed East across the Atlantic Ocean. Our group was spread out all over the plane and pockets of excited conversations broke out within the local teams. From southwest Louisiana near Lake Charles to New Orleans and beyond, people of all ages began connecting and friendships were being made as the Boeing 747 traversed the night sky. Our dinner came and the unlimited supply of carbonated beverages kept me awake and keyed up. Since a number of students were either in college or had just graduated high school and were 18 or older, alcoholic beverages were consumed and much livelier conversation could be heard. Bonnie and I were neither so we stayed with Coke and snacks and our books and Find a Word puzzles.

At that age, I could barely sit still for 30 minutes so it didn’t take long for me to explore. I walked up and down the aisles, people watching, discovering the inside of the plane and finally coming to the stairs that led to the ‘hump’ upper deck of the plane. I knew the upper deck was primarily used for first class passengers but that didn’t deter me from asking one of the stewardesses if I could go upstairs. Yes, flight attendants in 1980 were still known as stewardesses. The stewardess that I asked about going to the upper deck barely spoke English. Since broken English was my first language and English my second, this stewardess and I were at an impasse communicating with each other. I had a solution: walk away and go tell Bonnie what I had found.

When I asked Bonnie if she wanted to try and go upstairs to the first class lounge, she quickly said yes and followed me back to the spiral staircase. When we encountered another stewardess, I used my exceptional sign language skills and simply pointed upstairs and started ascending the steps to the upper deck. No questions were asked or if they were, I didn’t understand and kept walking. Bonnie followed.

While we were crammed in our seats in the lower deck, the rows of seats in this section were nearly empty. We saw only two people and they were seated in the last row away from the cockpit, hugging and kissing and apparently on their way to joining a certain club where membership starts once the jet is around a mile high in the sky. I took an aisle seat on one side and Bonnie took the seat opposite me on the other side of the aisle. We talked back and forth but the entire time, Dork Steve kept eyeing the open door to the cockpit. Yes, this was during a time when federal regulations were less strict and of course way in advance of 9/11. I would lean into the aisle and stare into the cockpit. The pilot, co-pilot and the flight engineer were busy doing their jobs and weren’t paying attention to me. I told Bonnie to lean into the aisle and look into the cockpit. She thought it was pretty cool too.

For 20 minutes I tried to get the attention of the flight crew by staring into the cockpit, talking loudly and so forth, but nothing happened. It took Bonnie about 15 seconds and the engineer noticed her and he in turn told the other two pilots who took a look back into the first class section. Once again, using my sign language skills, I pointed at the cockpit and then at Bonnie and I, and we were eagerly waved into the cockpit to check things out. Wow, I was more excited than the entire Who Dat section at Lumberjack stadium watching Dalton Hilliard score the winning touchdown against E.D. White on a Friday night in October.

Showing off for Bonnie, I took to asking educated questions about controls, the gauges, the instruments and anything else that caught my attention. I began to worry because the pilots didn’t seem to have many answers to my questions and if they did reply, their answers were short and uninteresting. Were these men qualified to fly this rocket with wings at 570 mph at 35,000 feet above the dark ocean? I wasn’t sure. I then realized these men may have been intelligent but were more the ‘ask questions type’ rather than being prone to answering questions. Or was it my imagination that they only wanted to ask Bonnie questions? Hmmmm.

Pilot, “Bonnie, what do you like to do when not studying?”
Steve’s Mind “She likes to hang out with cool 11th graders, not dirty old men like you.”

Pilot, “Bonnie, what are you studying at the university?”
Steve’s Mind, “Hey Perv, she’s still in high school, back off.”

Pilot, “Bonnie, you sure are pretty, are you a model?”
Steve’s Mind, “Hey Pakistani Paul, let’s focus here, eyes up and watch the sky.”

Well, maybe those weren’t the exact questions to Bonnie, but in my mind that’s what I heard. But to be fair, these PIA pilots, probably breaking some law or FAA rule, allowed us to hang out with them for a long time in the cockpit, watching the sun come up in a cloudless Eastern sky, miles above the dark Atlantic Ocean. I was in aviation heaven and giddy with excitement over this rare experience in the summer of 1980.

To our relief, the pilots safely landed the plane in Frankfort and
there was never a reason to “Panic in Air,” unless you count two teenage trespassers to the first class deck, nd no one had to “Please Inform Allah” as we were all safe, happy and of course, one of us was sitting next to Bonnie Martin.

From Back to the Bayou, by Steve Achord