Inside the Cockpit

Part 2

He got up and followed her to the cockpit. This was were his military training kicked in and he walked in as calm as ever....

When Lewis opened the door, he was met with the most frantic and desperate scene he had ever seen. And he had seen a lot.

The pilot on the right was out cold, she was pale and sweaty – probably food poisoning or something. The pilot on the left was talking franticly on the radio, pressing random buttons that should have been left alone. He needed to calm down otherwise this could end in disaster.

Lewis cleared his throat to make himself known.

"Oh, hi?" He sounded uncertain.

"I'm here to help," Said Lewis.

"Right, okay. What do we do first?"

Goodness, he really didn't know what he was doing!

"Okay, first, we get her out of the way," Lewis replied, pointing to the passed-out pilot.

Once she was moved, Lewis sat down in her seat and turned to face the captain.

"What's the problem here?" He asked.

"Well, we have a passed-out pilot, an engine failure and low fuel," The captain explained.

Just as Lewis suspected. He started pressing buttons and flicking switches. It was all coming back to him now – being in high pressure situations. And there was some good news that the captain hadn't figured out himself. Lewis grabbed a map just to make sure.

"Excellent! Right, I have good news – we have enough fuel to get us to New York," He reported.

"What? How?"

"The low fuel warning comes up too soon. We still have about 40 miles of fuel left," Lewis replied. "Now I'm going to let everyone know."

He grabbed a headset and started talking to everyone on ground control, who were amazing and got an emergency strip of runway to land on at the airport in New York. His next challenge was talking to the passengers, who he could hear screaming from here.

"Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for your patience with the captain. My name is Lewis Hill, and although I'm not one of the pilots on this journey, I am an ex-RAF pilot.

"Now, if everyone could please calm down for a minute, I will explain what is happening" He paused. "Okay, so as you know there have been a few technical difficulties during the flight. So, you will be glad to know that we will be landing in about 20 minutes to half an hour. However, not in Florida.

"We will land in New York, where You will be given a 30-minute hand over and then get onto a new plane to Florida. If you have any questions the flight attendants will do their best to answer them. Thank you and goodnight."

With that sorted, he could organise the landing.

About half an hour later, they were just at the airport with under a mile of fuel left in the tank. He would have to land this perfectly first try.

With a bump, Lewis just managed to do it. He landed a passenger plane with engine failure on fumes.

As Lewis walked back to his seat from the cockpit, cheering erupted all around the plane. Lewis smiled to himself as he sat back down.

'Once an RAF pilot, always an RAF pilot,'  he thought. 'So, it was all in a day's work!'