Flying & The Saudi Businessman

"Dad, I have a jumpseat request, I'm going back to Doha and I see you're operating the JFK flight, can I get the jumpseat to New York pretty please?"

"That seat is already taken."

"Don't f around."

"Hahah, just kidding, the jumpseat is yours."

There is nothing like the kind of flying I do now compared to what I used to do. "Chalk and cheese" said the Saudi businessman sitting next to me. I never quite saw it that way, but he was right.

"Winged Victory"/ "Nike of Samothrace" 200-190 BC. Lourve, Paris

I used to sit in the front of the plane where the view and all the buttons and levers are. Every day I had to sit next to a disgruntled Captain and play glorified-bus-driver for 9+ hours. They bad-mouthed me for speaking well, for being too feminine, too outspoken, for expecting too much, for having a good posture, and reading the check-list in a female voice. I was told I was "too proper" and "so much of a woman that I was gay to fly with;" no, I'm not talking about the Middle East, they treat women better than that out here, I'm talking about my old airline job.

The kind of flying I do now involves champagne and seats that fold out into beds large enough to accommodate a camel. I can't count the number of times I've been asked if I miss flying, nor the amount of times I've said "no". It's not rocket science (no pun intended to the guys that still fly the Dash-8 like it's the space shuttle), what was there for me to miss? The taking off or the landing bit? Showing a man that I can do what he did at work in a "mans world" isn't a good idea I found out (I got that line on my flight test... from my check-airman). My ancestry didn't help much either, one Manager told me "you white people ran this place for years, it's we turn now" (hey, I didn't say they had the best grammar, did I?). And 3,000 landings and take-offs later I can safely say I've "been there, done that."

I suppose growing up riding shot-gun on my way to Europe with my captain-dad didn't really prepare me for the reality of the aviation world twenty years later, well after the era of the Sky-Gods. The price I paid for being a young, educated, white woman with a voice in this place? I never got to fly with my dad... but boy did I get a good life handed to me.
And ... I still get to travel with daddy, just like old times.



The Saudi Businessman 



After the initial embarrassment of having a Saudi man try to make small talk as he sat next to me in first class, I realized he was talking to me because he recognized that I am a western woman (that might sound daft, but most people here think I am arab because I dress so conservatively and it is rude for a man to approach an arab woman). I had never chatted with a Saudi man before because of the cultural lines drawn here. He was cool and laid back. We chatted about different cultures, traveling, politics, children, education... I asked him about the way people dress in the Middle East, the difference between the mens white ghutra and the red checkered ghutra (no difference,  but Saudi men do not starch their head-dress where Qatari men do), why some women wore abbayahs while others only wore hijabs (personal preference), what the solid-gold beak-like things the older women wore across their faces were (an old bedouin tradition). I told him that my husband said that if I was naughty that he'd make me wear a face-cage. He laughed and said "yes" and I laughed thinking "the guys at my old job might agree."