Early morning flight for Louisville, KY. Everybody in the plane was bleary eyed or already sleeping. A few in the first class were sipping airplane coffee. And all of us were wondering why the plane door was not closing in spite of no more passengers getting on and it being already past our departure time. The weather was fine in Atlanta.

Then the flight attendant grabbed the PA. I was sure she was going to announce a weather delay or a mechanical problem. Instead she asked for some patience as we await two more persons to get on board. Some passenger way up in the first class yelled out asking why could we not leave without them? It was already past departure time.

The fifty-something flight attendant had built the perfect set up. She knew what she was doing. For, she responded on the PA, without missing a beat “Because, Sir, they are our pilot and first officer”!! She certainly made a potentially irritating situation funny.

As a post script, a few minutes later, our missing “passengers” came onboard and informed us “We have no idea what happened to your pilot and first passenger. We just landed from Colombus and we were told to run to your plane and take it to Louisville”. Wow!!

Another first time experience in my annals of continuous jumping in and out of planes…