Not this is out of order. Not even Aurelio. Nothing, from the moment I stepped back to the moment the door was behind me, which was about eleven seconds.
I knew exactly how they would read it, and they read it that way, and two of them have since told me so to my face, which I respect.
And then, near the cabin door, a flight attendant came quickly towards me, with two more behind her.
She said: ma’am, would you like us to cancel the flight?
Not are you all right. Not can I get you anything.
A procedural question, asked correctly, by somebody who had made a decision about which of two people on that aircraft she worked for.
I looked at the gold emblem on her uniform.
It is my family’s aviation company. It has been on that uniform the entire time, on every crew member, on every flight, for two years.
Nobody in that cabin had ever looked at it. Including me, properly, in a way that meant anything, until a woman in a navy jacket stood in front of me and asked a question that only made sense if she knew.
He has used that aircraft for almost two years, calling it his corporate jet, and billing the hours to a cost centre.
I never corrected him. Like a great deal else I provided, its ownership had become something he had simply stopped wondering about.
I said: not yet. Let it fly.
I have been asked about that sentence more than any other part of this and people assume it was strategy.
It was not. I said it because there were eleven people on that aircraft with meetings the following morning, and because I have never in my life been able to make somebody else’s day worse in order to make a point.
Through the narrow window in the door I could see her already talking into his ear again.
His face had already relaxed. Eleven seconds, maybe twelve, after his wife walked off an aircraft.
I stood at the top of those steps and watched a man’s shoulders come down.
