Two weeks ago, I flew with John Pullen, the same amiable first officer I’ve mentioned twice in these pages already (“Bomb Cyclone,” March 2023; “Beyond the Uniform,” July 2023). He greeted me with a grin, a handshake, and a vow: “OK, no drama that gets me into FLYING Magazine again, I promise!” No problems there, I told him. After weeks of unceasing thunderstorms up and down the East Coast with air traffic chaos and endemic delays and cancellations, the forecast promised unusually smooth sailing for the next four days.
As we settled into the Boeing 737’s cozy cockpit and started to build our nests, I recounted some of the more maddening episodes of my last four-day tour and told John that after this trip my wife and I were headed to Italy for 11 days of sightseeing, hanging out on Lake Como, and attending the Formula 1 race at Monza. John, for his part, revealed that this pairing would be his very last outing in the senescent, unloved 737 as henceforth, he was departing for the sunlit uplands of the Airbus A330.
