Last week I conducted a customer demonstration of a 777 with one of our Asian customers. This customer is one of our toughest to work with because they are methodical to a fault. Their procedures actually interfere with understanding and testing the systems. What is normally a two and a half hour flight, stretched into almost a five hour flight. This tries my patience.
At the "post flight" meeting I didn't let my fatigue show, but it was there. When all questions are answered and a plan to handle the discrepancies that we've found, are established, I excuse myself from the conference room, congratulating the customer pilot and everyone else for doing a good job. (I'm sincere in this, no matter how it goes, it's a challenging task.)
I'd skipped the box lunch during the flight, so I was hungry. There were some left over pastries available. I grabbed a muffin, and walked across the parking lot to our office. I'd gone a short distance when the customer pilot called to me. He came up to me, and I thought, "What now?" He took my hand thanking me for my help. He wouldn't let go. He told me when he'd be back for the next flight, he wanted to fly with me again. He was still shaking my hand. With a stale muffin in one hand and the other captured, I was wondering, "What's going on here?" We talked for a while, then I was finally able to extricate myself. I have to remember that, what for me, is routine, for him is an epiphany. Mixed feelings. I was doing something right and I missed it.
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