Chapter 17: Sofia’s Faux-Pas

There was a lot less honking when Esther drove Sofia and me to the airport the next morning, mainly because she had left her shirt on. Knowing that we would return by the evening or the next morning at the latest, made the farewell easily bearable for her. I was sure things would be a lot more emotional in a week’s time when my holiday in Hungary would be coming to an end.

Normally I would have left Sofia with her sister, but she had insisted that we couldn’t fly one of our best customers without a flight attendant. I knew of course what this was about. Despite the fact that I had spent a lot more time with her, especially on those days Esther had worked on her striptease routine, she had not nearly gotten enough male attention lately. Mark was in for a rather entertaining flight.

While I was taking the plane out of mothballs, removing all the various covers that protected the pitot tubes and various sensors, our little JS-31 executive shuttle landed and took up a parking spot next to us. Jack gave me a thumbs up from within the cockpit when its passenger door opened. A veritable brick house of a man came down the stairs and offered his huge hand for me to shake.

Although I had spent the last two weeks here on Lake Balaton, I was of course well informed what had been going on back home. This giant of a man was Bernd, our latest new pilot. He was a former professional heavyweight boxer, and his arms made my legs look a bit puny. Fred had hired him because he wanted to have a pilot on staff who would have no problems dealing with potentially unruly passengers.

So far we had always been on the lucky side with our ‘special flights’, but we had noticed that some of the business types had a propensity for overindulging on the drinks. Some of them had ended up being quite drunk upon arrival, but so far none of them had misbehaved. Alas, the day when that would eventually happen was probably already on a calendar somewhere, and we wanted to have a plan B for that case.

That plan B went by the name of Bernd and he was casting a seriously impressive shadow in the spring sun.

“I take it that was your check ride?” I asked him after we had introduced ourselves.

“Yes, and according to Jack, I pass muster,” he said with a chuckle.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” I said. “You’re not exactly how I had imagined a former heavyweight pro.”

Bernd seemed amused. “I never was your typical boxer. For starters not too many of them come with a master’s degree in Engineering and a side-career as a test pilot.”

“Yep, that definitely doesn’t sound like your regular heavyweight,” I agreed as Bernd accompanied me for the walkaround.

“That’s why I gave it up after only three years,” Bernd explained. “It was fun and you could earn some serious money, but I noticed quite quickly that you’d probably end up with serious brain damage if you do that job for, like, ten years or so. I didn’t get a master’s degree only to have my brains bashed to bits afterwards.”

“You said you were a test pilot?”

“Yep, I was on the test pilot team for these babies,” he noted and pointed at our Pilatus. “At twenty-one I was by far the youngest. Most other pilots were in their fifties.”

“So I guess that was before your short boxing career?”

He nodded. “When the test program for the PC-12 was finished, I resigned my job and went Pro, well, for all of three years. I never even made it to a serious championship fight. Half a year as European champion is all I have to show for it.”

“Still impressive enough,” I said with a chuckle. “You had to knock over a guy your own size to do that.”

Bernd snickered as we entered the plane to begin our preparations.

Despite his rather intimidating size, Bernd was easy to work with. He was eloquent and well-mannered. In short he was the opposite of what I had expected when Fred had told me he had hired a former professional boxer.

That he had the dimensions and the skills to protect the team from a potentially unruly passenger was very reassuring. Apparently Fred had also briefed him about the more unusual aspects of our business model and he didn’t seem to mind. In fact when Sofia served us some coffee – sans shirt of course – he didn’t make as much as a remark about it, concentrating on his duties as a pilot instead.

The flight from Keszthely to Dresden was not exactly a long-distance flight and we arrived after ninety minutes with more than enough time to spare. Bernd volunteered to deal with the paper work at the FBO’s office, so I could concentrate on getting the plane refueled and prepared for the revenue flight.