Bound By Wings

It was completely unexpected and it just like I said it was kind of a bright spot on a very sad day at Spirit closing. — I mean every kid wants to be like their dad, so growing up I always wanted to do what my dad does. We've actually done it a couple times. I've gone in jump seat with him probably about three or four times before and he's ridden on the 73 with me a couple times, too. — My age was getting up there where this was going to be coming to an end. Spirit put a pairing together for me to go from BWI to Fort Lauderdale and you know, Spirit unfortunately closed their doors around 3:00 in the morning on Saturday. — We were all kind of like kind of bummed just ready to go home at that point. I just got us all buddy passes on you know, one of the first flights out that we felt like we could make. Chris Jackson, the first officer, came up to me and I said, "Hey, guys, my dad is — supposed to have his retirement flight tonight. He's with Spirit and they shut down overnight. " So, I told my A flight attendant, Danny, and I told my first officer, Eric, and maybe if we could kind of recognize them, you know, on the way. — I was a dispatcher in charge for flight 1450, Fort Lauderdale to Baltimore. About halfway through, the crew sent me an ACARS. — So, an ACARS message, that's just like a text message from the airplane down to the ground. — Saw the ACARS from the captain. It was actually quite heartbreaking. Clearly, it's already a sad day. How should we handle this? What can we do for them? Um, so my first thought was arranging something on arrival to Baltimore. The other idea was a water cannon salute cuz that's kind of the ultimate — gesture for a retiring pilot. So, I delegated the water cannon salute to my coworker, Brett. I proceeded to make a call to Baltimore operations where I got in touch with the MCC and operations there. — That point in time, I wanted to jump in the action and see what we could do to put something together. When someone's having a day like how Captain Jackson was having, um, doing whatever we can to bring his spirits up. You know, no pun intended. That's what hospitality is is picking up the people when they're down. — Really when we landed on 33 left and I saw the fire truck sitting there, I haven't had any tears since. — This is the love airline. LUV all day. I don't care that he was with a different airline. He is definitely not a rival. We're all family. We're all in aviation. Even a small part, a smile, a hello, or just a wave can really turn someone's day around. Can impact them. You never know what someone's going through. And obviously we knew a little portion of what he was going through, but any passenger, any customer, any employee, just a smile and a wave can really turn their day around. — Seeing the video was pretty overwhelming for all of us. We were just overjoyed that the Baltimore team took it. And they just absolutely hit out of the park. — It's totally unexpected. Southwest went above and beyond anything I ever expected. — It's Southwest at its heart. It's the love airline. I mean, I I'm very grateful and happy this happened to my dad. And going forward, I just hope I can be on the other side of something like this in the future. — Luckily, that day I had a superstar team all around. My crew, my dispatchers, even the operations in Baltimore, everyone just took off with it and turned into this big gigantic thing that way we can celebrate Captain Jackson's retirement. — Captain Teague said something that we're all bound by a brotherhood of wings. We're united by wings and it was that's what he said and it's the absolute truth.