There are three of us pilots on the flight from Anchorage to Hong Kong, one captain and two co-pilots (known as first officers, by those with a title complex). The other co-pilot and I were discussing our pasts, like most pilots do to pass the time, and I discovered that he was Argentine and has lived in the U.S. for the last six years. Alfredo is getting his U.S. citizenship soon — a great guy, but unfortunately, he will add to the liberal voting bloc :o)
He was a pilot in the Argentine military back in 1982. I immediately asked him what he thought of Margaret Thatcher and he laughed. He continued to regale stories from the war and how the Brits would shoot at ships, just as his friends were launching off the decks of those ships in navy fighters. Asked why he thought that Argentina would want to fight the British, he talked about how there was economic hardship in the country at the time, so a war may spur on national pride and recovery. There also was a sense that the Brits wouldn’t fight as hard, being so far from home, for just a few islands. He felt that they had a fighting chance, but that they didn’t count on Reagan sending in help. Looking back, he said, it would have been obvious that Reagan would try and help Thatcher.
Fast forward twenty five years. A lot of the British Aces from that war are now senior training captains at Cathay Pacific. As a matter of fact, a great check captain Paul Barton, the one who did my base training – where we practice takeoffs and landings, was the first British Harrier pilot with a kill in the Falklands war. He probably shot at my new friend Alfredo! When Alfredo was hired and did his initial checkrides, Paul Barton was the examining check captain for him. Alfredo’s sim parter was also in the Falklands war. As they were in the middle of their training, Fredo’s sim partner asked him when he flew in Argentina. He answered, “In the early 80’s.” His sim partner laughed and said, I was in her Majesty’s Navy, and I’ll bet I shot at you! They had a good laugh about it. Alfredo likes to remind the British guys that the weapons technology was so much more advanced in the Royal Navy than what he had. “The Brits could just click the fire button and the missile would launch and head for the targeted aircraft, chase it, and blow it away. They could even fire on an Argentine airplane coming straight at them and if the missile missed, it would turn around and follow the target! We had nothing like that, so we earned our kills.”
I guess time does heal all wounds (or it wounds all heels, I can’t remember). Alfredo can laugh about it now, but I find it more than ironic that when he came to work at Cathay Pacific as a new hire, he had a sim partner and then a checkride given by pilots who tried to kill him earlier in his life! Luckily, everyone is around to laugh about the stories and I guess it proves that the pilots at Cathay are truly diverse.