In March 2020, Delta pilot Chris Dennis left a note in the aircraft he was parking in a storage lot in Victorville, California, thinking it would be found after a two-week quarantine. But after being discovered 435 days later, the note is now being called a “time capsule.”
Dennis said he parked the aircraft with dozens of other planes and said each represented hundreds of jobs. He described the scene as “Chilling, apocalyptic, surreal” in a Facebook post in March 2020. Airlines were parking passenger planes en masse as travel fell to historic lows.
Dennis wanted to commemorate his emotions in a note for the next pilot to find.
“Hey pilots – It’s March 23rd and we just arrived from MSP,” Dennis wrote in the note. “Very chilling to see so much of our fleet here in the desert. If you are here to pick it up then the light must be at the end of the tunnel. Amazing how fast it changed. Have a safe flight bringing it out of storage!”
Fast forward more than a year later to First Officer Nick P. landing at VCV and starting on his checklist to wake up ship 3009. One thing he didn’t expect to find was Chris’ letter, tucked away on a tray table in the flight deck.
Those 57 words, which captured so much of the uncertainty and emotion we all felt in March 2020, underscored the gravity of the trip, and how optimistic he now feels about the direction we’re heading in. Ship 3009 is now prepared to take the skies once again.
While the world certainly has changed over the past year, one thing is for certain: we won’t be taking that open runway for granted anytime soon.