Delta First Officer Chris Dennis’ short, handwritten letter left on the flight deck of an A321 parked in the California desert at the beginning of the pandemic was discovered by a fellow pilot, more than a year later.
First Officer Nick Perez found Dennis’ note in the flight deck of Delta Air Line’s ship 3009, the last A321 still parked for storage in Victorville, California. As passenger loads and departures decreased at the onset of the pandemic, 435 days prior, Dennis had parked ship 3009 in the California desert. Feeling the surreality of the moment, he penned a note for the pilot who would get to do the return-to-service flight.
As he read the letter, Perez was transported back to feelings from 15 months ago, a chilling reminder of how different things were and how different we feel today. “If you are here to pick it up then the light must be at the end of the tunnel,” the letter read.
On March 23, 2020, the world was only beginning to enter the pandemic tunnel. Dennis picked up a trip to VCV. At first glance, he didn’t recognize the airport code and looked it up: Victorville. He knew of the desert airport. The significance of this flight started to sink in.
When he arrived at an empty Minneapolis-St. Paul airport that Monday, he realized this particular trip would be unusual. The airport was empty, quiet. Only one Delta employee greeted him. “We pushed back with the ground crew; the terminal was empty. It felt desolate,” he said.
They took off to Victorville as Minnesota locals heard talks of a two-week lockdown.
“It wasn’t until we were on final approach headed in for landing when it hit me,” Dennis later recalled. “The VCV instructions noted to go behind a ‘follow-me vehicle’ that brings you to a parking spot. As we crossed the runway, it’s hard to fathom how many aircraft Delta has until you see that many of them parked in one place.
“When we got in line, it looked like an optical illusion. It just kept going and going,” Dennis said. “I don’t know how to describe it. It was shocking.
“I thought about how many people’s jobs rely on just one of those airplanes,” Dennis said. “From the reservations agent, to the ticket agent, to the pilot, flight attendants, mechanics, the ramp crew. Then you go a level deeper: the rental car agency, the hotels, the tourism companies.”
Credit: Delta Air Lines
Credit: Delta Air Lines
Dennis parked 3009 for what he thought would be a 14-day stay at VCV. Even then, 14 days was a shocking amount of time to him.
Recognizing the impact of that moment, Dennis penned a letter to serve as a “time capsule” and tucked it away in the tray table for the crew that would take the aircraft out of storage.
The letter reads: “Hey pilots – It’s March 23rd and we just arrived from MSP. 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!”
Feeling overwhelmed, Dennis shared photos of his trip and his letter to Facebook. As people tried to come to terms with what was happening across the world and to the airline industry, the post went viral, shared by more than 4,000 people across more than 35 countries.
Fourteen days passed, and 3009 stayed parked. Then 100 days, then 300 days.
On June 1, 2021, Perez landed at VCV and started planning his mission to wake up 3009.
Before taking off, Perez and the team went through pages and pages of pre-flight verification. While parked, ship 3009 lent parts to other aircraft, a standard practice for long-term storage. But this loan was more extreme than usual. More than 120 of 3009′s parts went to other aircraft during its unprecedented 436-day stay at VCV.
Mechanic Tom Trenda and his team spent weeks preparing this aircraft, and many others, to fly again as Delta’s loads and schedules picked up. As Perez prepared to depart, Trenda mentioned that he should check the tray table in the flight deck – that he’d find something inside.
When Perez flipped down the tray table, Dennis’ note fell out: 57 words capturing the uncertainty and emotion the nation felt in March 2020. Perez recognized that note. He’d seen it go viral last year.
It was only after reading the note that he understood the gravity of the trip. He immediately began to think about how Dennis must have been feeling when he wrote the letter. “He had to have been thinking he was leaving his job,” Perez said. “Back in March, I was 100% certain I was going to lose my job.”
Perez’s pre-flight procedure didn’t include the same worries.
“I kept thinking about my mindset now compared to his when he left this note,” Perez recalled. “[Back then], we were getting good at landing empty airplanes, now we’re going in the right direction. I’m in good spirits. I’m very optimistic. I feel like how I felt in 2017 again, ready to get going.”
“As they get into that airplane, they are going to see the opposite view than I saw,” Dennis recalled. “There’s going to be an open runway in front of them.”
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