November 21, 2023.   Cold Turkey.

Looking back, holiday flying has provided me a few of those sentimental oddities a pilot files away in his mental logbook:

One of my favorite memories dates all the way back to Thanksgiving, 1993. I was captain of a Dash-8 turboprop flying from Boston to New Brunswick, Canada, and my first officer was the always cheerful and gregarious Kathy Martin. (Kathy was one of three pilots I’ve known who’d been flight attendants at an earlier point in their careers.) The Dash-8 had no galley, but Kathy brought a cooler from home packed with food: huge turkey sandwiches, a whole blueberry pie and tubs of mashed potatoes. We assembled the plates and containers across the folded-down jumpseat. The pie we passed to the flight attendant, who handed out slices to passengers.

Quite a contrast to Thanksgiving, 1999, when I was working a cargo flight to Brussels. It was the custom on Thanksgiving to stock the galley with a special holiday meal. The three of us were hungry and looking forward to it. The trouble was, the caterers forgot to bring the food. By the time we noticed, we were minutes from departure and they had already gone home for the day. We always checked the galley prior to leaving, and I thought I might cry when I pulled open the door and saw only a can of Diet Sprite and a matchbook-size packet of Tillamook cheese.

After a desperate radio call to ops, one of the guys upstairs drove out to McDonald’s and came back with three greasy bags of burgers and fries. Who eats fast food on Thanksgiving? Pilots in a pinch.

Just a few years ago I spent most of Thanksgiving day on board a Qatar Airways A350 en route to a vacation in Armenia. Thanksgiving is unknown outside the U.S., but Qatar featured an autumn-themed holiday menu that day in business class. A nice touch, I thought, and something I wish our own airlines did.