Her family drove Vicki to the Fairview station in plenty of time for the noon train to Chicago. Freckles, their spaniel, sensed Vicki’s excitement and ran around the platform so wildly that for safety they had to lock him in the car.
“Do you think, dear,” Mrs. Barr asked Vicki, “that you’ll meet any especially interesting people on this new plane?”
They could hear the train coming. In another minute it pounded in alongside the platform. Vicki’s mother and sister hugged her. “Good luck! See you soon!” Mr. Barr picked up her overnight kit, helped her aboard the train, and found her a seat. He bent over to kiss her.
“You look mighty little to be flying coast to coast, Victoria.”
“I feel like an eagle in the sky--you know, the words of the spiritual? Dad! The train’s starting to move!”
He got off, and then her family was waving to her, and the train slid quickly out of the station. She was on her way.
By three o’clock Vicki was in Chicago, and a little before four she reached Midway Airport. That allowed comfortably for an hour’s preflight ground duties before departure time at five P.M. In the stewardesses’ lounge, Vicki changed into her blue uniform and cap, then picked up her topcoat, purse, and overnight kit. She walked over to the operations area where she initialed the crew check-in sheet, wrote in the time, and noticed that Jean Cox had signed in five minutes ago.
Vicki found Captain Jordan in the busy meteorologist’s room. Jean was there, too.
“Good afternoon, Captain Jordan--Jean. Reporting in for our very first Electra flight!”
The pilot, a graying, solidly built man in blue uniform, smiled at her and Jean grinned. Jean Cox looked like a good-natured imp, with her cropped brown hair and twinkling eyes. Vicki knew that her fellow stewardess, despite the elfish grin, was absolutely reliable--just as their million-mile Captain Tom Jordan was a rock of strength. He told his two stewardesses:
“Dan McGovern will be our copilot, and Chuck Smith our navigator. Good men, both of them. I expect the five of us will work together fine as a unit. Now, then--”
Captain Jordan gave Vicki and Jean the flight plan and briefed them on the route and the flight conditions for this trip. Vicki knew that the passengers who asked questions about the flight might include anyone from a businessman who flew his own private plane to an aviation engineer, so she listened carefully. The pilot planned to fly above the day’s overcast, at an altitude of around 22,000 feet. “Our cruising speed will be about 400 to 420 miles per hour,” he said.