*(CNN) — Ruben Flowers stumbled across the photo by accident. It was early 2023 and he was thumbing through photo albums at his grandmother’s house. Suddenly, there it was: a snapshot from 1994, taken in an airplane flight deck, depicting him as a toddler, sitting next to his pilot dad.
In this picture, Flowers is looking at his dad in admiration. His father smiles at the camera, ready to fly the plane.
Flowers had forgotten the photo existed, but seeing it again, he was flooded with memories of growing up, inspired by his father. He’d loved their trips to the airport, tagging along to the training center, and taking a go on the simulators. He’d beamed with pride when his dad talked about his job at the school careers day.
And the timing of the rediscovered photo was perfect: Flowers, now 30, was just about to follow in his father’s footsteps and begin flying as a First Officer for Southwest Airlines.
Meanwhile Flowers’ father – also called Ruben Flowers – was nearing retirement and readying for his final Southwest flight as Captain.
The two men were excited to briefly overlap at Southwest and hoped they’d get an opportunity to fly together.
“It was a dream of mine to make it to this point to fly with my dad, it was probably my number one aviation goal,” the younger Flowers tells CNN Travel.
After rediscovering the old photo, the two Flowers men added a coda to the goal: not only did they want to fly together, they also wanted to recreate the 1990s flight deck photo, over two decades later. Not just as father and son, but as colleagues and co-pilots.
Cut to March 2023 and the older Flowers was flying his final Southwest flight, piloting an aircraft from Omaha, Nebraska to his home city of Chicago, Illinois. His son was by his side, as his first officer.
“That was an awesome feeling,” says the older Flowers. “To look over there and see my son, next to me, for my last landing.”
Recent Comments