CHICAGO — Patti DeLuna hadn’t piloted a plane in about 20 years until this week.
Back then, it was a small Cessna. On Monday, she quickly stepped up to a Boeing 767 airliner.
DeLuna, 61, an American Airlines flight attendant, helped her captain land the airliner at O’Hare International Airport after the flight’s first officer fell ill with stomach flu.
“I was the best available (back-up pilot) they had on the plane,” DeLuna said Tuesday from her California home. “I spent a lot of time in the cockpit looking at the flight deck panel and asking questions. My first question to the captain was, ‘Where are the brakes?”’
DeLuna was scheduled to be off work on Monday, but she was called in to replace another flight attendant for the trip from San Francisco to Chicago with 225 passengers on board.
The flight to O’Hare was running late. Then, about two hours into the flight, after the first officer made repeated trips to the bathroom, the captain moved him to a spare seat in the rear of the cockpit and DeLuna took over his right seat at the flight controls, she said.
At first, the veteran captain of American Flight 1612 checked to see if any off-duty pilots were on the flight. No luck.
The flight’s purser also had been a pilot many years ago. But DeLuna, with a mere 300 flight hours and a commercial pilot’s certificate that she earned in about 1970 and was no longer current, was selected by the captain.
“That doesn’t mean I’m a hot shot pilot, it only means I was the best they had — I was the best candidate for the job at the time,” DeLuna said.
“I felt terrible for the first officer,” she went on. “But I was so excited. It was way more fun than serving meals from the galley.”
“I was thinking about survival. I was thinking about getting it down the best I could. I don’t feel like a hero. When you work on an airplane, you work as a team. You do whatever you can do to help.”
The captain assigned DeLuna to change the altimeter settings a few times because the altimeter gauge, which measures the airplane’s altitude, was on the right side of the flight deck panel, she said. She also familiarized herself with the cockpit’s public-address system.
“Otherwise, I let the captain know I was not the panicky type,” said DeLuna, who has been a flight attendant for 32 years, 14 1/2 of them at American. She previously worked for TWA and Flying Tigers, she said.
“The captain had me watch for traffic and listen to the radio for our aircraft call number to receive course headings from air-traffic control,” she said.
American officials said the flight crew did an outstanding job handling the situation.
One pilot is fully capable of flying a 767. In fact, the sophisticated plane, equipped with an array of computers, can fly and land by itself.
But there is plenty of work for two pilots to do, especially during a descent to the crowded airspace around Chicago and at touchdown.
“Two heads are better than one,” DeLuna said, “even though the captain was so collected and really, really good. What was most important was that we did our jobs in a connected fashion.”
No announcement was made to the passengers about the change of pilots, DeLuna said. The plane landed normally.
The Chicago-based first officer, who vomited repeatedly during the flight, rested until the plane was parked at the gate in Chicago.
“He missed a beautiful landing,” DeLuna said.
The first officer was treated by paramedics and taken to a local hospital, where he was later released. He was recuperating at home on Tuesday, officials said.
“This was an example of how our flight attendants are able to step up to the plate in an emergency,” said Jeff Pharr, a spokesman for the Association of Professional Flight Attendants. “We are proud of what they do to keep passengers safe.”
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