We always board the plane early. Beth moves slowly, she can be unsteady on her feet, and she always stops at the end of the ramp and hesitates to step off the ramp and onto the plane... we've found it's easier for her if we just get on early. I get the window seat, Beth prefers to be between us and Chuck likes the aisle.
On our flight to Anaheim we got settled in our seats here in Seattle and I looked out the window. I usually take a few pictures of the airport, just as a starting point to our trip. Plus it helps me find the pictures faster when I'm scrolling through my phone later on. But this time something caught my eye.
You know how you have that debate in your head? That's what I did:
"That's not right, maybe I should take a picture."
"No, no. I'm sure they know about it."
"I don't know, I think I should show it to someone."
I wouldn't say I'm a frequent flyer but I've flown enough to know that's not how the wing is supposed to look. So I took a picture. Now the flight attendants are helping people with their luggage, answering questions, so I waited until one was just walking through and asked her, "Is this normal?" I don't know why I asked it that way. I knew it wasn't normal, but we were getting close to departure and I think I was just starting to get nervous.
She looked very surprised and headed to the front of the plane. She came back a few minutes later and asked if she could take a picture of my picture. Then headed back to the front.
By now everyone is on board and we're just waiting. Then the pilot comes back to our seats and asks if he could take a look himself. We get up and he looks out the window. He looked right at me and thanked me for telling them about it.
We settle back in our seats and I see the pilot outside looking at the wing. Different people are coming to look at it and by now other passengers have started taking pictures of whats going on.
A few minutes later he comes back to our seats and says everything's okay. "Can you see how clean the cut is? The maintenance team did that. It happened a few weeks ago so it wasn't on the current maintenance record that I reviewed today, so I was a little shocked to see your picture. But they know about it and the plane's been flying with it that way. They're planning to replace the flap soon when the plane goes into the hanger for a complete overhaul. But thank you for bringing it to my attention!"
He headed back to the cockpit, and made a short announcement about it over the intercom. Even though we took off a little late, we had a very nice flight to LAX.
