A former serviceman who was injured on duty and a cabin manager who began her flight career at the age of 59 are part of a historic all-black airline crew flying from Manchester and London in celebration of Black History Month.
The two flights, operated by the airline Tui, were flying from Manchester to Boa Vista in Cape Verde, and from London Gatwick to Jamaica on Thursday.
Guests were welcomed by traditional steel bands as they checked in for the flights, which aim to showcase the contribution of black and mixed heritage communities in the travel industry.
Tui said it hoped the initiative would highlight its Caribbean and African Network Group’s mantra: “You can’t be what you can’t see”.
Second officer Louis Farrell described his journey to becoming a pilot as unique. He joined the army at 16 and had aspirations of becoming a military pilot. But he was injured while serving in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers and lost a leg. After being medically discharged, he was introduced to a military charity called Wings for Warriors, which trains injured ex-servicemen and women to become commercial pilots.
“I grew up on council estates in Bolton in Lancashire … I was born in ‘89 so I grew up in the start of the ‘90s, 2000s, you didn’t see a huge amount of black, mixed race, or people of colour in this job. You obviously did when you went abroad, to Africa and Caribbean countries, there were a lot of people of colour operating as air crew, flight crew and cabin crew, but in the UK, there weren’t. You didn’t really see it very much, which is one of the reasons I’m really excited to be part of this flight,” Farrell said.
Farrell added that when his grandmother moved from Barbados to the UK, there were only a handful of roles available to black people from the Caribbean; they tended to be labouring, non-skilled jobs. “My pride in taking part in this fight is that in my grandmother’s lifetime, she’s witnessed being in the UK where employment was limited to now having a grandson that hopefully in the next five to seven years will command a commercial jet.”
Cabin manager Sandra Russell became tearful when she thought back to how she got to this moment. She had wanted to be a flight attendant since she was a schoolgirl, but was rejected when she applied, and interviewed for a job at another company once she had left education.
“I realised when I reflected back on it now, there was nobody like me in the room. I didn’t think anything of it. Obviously, I did go on to have a really successful career in my [previous] job [in the NHS]. I did a really good job, and so I never bothered looking back again,” she said.
It was while she was on a Tui flight a few years ago that she told a flight attendant about her childhood dream. She was encouraged to apply, and told previous restrictions on race, age, height, weight were a thing of the past. She ended up getting the job. “Even though I had this dream since I was 16, it came later on in life.”
Russell, whose mother and father migrated to the UK from Jamaica, became emotional when speaking about what the Windrush generation endured. “For my mum, to see how things have changed, that I’m doing the job I wanted to do.
“I am my mother’s daughter, and she could never even have applied for this job and never did this job. For me, to do this job is saying things have changed.”