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definitely put his hand right up your skirt.” She blew on her coffee again. “He probably threw that old olive on the floor to start with. Mmm-mmm, those were some fine old days.”
    â€œYou have to admit that the passengers were a lot less rude and demanding,” Nikki said. “With the occasional exception.”
    â€œAnd the pilots were a lot more accommodatin’. They used to carry bags and pay for dinner, and…Well…They were much more accommodatin’.” Dixie smiled suggestively.
    Nikki grinned back at her. Dixie had been accommodated quite a few times. And vice versa. “So were the Stews,” she said.
    â€œCoffee, tea or me?” her friend replied, smile dazzling, lashes fluttering. All of Dixie sparkled. She could easily have been one of those airline beauties back in the sixties. Five-eight, blond, blue-eyed, slender as a reed except for “her girls,” which were full and high and elegant. She had the kind of looks that had men crossing the room to ask if she was attached.
    A very pregnant flight attendant pulled an overnight bag on its rollers toward a podium on the other side of the concourse.
    â€œNow, there’s something else you wouldn’t have seen twenty-five years ago,” Dixie pointed out. “In fact,” she said, looking Nikki up and down, “it would’ve seemed pretty unladylike to ask to fly the plane.”
    â€œMy God, she looks ready to pop!”
    â€œShe told a little fib about her due date. She can’t afford to go on maternity leave, she needs the overtime. Her husband was activated reserve—Navy—gone to Kuwait. The family took a huge pay cut.”
    Almost everything about the industry had changed, all right. Back in the glamour days there was no real competition. Enter deregulation of the airline industry and the entrance of low-fare carriers. The large and established airlines found it increasingly difficult to compete.The new entrants, often nonunion start-ups, had low costs, but the big guys had been around long enough so that with every union contract, the cost of labor went up, then up, then up some more. The cost of fuel kept rising, but competitive pricing meant ticket prices plummeted, and the business traveler took advantage, went global.
    Before long the big airlines were making almost half their profit from the last-minute business traveler whose company paid the premium price. As for the rest of the travelers, they were no longer just the well-to-do. After deregulation it was cheaper to fly from New York City to Miami for the weekend than to go to a good restaurant and see a Broadway musical. It was frequently more expensive to travel by bus. Now the people waiting to board the airplanes were not wearing their hats and gloves, politely waiting for their flight, but clad in beach clothes or ragged jeans, complaining loudly about the degradation of the service.
    The major airlines were losing millions a year, a month, some losing millions a day as they tried to compete with the start-ups. The start-ups would fail and disappear, but that did not put the money back in the coffers of the legacy carriers, and another start-up would appear with bargain-basement tickets, starting the whole process all over again.
    Then the unfathomable happened.
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    Everyone remembered where they were that morning. Buck was hosing down tarmac outside the largest hangar at Burgess Aviation when one of the young maintenance techs came running, yelling for him to come to the office and see the TV. Carlisle was in New York on an overnight, due to fly out later that day. Dixie was in D.C.,on the treadmill in the hotel’s fitness center, watching CNN. At first, she thought she was seeing an Aries plane and she ran to the nearest phone and called Aries dispatch.
    And Nikki was in Boston, sitting in the cockpit of an Aries 767, full of passengers, ready to push back. She was turned around in her seat, talking to a