In a time when flying was still a skill and hostesses and stewards looked after the well-being of the passengers, my mother was on a rough flight due to weather conditions.

After World War II, my mother moved from London to Switzerland where she started work with Swissair as an air-hostess. These days, flight-attendants are working on flights, and attending is about what they do. Then, the job was called hostess, and playing hostess to cherished guests was in the job description, not handing out dry sandwiches and soft drinks.

Just about any flight then was a long flight; I think flying to India for example took about 24 hours. The flights were mostly rough and weather had a much bigger influence on a flight than nowadays. Being on a rough flight always put a lot of pressure on the hostesses to keep up perfect service and at the same time calm down nervous passengers who very probably were flying for the first time.

It was one of those rainy days with clouds hanging low keeping the day in an indifferent twilight leaching colour from everything. Inside the barracks serving as a temporary terminal at Zurich Airport, you could feel the cold creeping through every crevice and creeping in moist tentacles over the floors and into the shoes of travellers and employees.

My mother was greeting the passengers as they made their bedraggled way over the wet tarmac to the waiting aircraft, handing them over to a second hostess to show them their appointed seats. The plane having filled up, they took off minutes later into a dark and blustery sky. The start was made bumpy by gusts of wind scouring the open airfield, and the plane soon pushed through the low-lying clouds only to find an even thicker and darker cloud cover further up.

The plane was buffeted by cross winds all through the service of the meal and into the serving of the coffee. The light outside seemed to have completely faded blocked by the black clouds overhead, the wind seemed to be shaking the plane like a kite, and serving coffee was a major feat of acrobatics. A young man was sitting at a window when my mother brought him coffee, and he said ‘Lucifer’ to my mother very quietly. Lightning lit the inside of the plane and the wings at that very moment. Involuntarily, my mother glanced out to the tip of the wing, but there was nothing.

‘Lucifer’ said the young man again, while crashing thunder filled the air to bursting. My mother looked around to see what could induce the young man to think of the devil, but couldn’t see anything inside the plane either. My mother kept a look-out for the devil all the rest of the flight, but couldn’t perceive him.

When my mother told this story in 1968 to the Czech student that had been adopted into our family upon his flight from his country, he laughed out loud. The young man, he surmised, must have been a Czech asking for matches in his native tongue.

More about flying:

First Flight over the Channel

Flying with Solar Power