by Glen Johnson
This section was used by the media and Public Affairs staff, Diplomatic Security agents, and Air Force personnel who didn’t fit in the forward cabin or who wanted a place to stretch out and sleep when space permitted.
Reporters reimbursed the government for each leg on a trip, with their seat costing the same as a coach airline fare for a given route. The media had a most diplomatic way for allocating whatever first-class seats might be left after the government traveling party had been seated.
They’d write numbers on a piece of paper, cut it up, and place them in a hat. A reporter picking 1 would look at a map of the plane and have first choice of the empty seats. The person with 2 would go second, and so on. The drawing always produced cheers or howls of protest in the Andrews DV lounge, especially if the lottery organizer had the good fortune of drawing the best seat.
Those complaints were also heard at the end of some trips, when reporters might lose the more spacious seats. Sometimes the State Department reclaimed spots so it could give a lift home to guards or staffers who’d worked at the secretary’s final stop.
A reporter could go from the comfort of a first-class seat to the middle one in a three-person row, occasionally on days lasting up to thirty-eight hours, such as when we flew home from Asia.
I chose to sit on the inside of the last row on the right side of the senior staff cabin, even though my staff rank and attendance on virtually every trip would have let me to sit further forward.
I picked that spot because it let me recline without bothering anyone, lean against the side of the plane as I slept, and gain some extra storage in the bulkhead behind me while keeping my cameras accessible in the footwell in front.
With three panes of glass situated directly below the words United and States painted outside on the fuselage, it became my window seat on the world.
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WHEN WE GOT WORD at Andrews that Secretary Kerry had left the State Department or his home en route to the airport, the traveling party would move from the DV Lounge to the airplane. We’d find name cards identifying the occupant of each seat.
Many passengers would be dressed casually, hoping to sleep on the flight or at least not wrinkle their work clothes. Those of us who typically wore suits would change just before takeoff, hanging up our jacket and slacks during the flight and switching into jeans and a sweatshirt or other comfortable attire.
I often didn’t change until after the secretary arrived at Andrews, because if I wasn’t riding with him to the airport, I’d disembark from the plane and snap photos of his arrival. I wanted to look professional for the occasion.
His limousine would be led by an Air Force security vehicle and followed by an SUV filled with DS agents. Sometimes that would be trailed by a van carrying the most senior staff members, in the event they had to remain at the office until the secretary departed for the airport.
The motorcade would make a sweeping left-hand arc across the tarmac as it reached the plane, stopping when the secretary’s limousine reached the foot of the boarding stairs. He’d hop out, say hello to a uniformed Protocol Officer standing at attention, and then pose for any photos. Sometimes they were with State Department workers who came out to see the departure, other times with people who were retiring or rotating to a new assignment.
Secretary Kerry would then climb the stairs alone, allowing the traveling media to get a shot of him setting out on a journey. At the top of the stairs, he’d turn around and wave goodbye before ducking his head inside the door. We’d sometimes chuckle when it was just me and my camera on the tarmac.
He waved out of habit, but I was the only recipient of his bon voyage.
The new secretary was so excited to start his first trip in February 2013 that he neglected the traditional wave and went straight on the plane, prompting a needle in the story written by Matt Viser of the hometown Boston Globe. During our final trip in January 2017, I joked that John Kerry had finally gotten the hang of it, compiling a series of snapshots of him waving goodbye at every stop.
Whatever he did on the stairs outside, once the secretary was aboard the plane, the tempo quickened.
DS agents would scramble up the stairs, carrying any remaining bags and rushing to their seats. An Air Force ground crew would back away the stairs while the pilots started the right engine, located on the opposite side of the plane. Once the stairs were clear, the flight attendants would shut the front and rear doors. The pilots would then start the left-side engine.
When both engines were up to speed, the plane started moving and the clock began ticking. We typically took off within ten minutes, often less. This ability to depart whenever we wanted was one of the biggest benefits of traveling in a government aircraft, far different than being restricted to the schedule of a commercial jetliner.
The US Air Force also has an uncanny ability to predict arrival times, often down to the minute. It’s quite a feat when your destination is an ocean away and the projected arrival is eight or nine hours later. Nonetheless, more often than not, we’d land in another country and roll to a stop at the precise minute scheduled.
Kerry had an equal skill as a quick-change artist. After boarding the plane, he’d disappear into his cabin in his suit and tie and emerge several minutes later in what became a flight uniform: compression socks, jeans, and blue-and-white Yale University hoodie. Sometimes he’d swap in an orange sweatshirt with a Southwestern-style trim, but usually he showed his pride in his undergraduate alma mater.
Once the plane reached ten thousand feet, the pilots would turn off the seatbelt sign and everyone was free to move about the cabin. That sparked all kinds of activity.
The staff had access to air-to-ground telephones, as well as Internet service. This was both a blessing and a curse, because you could work almost anytime, anywhere—and you had no excuse for not working almost anytime, anywhere.
The worst situation was in Asia, when we’d be ready to sleep just as Washington was waking up, twelve hours behind us. We’d often have to answer questions or listen in to meetings while our body clocks were saying it was time to turn in for the day.
In flight, The Line would use its airphones and Secure and Unsecure computers to organize the secretary’s phone calls, check in with the advance officer at our destination, and make final adjustments to our schedule.
Toward the end of a flight, they’d put a colored cover page on top of a stack of pages and staple together our daily schedule.
This pocket-sized “mini” was our guidebook, telling everyone where to be and when, as well as which vehicle to sit in and any miscellaneous notes about local customs or dos and don’ts. Secretary Kerry consulted this schedule but refused to be beholden to it, letting meetings run over if necessary and then seeking to make up time elsewhere.
He’d often get exasperated if we interrupted while trying to get him back on track. He felt the purpose of his trip was to attend the meetings he scheduled, not to race from destination to destination without regard for the progress he might be making in a particular conversation.
In that sense, the schedule became a guideline rather than a dictate.
The tension for us staffers was rooted in our focus on the entirety of a trip, not just each stop. Running late in one place risked offending those waiting at our next destination. And if we got too far behind schedule, we faced the very real risk of not getting to where we needed to be before the flight crew’s duty-day expired.
One time in Afghanistan, we raced out of a news conference after the government power-sharing agreement was announced, needing to be wheels up by midnight if we hoped to reach Paris by the end of the crew-clock.
We started our takeoff roll at 12:00:30 a.m.
Several times, the aircraft commander had to call back to Andrews and get special dispensation to go twenty or so minutes beyond the deadline.
It was never a position we wanted to put the crew in, because the military had strict safety protocols. They were tightened further after Co
mmerce Secretary Ron Brown died in 1996 when his Air Force plane crashed in Croatia.
Besides The Line officers beginning their work, takeoff prompted others to read briefing books, intelligence updates, or newspapers and magazines they hadn’t had time to peruse back home.
During the course of our four years, I also gained a healthy respect for the market that had emerged for on-demand content. Often before our trips, staffers would use the Wi-Fi at their homes or in the Andrews DV Lounge to load up on movies and television series from iTunes, Hulu, or Netflix. Once aloft, you could walk down the aisle and see almost everyone looking at a laptop, iPad, or iPhone. Some would be working, but many would be watching whatever they downloaded and laughing as they listened via their headphones. One of our DS agents continually cracked me up, showing incredible stamina by playing the Candy Crush video game for eight or more hours straight.
Kerry would also use our ascent to come back and greet the press, if he hadn’t before takeoff. Sometimes, he’d talk on the record, giving them some meat for the stories they’d write in flight. Quite often, he’d speak off the record, providing anonymous background and context so the reporters would understand his thinking as he traveled between his meetings.
The flight crew also got to work immediately after takeoff. Some of the flight attendants took drink orders and others put on aprons and made final preparations in the galley to serve whatever meal was appropriate for the time of day.
On this front, the Air Force aimed for first class-treatment. Food was served on trays carrying a real plate and a metal fork and knife. They were accompanied by a garnish of some fashion, a roll and butter, and a small pair of glass salt and pepper shakers. The napkins were not paper but linen, a fresh cloth for each meal.
The menu was selected in advance by the trip director and purchased in bulk by the Air Force at places like Costco. The flight attendants would cook many items in advance—a favorite crew member named Juan took great pride in his Bolognese sauce—and then freeze what wasn’t immediately needed until later in the trip. It would be stored in a luggage hold, packed in coolers lined with dry ice. The crew was able to keep ice cubes cold this way for weeks.
The general rule was that the crew transported everything we might need for a trip, including extra meals should we expand our itinerary. The Air Force tries to avoid shopping overseas because it increases the risk of causing food poisoning in the traveling party. The effect was that as a trip went on, we were served fewer and fewer fresh items like fruit and salads. Instead, we got more and more reheated dishes pulled from the dry ice.
A hallmark of virtually every trip was the 89th Air Wing’s famous turkey taco salad. It’s little more than ground turkey and spices, mounded on a bed of nacho chips. But it was served in a bowl, accompanied by an array of guacamole, pico de gallo sauce, and sour cream, along with a mini-loaf of jalapeño cornbread.
There was a stir each time the flight attendants started delivering turkey taco salad from the rear galley. Everyone doctored it up to their liking.
The director for the secretary’s final trip, Jonathan Mennuti, made sure to include it in the meal rotation.
When Mennuti asked when the Air Force should serve it, the answer was a no-brainer: the last supper.
Secretary Kerry, who like all DVs was always given the option to have a special meal like pasta or shrimp, devoured it alongside the rest of us.
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AFTER A MEAL AND a drink, most everyone would plot a sleep strategy based on the schedule we’d keep after landing. If we were heading straight to the hotel for the night, people would stay up on the plane and work or watch a movie. If we were landing and going directly to a meeting, everyone would try to sleep before our arrival.
Some people could fall asleep no matter the place or time of day. Others needed help to reset their body clock. I went au naturel for the first two years, simply forcing myself to sleep or at least close my eyes when the situation warranted. But as we reached the halfway point in our term, I asked my doctor about sleeping pills. He said it was entirely appropriate to pop an Ambien if I absolutely, positively had to get to sleep.
That often was the case on our overnight flights to Europe, even if we left Washington after dark. The trip to London or Paris was often no more than eight hours. Factoring in the time to take off, change clothes, and then wake up, change back, and prepare for arrival, there often was little more than four or five hours in the middle of the flight for sleep.
In those cases, I’d pop a pill, put on my eye mask and noise-canceling headphones, wrap myself up in a velour blanket I bought at Target for eighteen dollars, and lean against an inflatable pillow so I could go to sleep. I am convinced that beyond the pill, the difference-maker for me was a seven-dollar folding stool I got at Ikea.
I carried that stool and my blanket in the garment bag I’d bring to store my suit during a flight. When I unfolded the stool in my footwell, it transformed my reclining chair into a semi-sleeper seat with a footrest.
Even with the occasional pill, I had a tough time sleeping on the plane for more than four hours at a stretch. Often I had photos to process, or I simply found the view out my window to be engrossing. It usually was like a movie reel playing before my eyes.
One of my favorite flights was a daytime trip from Israel to any of several destinations in Europe. We’d depart from Ben Gurion International Airport, cross the Israeli coast above Tel Aviv, and climb out over the Mediterranean Sea before turning north. The route would typically take us over the Greek Isles, so I’d use Google Maps to pinpoint the specific islands along the way.
Santorini has such a distinctive hooked harbor I came to know it by heart.
We’d then fly north over the Adriatic Sea, with the heel of the Italian boot off the left side of the plane and the coastline of Albania, Montenegro, and Croatia in the distance outside my windows on the right.
We’d cross back over land to the west of Venice before heading north over the Italian and Swiss Alps. From there, we would fly over Bavaria, the French countryside, or the ship-filled English Channel.
Some of my other favorite flights were over Africa and the South Pacific, where heat and humidity built tremendous cloud formations. These would look spectacular at sunset. I created a folder on my laptop called “Clouds” to save the best of my cloud-formation shots. Once I asked my friends on Facebook to pick their favorite of four South Pacific shots I snapped.
They were so stunning they almost didn’t look real.
Another favorite scene came at early morning as we flew into Japan. I was looking out the window at the bluish pre-dawn haze when the wingtip rose for a turn. That gave me an unobstructed view of Mt. Fuji, shrouded in the fog. I grabbed my camera and squeezed off several frames. My Facebook friends furiously Liked it.
Another time I was looking out the window when someone on the opposite side of the plane called over. I jumped across the aisle and looked out to see a Swiss Air Force F/A-18 fighter jet flying alongside us. It was so close you could clearly see the pilot. He soon dipped the right wing and flew beneath the belly of our plane, returning to view back on the right side of the aircraft.
I got a good look and took some photos before the pilot pushed the stick hard to the right, tilting the left wing upward and peeling his jet off in a big sweeping turn.
The local air force used our flights over Switzerland for escort duty or to practice intercepting hostile aircraft, but we were told they had to give advance notice after one approach caused alarm for the passengers flying on a plane carrying first lady Michelle Obama.
On still other flights, we saw the Eiffel Tower, the Thames River, the island of Malta, and the Great Pyramids while landing in Cairo.
We crossed the equator ten times during Secretary Kerry’s four years in office, each time shifting from summer to winter or vice versa. We also took fourteen trips that went fully around the world.
On one trip, we flew back and forth between Muscat, Oman,
and Beijing four times in a week: once from Muscat to Beijing as we headed to China for meetings, once for a round trip as we briefly left China for a meeting in the Omani capital, and then a fourth time to refuel in Muscat after departing Beijing for the last time.
I took a picture of the flight map each time to document our ping-ponging across the Arabian Sea, India, Southeast Asia, and Chinese countryside.
As a typical flight neared its end, I almost always changed from my casual clothes back into my business suit. Because I entered and departed the plane from the forward door, and because I took photos of the secretary’s arrival and departure in my capacity as official travel photographer, I always wanted to look presentable as we came and went.
Not only did that mean wearing a suit and tie, but also leather-soled business shoes. This somehow felt appropriate to me: We were representatives of the United States of America, and I felt a responsibility to look as professional as possible. I couldn’t imagine doing so in a pair of rubber-soled shoes, so I went old school and took repeated advantage of Johnston & Murphy’s $125 shoe resoling program.
Because I needed to change my clothes, and because there were up to forty-five people using two bathrooms (the forty-sixth passenger, Secretary Kerry, had his own), my routine was to wake up at least two hours before our scheduled arrival time.
That let me snap out of my haze, wet my hair, and clean up in the lavatory with a washcloth and minitowel I packed in my carry-on. I’d then get redressed in a space not much bigger than a phone booth. By the fourth year, I dropped most of the pretense and would often simply strip down to my underwear while changing clothes in the alcove between the bathrooms and the computer printer.
I did it when no one was looking, but by then everyone was pretty much family. I just didn’t have the patience to wait for a bathroom to open, or to try to take off or put on clothes while my elbows smashed against the walls. I could do it all faster and easier just outside in my little private spot.