Flying Higher

Commercial pilot Charlie Dadoun finds clouds of faith as he soars through the skies. Eytan Kobre joins him for a midnight flight through the NY skyline.

T
he transatlantic flight was rocking back and forth in a turbulent stretch, and one passenger in first class, a religious Jew, was none too happy. “After all the money I spent on my ticket, I expected a smoother ride,” he said to the flight attendant. He asked her to convey his message to the captain, which she did, whereupon a message came back from the cockpit: “Pray to Hashem.” The passenger nearly flipped out: “Who is that pilot?!”

“That pilot” was Charles Dadoun, a member of the Sephardic frum community in West Long Branch, New Jersey, who’s been flying the world’s skies as a commercial airline pilot for over 30 years. And the line was typical Charlie, dealing simultaneously with a difficult flying scenario and a slightly goofy passenger as he’s dealt with so many situations over his career: with grace under pressure, an impish sense of humor, and a gentle dose of Torah inspiration.

Charlie invited me out to New Jersey on a beautiful early April evening to meet at a favorite haunt, the Monmouth Executive Airport in Farmingdale, where he’s offered to take me for a spin in a single-engine Cessna. With the hour nearing midnight, it’s not windy at all, a great night for flying. But it’s a bit chilly out and before lifting off for the heavens, we sit in Charlie’s warm SUV as he shares a bit about himself, the passions that combine to make him a rarity — a Torah-observant Jew who navigates the biggest flying machines known to man — and, of course, what happened to him on that September day in 2001.

Shabbos Protects

Flight 93, from Newark to San Francisco, was Charlie’s regular route for years; he flew it on alternating Mondays and Tuesdays. Yet he wasn’t in the cockpit that fateful Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001, when terrorists hijacked the plane and crashed it in a Pennsylvania field. Why not? The answer can be summed up in a word: Shabbos.