It was a warm summer day in August 1995, when Captain Timothy Crowch and I went into the airconditioned briefing room of our Flight Attendants in the Swissair operation center on Zurich airport. We were looking forward to meet a merry cabin crew with which we could form a good team for the days to come. Planned was five days of flying passengers to Paris, Milano, Istanbul, Geneva, London and to Zurich on the brandnew Airbus A321. Amongst the mostly female Flight Attendants was a charming young woman from the French speaking part of Switzerland. Despite it being the first flight for her on this type of aircraft, Anne-Sylvie Gagnebin didn't seem to be nervous.

The second day, the crew stayed the night in Istanbul. On the day to come we should have flown from Istanbul to Zurich, on to Geneva, back to Zurich and once more to Geneva to stay the night there. (Fortunately), we had about an hour delay out of Istanbul due to airport congestion. In order not to delay the subsequent Zurich-Geneva-Zurich flight, another crew called out of stand-by flew it for us, and we were left with the last Zurich-Geneva leg, giving us about 3 hours rest in Zurich. Spontaneously, I invited the whole crew to my bachelor's appartment in the city to cook some spaghetti and - always available - ready-made sauce. I was impressed at how Anne-Sylvie helped as if she had been living there for a while...

The next day in Geneva was one of those on which you could impossibly refuse a good ice cream. And this is what I invited Anne-Sylvie to. This time, it was just the two of us, giving us enough time to discuss and just enjoy a lovely morning. Maybe that was the point where we noticed that there might be more than just professional courtesy between us. I found out that she was very interested in our work in the cockpit, so I promised to try getting her into the flight-simulator, when I would have my upcoming half-yearly check. Apparently, this helpfulness impressed her enough to invite me some day to her place for a dinner. 'Some day' was next Wednesday, August 23 1995, and since then two people found themselves...