LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — It was a regular day of work for a crew of Delta flight attendants until something that took everyone by surprise happened as they walked to their gates.
"I think we all looked around and I knew okay, this is going to be an all-Black crew as far as the flight attendants but when the pilot showed up both of them that's when it just became like, oh my gosh," Delta flight attendant, Felicia Kaye said.
With all the experience in the world when it comes to flying on planes and servicing others Felicia Kaye, Alana Doucette, and Tim Lee weren't expecting this moment of being a part of history by having an all-African American crew aboard their flight.
"To actually have my own experience it's just a different feeling that you know, you can't explain, you have to just kind of savor the moment you're like, wow, this is really happening," Doucette described.
Felicia Kaye is a flight attendant from Little Rock, Arkansas who gained her Delta wings about four and a half years ago. She said she knew this moment was too good to pass up because it was a sight she had never seen.
"I had never seen, I think we all agree, we had not seen it so it was amazing to me and I wanted to capture it I kept saying to them, we got to get this picture, we got to get this picture," Kaye explained.
They say a picture can be worth a thousand words and to Lee it was. Coming from a small predominately white town to making the big screens is something he never even thought could be possible growing up.
"Just being from a small town where, you know, being an aviation was not a big thing, but to see all of us have people of color and to also know that working at a company like Delta, that this is possible," Lee described.
With the viral picture surfacing all over social media platforms, Kaye said there was one post by Jet magazine that stood out to her the most.
"They put the flight attendant, the very first flight attendant in 1958, and put our picture next to it and said, how it started versus how it's going. that that just made me tear up that was a moment, that was a huge moment," Kaye explained.
Doucette said capturing moments like this shows that representation matters and it reminds her every day of why she chose her career.
" I do have a daughter and she's three, so it is normal for her to see me so she's always excited. And she's like, Oh, where are my delta wings that mommy, I want to take my luggage and she's playing pretend. Still, when I'm on the aircraft or walking through different airports, you know, there's other little girls saying you look like my Barbie doll or I want to be a flight attendant like you. Hence, it's a good warm feeling because they haven't gotten that exposure to see someone like me do this job," Doucette said.
Kaye stressed the idea of how random it was to all be placed in this one setting as people don't realize how scheduling works.
"I literally just picked it up the day before. It was a random late-night Atlanta to Kansas City and we only have those pilots just for one leg of our trip so it was just very random and magical I just felt like the stars aligned," Kaye said.