Two flights operated by the airline Tui, staffed entirely by crew of black or mixed heritage, flew from Manchester to Boa Vista in Cape Verde, and from London Gatwick to Jamaica on Thursday. Guests were welcomed by traditional steel bands as they checked in for the flights. The initiative is in part to celebrate Black History Month and Tui’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. The flight crew were made up of Matthew Brown (captain), Louis Farrell (second officer), Joniel Robinson, Chekayha Lemmon, Sandra Russell (cabin manager) and Jessica Davis-Dunn. The two flights, operated by the airline Tui, were flying from Manchester to Boa Vista in Cape Verde, and from London Gatwick to Jamaica on Thursday.

This is not the first ever Tui flight staffed entirely by a crew of black or mixed heritage people. Last year the company did the same thing to mark 2023’s Black history month. Tui said it hoped the initiative would highlight its Caribbean and African Network Group’s mantra: “You can’t be what you can’t see”. But what makes the journey even more special is the stories behind some of these incredible flight crew. Second officer Louis Farrell joined the army at 16 and had dreams of becoming a military pilot. But he was sadly injured while serving in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers and lost a leg. After leaving the army on medical grounds, he was introduced to a military charity called Wings for Warriors. The charity trains injured ex-servicemen and women to become commercial pilots.

“I grew up on council estates in Bolton in Lancashire … I was born in 89 so I grew up in the start of the 90s, 2000s, you didn’t see a huge amount of black, mixed race, or people of colour in this job. You obviously did when you went abroad, to Africa and Caribbean countries, there were a lot of people of colour operating as aircrew, flight crew and cabin crew, but in the UK, there weren’t. You didn’t really see it very much, which is one of the reasons I’m really excited to be part of this flight,” Farrell said.

Meanwhile cabin manager Sandra Russell always wanted to be a flight attendant, but was rejected when she applied as a teen. She then began a long career in the NHS. It was while she was on a Tui flight a few years ago that she told a flight attendant about her childhood dream. She was encouraged to apply, and told previous restrictions on race, age, height, weight were no longer relevant. This time at the age of 59 she was successful.

Russell, the daughter of Jamaican parents from the Windrush generation, said tearfully: “Even though I had this dream since I was 16, it came later on in life. For my mum, to see how things have changed, that I’m doing the job I wanted to do I am my mother’s daughter, and she could never even have applied for this job and never did this job. For me, to do this job is saying things have changed.”