Back in the day, Jamaican parents had a habit of dressing up the family in their Sunday best for a relaxing evening on the waving gallery at the international airport on the eastern edge of the capital, Kingston, to watch the magic of airplanes landing and taking off.

The joy would often be mixed with tears as some would be there to see family members disappear into the departing aircraft, or emerge from an arriving flight. Ice cream vendors did roaring business. The trek to the airport became a ritual.

Among the children, whose shrieks of delight testified to the wonderment of that spectacle, was six-year-old Marc Coley who could not get enough of their frequent visits to the Norman Manley Airport on the Palisadoes Strip.

Today, World Pilots Day, the now 41-year-old Captain Marc Coley, the Jamaican who piloted the historic first scheduled international commercial jet — American Airlines flight 4007 — into the Ian Fleming International, can reminisce on those innocent days on the waving gallery where the seed of his aviation interest was planted.

“I loved to see the planes land and take off. I was fascinated by the pilots,” says Coley 35 years and 10,100 flight hours later.

Flying into Ian Fleming International Airport at Boscobel, St Mary, near Ocho Rios on February 24 this year was special and something — like the idea of becoming a pilot when he watched from the waving gallery — that Coley could not have imagined.

Ian Fleming, named after the British creator of the fictional spy thriller James Bond character popular with movie-goers, is Jamaica’s third international airport. Hundreds came to watch, catapulting American Airlines (AA) #4007 with Envoy Captain Coley at the controls, into local aviation history.

The Government hopes that AA would be the first of many international commercial flights landing at Ian Fleming, and becoming the catalyst for economic development in the eastern region of the country.

Coley recalls the mental pressure he experienced after his chief pilot Freddie Defilipo tapped him to fly AA #4007 flight from Miami into Ian Fleming.

“Words fail me to describe the pressure, self-induced, of course,” he can laugh heartily now. “I know that there were other senior pilots who could have been asked. But it was an honour and I said yes.”

He could not confirm if the flight was deliberately so named because of James Bond, or that he was chosen because he is Jamaican, “although it might have helped; it has a nice flair to it”, he told the Jamaica Observer in an interview from his Miami perch.

In the weeks leading up to February 24, he recalls, he underwent intense preparation, a hallmark of envoy, the wholly owned AA subsidiary to which he is assigned. He will be forever grateful to all the teams of professionals who worked to get him ready.

“It was a big flight and I wanted to ensure that I executed it well. It was an inaugural flight and there would be media coverage. Hundreds of people would be there to witness it. I wanted to ensure that the passengers were happy and that I represented American well,” he recounts.

As the aircraft slowed to land, memories rushed back of the times when he flew small 9-seater aircraft into Ian Fleming during times he worked as a rookie pilot for International Airlink out of Tinson Pen, St Andrew, where he had a great but challenging start, right after the 9/11 terror attack in New York.

“I had come full circle at Ian Fleming and it was a special feeling,” says Coley. “I was flying back to where my career started in Jamaica.”

Noting how amazed he was to see the enthusiastic welcome for the new flight and the warm reception that he got personally, Coley says: “I was happy to see the children waving at us from behind the fence and I hope to inspire future generations of boys and girls to see the aviation industry as a dream they can pursue.”

Born October 9, 1983, to parents Janet Coley (Ricketts), a mortgage insurance officer, and Gerald Coley, an accountant, Marc’s first dream was to be a doctor, influenced, he says, by Dr Lloyd Goldson, one of the outstanding persons in his community of Mona, St Andrew.

He attended Mona Preparatory before passing the Common Entrance exams and going to Wolmer’s Boys’ School where he excelled in basketball and swimming, later spending a year at Maths Unlimited.

In 1997, he being 14 years old, Coley went to New York with his mother for the summer. Upon his return to Jamaica, all he could think of was aviation. He couldn’t explain it, he says. But he convinced his parents to send him to flight school, at Wings Jamaica.

He was then sent to flight school in British Columbia, Canada, to get his commercial pilots licence in 2003, returned to Jamaica after a year and joined International Airlink in Montego Bay, St James, flying tourists charters and getting to appreciate all aspects of the operations, including loading bags.

It was next to Carib Aviation and then LIAT, in the eastern Caribbean island of Antigua and Barbuda. He loved it there for the “Caribbean vibes” but moved on in search of greater prospects, egged on by his dad, when he got an offer at Caribbean Airlines which had just bought Air Jamaica.

“Leaving Antigua and LIAT was one of the most difficult decisions I have ever made. I’m a creature of comfort and I appreciated the nice, slow, relaxed pace of Antigua. But in the end I was happy I decided to go to Caribbean Airlines based in Trinidad and Tobago where I flew larger aircraft to international destinations.”

There he met some of the pilots who worked with Air Jamaica which he used to admire and dream of working for. Coley again moved on from there, when the airline experienced financial turbulence, this time to joint the trek of pilots to lucrative Fly Dubai airline.

From there he flew to destinations within five hours east, west, north and south of Dubai which meant all over Africa and Asia.

“They were big on training. In fact, second to none because they wanted us to be the best. I got a complete overview and understanding of aviation as a profession. But the culture was difficult to assimilate and I was having home sickness, missing my family,” Coley admitted.

He often went long periods without seeing his wife, mom and step-son and so he took an offer at Arik Air in Nigeria in April 2016, serving there till 2018.

When his wife, Marie-Therese Valmond, a pretty flight attendant whom he had first met at University of Technology, Jamaica, suggested he join American Airline, he didn’t hesitate. She had been with AA since 2015.

And the rest, according to the popular cliché, is history.