"Good Morning Captain!" is the story of one man's life. Each chapter has a different theme, but the tales of adventure, love and sex, will hopefully make you laugh and cry and eventually help you know the man.i>
Alex Young is a retired airline pilot who meets his new nurse Maria at the Residencia Mayores, a nursing home somewhere in Catalonia, Spain. He is an old man trapped in his own mind, but Maria persuades him to recount his life memories, his travels and adventures. Alex has always been a story-teller and begins by recalling his childhood, but drifts into one of his father’s stories about being evacuated to Cornwall during the Second World War. It progresses to how his parents met, Alex’s school years, his dark days at school and his disastrous first love. He recalls two of his schoolteachers, who aided him and made him realise that only by hard work and graft will he achieve his unlikely goal of becoming an airline pilot.
Yet, following graduation from the pilot college, Alex is laid off (without pay) for three years and has to find other ways of making a living. He gets married to his girlfriend and finds work at a flying school, but he struggles for money and the couple are finally evicted from their flat one Christmas Eve. Another job and another flat helps a little, but the months pass slowly before he is able to achieve his life-time ambition – airline pilot!
As Alex’s recalls some of his experiences, some dramatic and some bizarre, he speaks of his life and his dream career. Initially overwhelmed by his travels, Alex falls in love with the Cold War walled city of West Berlin and experiences lust and temptation in Paris and Copenhagen. A move to longhaul takes him around the world in his 747 Jumbo Jet, but he still finds time to pursue his lifetime hobby of family history. Alex uncovers a living relative, locked away for a lifetime and forgotten by his own family. Then he journeys to Boston to search for an artist, a Countess and the ghosts of the past.
One night Alex is woken by a terrible storm above the hospital; then the voices begin. It reminds him of his near death experience when his children were young, a white light nearly drawing him away from life and his family; his heart and breathing simply .
But, with a second chance of life, Alex feels renewed and eventually gets promoted to Captain, flying those Jumbo Jets around the world. However, amongst the joy, he experiences turbulence through separation and divorce and a romantic encounter with a beautiful Japanese girl turns out not to be the answer. He then meets Laura, but the whirlwind romance creates torment, jealousy, mistrust and pain. Alex battles with life and his career, but there are more surprises, adventures and experiences on the way.
Finally, as an old man, Alex recalls his eightieth birthday party in Spain, surrounded by his wife, children and grandchildren and he is at peace with the world. However, back in the hospital things may not be what they seem as Laura talks with the nurse, revealing the truth about Alex and his recollections. The old retired Captain struggles with his memories. Will there be one more flight before the final shut down checklist begins…?