Sri Lanka's Pilot Light

When Elmo Jayawardene Isn't Piloting 747s Around The Globe, His Earthly Pursuits Include Taking Care Of The Needy In His Homeland.

When I met Capt. Elmo Jayawardene at thirty-five thousand feet over the Pacific, our Singapore Airlines pilot from San Francisco was clad in a jogging suit. Having awakened from a several-hour nap, he seated himself in the back row of the upper-deck business-class cabin. After overhearing him request a breakfast tray, I surprised myself by flagging down the steward to ask if I might join our pilot while he ate. I was even more surprised when a prompt invitation came to join him.

The captain greeted me with a warm smile, and we began to chat in the kind of relaxed manner that long flights can be conducive to, especially if one welcomes the captivity and the opportunity to be unplugged from familiar routine. Although I anticipated talking with Elmo about his life as a pilot, the dark-skinned, soft-spoken man with a gray beard came off more in a literary mold than, say, out of The Right Stuff.

Indeed, he told me he savored the mandatory multiday layovers in foreign cities during his long-haul global jaunts. Rather than touring, he holes up in hotel rooms, draws the curtains, and, fueled by a banana or two, sets up his laptop to write about characters in his Sri Lankan homeland.

This was only one dimension that the pilot would reveal about himself. There was more. He told me that when he isn't flying four hundred passengers on Boeing 747s to Anchorage or Amsterdam, there's philanthropy to look after at home, which he runs with his wife of twenty years, Dil.

They named their organization Association for Lighting a Candle, or AFLAC. Elmo pulled out an AFLAC business card and pointed to the inscription on the back: "It is better by far to light a solitary candle than to curse the darkness."

"We try to be the link between one man's generosity and another man's humanitarian need," Elmo explained. As he began to describe this work, he interjected: "My friend, I am afraid I must go land the plane."

Still, I had one last question. "Where might I travel …