A note left by a Minnesota-based Delta pilot at the beginning of the COVID shutdown was recently discovered 435 days later.

On March 23, 2020 Delta First Officer Chris Dennis of Excelsior, MN wrote a note to the next pilots who would fly the plane he just parked.

"It's March 23 and we just arrived from MSP," it read. "Very chilling to see so much of our fleet here in the desert." The fleet he was referring to was the Delta fleet of commercial passenger planes parked in a Victorville, California desert lot. COVID-19 was just beginning to launch a year-long pandemic that would shut the country down, bring flights to a halt and put millions out of jobs.

"If you are here to pick it up then the light must be at the end of the tunnel," Dennis' note continued. Amazing how fast it changed. Have a safe flight bringing it out of storage!"

"It's hard to fathom how many aircraft Delta has until you see that many of them parked in one place," Dennis told Fox News. "When we got in line, it looked like an optical illusion. It just kept going and going. I don't know how to describe it -- it was shocking."

According to Fox News, Dennis' note was found 435 days later by First Officer Nick Perez. According to Delta, the No. 3009 flown by Dennis was the last A321 aircraft parked in the Victorville lot when Perez arrived on June 1 to prepare it to return to service. While going through pages of preflight verification, Perez found the note when he opened the tray table in the flight deck.

"As they get into that airplane, they are going to see the opposite view than I saw," Fox News quotes Dennis saying. "There's going to be an open runway in front of them."