Cruising Attitude (20 page)

Whether you’re a flight attendant or one of our friends, there are rules to be followed when traveling standby. The biggest rule is not to bother the gate agents. They are there to help paying passengers, not standby passengers. Take a seat and patiently wait until your name is called—
hope
your name is called, would be a better way to describe it—before approaching the desk, but do know that won’t happen until five minutes before the flight is to depart, which means by the time you hear your name only middle seats will be left and there will be no available space for your bag. Unless you’re traveling with a small child, don’t even think about trying to sit together. Or breaking the dress code while traveling on a pass. Shorts and flip-flops aren’t allowed in coach, while jeans and sneakers cannot be worn in first or business. When standby passengers don’t follow these rules, or try to argue about what they don’t understand, the flight attendant who issued them the pass could lose his or her flying privileges for good. If you’re a commuting flight attendant with no flying privileges, good luck!

Crazily enough, I’ve heard many times of spouses attempting to lay claim to the passes in a divorce settlement. In some cases courts have awarded it, but most airline policies won’t allow it, regardless of court rulings. I heard a story about a flight attendant who requested her husband meet her in another country owing to a medical emergency. Because she had been living and working out of the country she used her flight benefits to get him there. When he landed, instead of finding an ailing wife, he was served with notice that she was filing for divorce. As soon as he flew back home she yanked his flying benefits. He couldn’t fly back to South America on her passes to defend his property rights—or fight for the passes—because he couldn’t afford the full-fare ticket.

When it became apparent I wasn’t going to find what I was looking for in the cockpit or at a bar, I took my search for love online. Going by the name Skydoll, tag line “destination unknown,” I quickly found my inbox swamped with emails from would-be suitors. It didn’t take long to realize my profile—more specifically, my job—wasn’t just attracting Mr. Wrong, but also Mr. Never-in-a-Million-Years. This doesn’t seem to happen to pilots or male flight attendants. Or maybe it does and they just don’t care, which is why you’ll find so many of them posing in uniform in at least one of their profile pictures. One pilot turned out to be so successful at dating online he wound up getting hitched to a nurse and then starred in a nationwide Match.com television commercial with her. Female flight attendants, on the other hand, are a little less inclined to advertise the job because it turns out that a whole lot of guys have kinky ideas about the uniform. Don’t believe me? Go to eBay and plug in two words: “flight attendant.” There you’ll find all kinds of airline paraphernalia, including used undergarments and work shoes worn by “a real flight attendant.”

Genuine uniforms are not easy to come by. We are not allowed to give them away or even donate them to charity without first destroying any airline insignia on them. This way no one can impersonate us and do something crazy like, say, carry out a terrorist act! If a uniform item is stolen or goes missing, flight attendants are to file a police report, which is exactly what I did after I heard the door to my layover hotel room in Miami quietly shut and I awoke to find my closet door open and a uniform belt and vest missing. I’m not sure which disturbed me more; the fact that someone had come into my room while I slept or that someone wanted to wear my clothes.

A “full set” Japan Airlines vintage uniform (blouse, jacket, skirt, pumps, apron, nameplate, and stockings) can fetch as much as 280,000 yen (about $3,500), with well-worn items garnering premium prices. Female flight attendants from JAL are actually warned not to sell their outfits online to uniform fetish fans, and JAL requires flight attendants to return their uniforms at the end of their career. They even affix each one with a registration number inside, and it’s been rumored that they might take it a step further and follow All Nippon Airways’s footsteps by sewing microchips into uniform pieces. This all came about after some uniforms made their way into sex fetish clubs in Japan where people are willing to pay top dollar to live out a fantasy with an “entertainer” clad in an authentic airline uniform. Other than nurses, it’s tough to think of another profession with as much dedicated pornography, which just reinforces the way people think of flight attendants. It’s no wonder men have screwed up ideas about us—about me!

As soon as I realized how many men online were interested in me because of my job, I had no issue searching for hot jobs to date as well. Keywords like “doctor,” “lawyer” and “PhD” resulted in quite a few amazing dates with many interesting men. I really hit it off with SexyErDoc who raved so often about how great my medical insurance was at one point I thought he might be more interested in my health-care plan than in me. And then it happened. The inevitable. On our third date he requested I put on the uniform.

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” I teased. I thought we were joking. But when I got to his apartment and he answered the door wearing a stethoscope and only the top portion of his scrubs, I knew we had a problem. The skinny pantless legs still give me nightmares.

To be honest, the last thing flight attendants want to do on a day off is role-play like we’re at work. Really, we don’t get off on telling people what to do all the time. It’s not fun having to remind passengers of the same things over and over again, like the electronic device policy before takeoff. Recently I had to tell sixteen passengers on a flight from Oklahoma to Chicago to turn their phones off, after having told them twice already! After a while it’s kind of nice for someone else to be in control and take charge of a situation. I imagine a lot of doctors may feel the exact same way because CelebrityDoc didn’t really seem all that interested in me until I told him off for yelling at a waitress who picked up his plate before he was finished. Everyone in the restaurant turned around to get a look at the ass across the table from me. I straightened myself up and in a quiet but stern voice told the doctor exactly how I felt about his poor behavior, but not without first demanding he apologize to the waitress or else have me make a scene as I stormed out. Surprisingly he did as he was told, and he did so rather jovially. The following morning he sent me a beautiful bouquet of flowers. I guess we all want someone else in charge some of the time.

Still, he was hardly the strangest. For example, I had no idea there were actually people out there who loved to worship flight attendant feet after a hard day at work until I met the podiatrist. He didn’t tell me about his dirty little secret right away, but when he did it didn’t bother me. What’s the difference between that and butts or boobs? Nothing, that’s what! Not to mention that, while I don’t have big boobs, I do have nice feet. I couldn’t believe I was dating a doctor who loved shoes and foot massages just as much as I did! It seemed like a match made in heaven. But after a while, it did get weird. I couldn’t deal with the guy begging me to smash my pantyhosed feet into his contorted face after a long day at work every time I walked through the door. Everyone has their quirks, but that was just too much. Would you believe the podiatrist actually had the balls to ask me to refer my flight attendant friends to him after we broke up?

“You’re crazy!” I told him, and slammed down the phone.

He called back, sweetening the deal by offering my friends 80 percent off orthotics! Well, that changed everything. I left his card tacked to the wall in flight operations.

Everything happens for a reason. I truly believe that. Because if not for the podiatrist, I might have actually mailed my work shoes off to an engineer I met on a flight. He told me he was a shoe cobbler on the side after he noticed my Mary Janes were in need of mending and he’d be willing to make them look as good as new for free.

“Pack them up and mail them to the address on my card,” he said. He’d pay for shipping. Shoe cobbler, sure.

Eventually, I realized I might be better off meeting the man of my dreams on the plane instead of online. First class, business class, coach, I was an equal-opportunity dater. I didn’t care where they were sitting, just as long as they were sitting with their seat belts fastened, even when the seat belt sign was not on. Hey, what’s the big deal? I’ve seen enough TV to know that doctors date nurses, lawyers date court reporters, and the one with the corner office dates the one pouring the coffee. Where else was I going to meet men? On the airplane, flight attendants get to know people,
really
know them, when they’re completely unaware of it. We see people when they’re not dressed to impress or on their best behavior, and because we’re in control of their safety and comfort, we know how they react at their most vulnerable.

They say you can tell a lot about people by the way they treat their mother. Turns out you can tell even more about them based on how they treat a flight attendant. Do they make eye contact? Do they say please and thank you? Are they polite when I run out of the beverage of their choice? Do they move the newspaper out of the way when I place a drink on their tray? Do they remove their earphones when I ask a question? Do they show respect to those who serve them? Do they show respect to the passengers seated around them? If the answer is yes, they’re a winner! Major boyfriend potential.

“Whenever a passenger flirts with me, I just assume they want something for free: alcohol, headsets, whatever!” said a coworker after a super cute passenger slid me his number.

“Maybe they just want you,” I suggested.

My coworker pushed his long blond bangs behind his ear and sighed. “It would be nice to find a future ex-husband who could keep me in the lifestyle I’m unaccustomed to.” When I laughed, he snapped his sassy fingers. “Gurrrl, I may be blond but I’ve got dark roots.”

I pointed to my own dark roots. “I hear ya, sista!”

“And I’m not judging, sweetie.”

Thank God for that.

But judge people do, including me, which is how I came to chat with a friendly lady on a flight from San Diego to New York. I knew she was nice based on the way she exclaimed “Happy Tuesday!” before I could welcome her on board, and I knew she was fun as soon as I spotted the hot pink hat on her head. Later on in flight she came to the back galley and asked for a glass of water. I brought up the hat.

“You know, you’re the second person to compliment my hat today. A really nice guy standing in line at Starbucks said something to me about it and then he bought me a cup of coffee.”

“Coffee? Oh, he liked you!” I said.

“Ya think? Oh no. I don’t think so. Really?”

“Really. Listen, if there’s one thing I know, besides uncomfortable seats and bad food, it’s men. And strange men don’t buy random women coffee at the airport. And they certainly don’t notice cute hats. He just wanted to talk to you. Hey, is the guy on our flight?”

Pink Hat Lady wasn’t sure, so she took a quick walk up the aisle to check. “He’s in 22B.”

“Wait here, I’m going to go analyze him for you.” I picked up a plastic bag and walked to the front of the cabin, collecting garbage along the way.

Here’s what I learned in five seconds about 22B. He had nice manners because when I asked if he’d like a refill, he said “No, thank you.” Rarely does anyone say “please” and “thank you” anymore. He also made eye contact. A lot of passengers will just wave me away. This told me he had respect for people, regardless of what they did for a living. When he reached for his seatmate’s empty cup to dispose of it for her since her arms were too short to reach, I knew he was kind and helpful. Most passengers will ignore one another, even if one of them is struggling with something—namely a bag. When I asked if he wanted me to dispose of what looked like top secret papers exploding out of his seat back pocket, he responded with something witty right back. A quick-witted and fun personality is always a plus in a man. The book he was reading had something to do with human anatomy. I assumed he was either a student, a professor, or a health professional.

“I like him,” I told the Pink Hat Lady. “You two would make a good match.”

She wasn’t sure how to approach him, so I suggested that she walk over to him and thank him for the coffee this morning. Then I instructed her to tell him she’d like to reciprocate by buying him a beer or a snack, whichever he’d like. I was fairly certain he wouldn’t take her up on the offer. I just wanted her to put the ball back in his court. Ten minutes later she came back to report that they were going to meet up in the terminal after the flight. A few weeks later I got a letter from her saying that they’d been emailing and had plans to visit each other. Just goes to show love really is in the air. And I was more than ever bound and determined to find it for myself!

T
HERE ARE FOUR
types of turbulence: light, moderate, severe, and extreme. Light turbulence causes a slight, rapid, and somewhat rhythmic bumpiness without appreciable changes in altitude or attitude. Sometimes pilots refer to it as light chop. It’s the kind that rocks babies to sleep, and even a few overworked flight attendants. The seat belt sign may be on, but flight attendants are still able to conduct the food service with little to no difficulty. Moderate turbulence is a little more intense. It causes rapid bumps or jolts without changes in aircraft altitude. Passengers will feel the strain of their seat belts. Unsecured objects in the galley may dislodge. Conducting a food service or checking for seat belt compliance is difficult. Severe turbulence causes large or abrupt changes in altitude. The aircraft may be momentarily out of control. Passengers are forced violently against their seats. Walking is impossible. If flight attendants haven’t strapped into their jump seats already, we may not be able to do so and we’ll have to grab the nearest available passenger seat. If there’s not one open, we’ll sit on a passenger—anyone will do. Make sure to hold on to us tightly. Extreme turbulence rarely happens, but when it does it will violently toss an aircraft about, making it practically impossible to control. Structural damage is possible.

There are probably a few nervous fliers who want to know just how rare extreme turbulence really is. I’ll put it to you this way. Bob the stylish pilot has never experienced it in his twenty-six years of being a pilot for a major U.S. carrier, nor does he know any other pilot who has. I’ve been flying for sixteen years and I have yet to experience it myself. But once from New York to Los Angeles it became so bumpy on descent I had to hold on to a coworker who couldn’t make it to her jump seat. A beverage cart fell over in galley. Soda, coffee, cups, napkins, and sugar spilled all over the floor. When it was over, the galley looked like a tornado had ripped through it. I had my arms wrapped so tightly around the flight attendant’s waist that by the time we finally touched ground I could barely release my grip on her. My fingers were stiff and my colleague was bruised.

During another flight, one of my first flights I ever worked for Sun Jet, we encountered so much turbulence a passenger started screaming “I don’t want to die!” This caused the others to start lighting up so they could have one last cigarette before we crashed. While cheap tickets attract passengers looking to save a buck, they don’t always cover the cost of maintenance and upkeep, so the flickering side wall lights really set the mood. At one point even I began to feel like I was starring in my very own Stephen King horror movie at 35,000 feet. But because I was new and had never experienced any sort of turbulence before, I figured it had to be normal and did my best to put on a brave face for the passengers who watched my every move.

“Flight attendants take your seats!” the captain’s voice boomed over the PA. Whenever you hear these five words it’s probably going to be bad. I didn’t have to run and buckle up because I had already done so.

From the front of the plane I could see some passengers clutching the armrests while others held hands across the aisle. With each dip I heard moans and groans and even a few full-on screams, making a bad situation sound even worse. It’s my job to keep the cabin calm, yet there’s little I can do from my jump seat except reassure those sitting nearby that everything is going to be okay with a pleasant smile. But on that flight I wasn’t so sure everything would be. It was so bumpy there was no way I could possibly get up to grab a bottle of halon and fight a fire if I had to!

“Put the cigarettes out!” I yelled from my jump seat. As soon as the words were out of my mouth I regretted saying them. The last thing I wanted was for someone to squash a lit cigarette into the flammable fabric covering the seat in front of them. Luckily, instead of doing as they were told, the smokers multiplied in number, puffing harder and faster as the lights blinked off and on and we jolted from side to side.

Later on, I learned two airplanes in front of us had aborted landing. That didn’t deter our captain from attempting his approach into Love Field Airport. With thunder and lightning all around, he somehow managed to get the aircraft on the ground, but not without hitting the runway so hard it felt like the aircraft might split in half. As we taxied to the gate, passengers began jumping out of their seats and running toward the front door, screaming “Let me off this flight!” Problem was, there was nowhere for them to go. The airport was closed.

My coworker, a senior mama with only two years under her belt, firmly instructed me to keep the passengers back when the airplane came to a complete stop while she cracked the door open to allow a little fresh air inside to dissipate the smell of vomit. Although it was one of my first flights, even then a twenty-foot plunge in stormy weather didn’t seem so bad compared to what we had to deal with now: an airplane full of sick and angry passengers on the verge of revolt. That’s when the captain announced the unthinkable. He informed us over the PA that we had diverted to an airport a few minutes away from the one we were scheduled to land at, which meant that as soon as the storm passed we’d have to do it all over again!

Half the passengers had had enough and decided to abandon ship—er, plane, once the airport opened two hours later, leaving behind checked bags that would accompany us to DFW Airport. An agent had to escort them across the tarmac to the terminal while fighting to hold onto an umbrella blown inside out over their heads.

I didn’t realize how serious our situation had truly been until I spotted the captain sitting in the cockpit staring straight ahead. His pale face isn’t what scared me. What freaked me out was his white button-down shirt that was now drenched with sweat.

Although turbulence doesn’t scare me, I have been frightened in the air more than once. I’ve experienced aborted landings and takeoffs and even landing gears that wouldn’t go down, but that didn’t scare me, either. I’m kind of embarrassed to tell you about my scariest flight of all time because nothing even happened. It was just a feeling of impending doom. I truly thought we were all going to die. I didn’t get nervous until we began our descent into Los Angeles and I happened to look out the window and noticed we were unusually low over the ocean. It was 3:00 a.m. The thought of ditching an aircraft into the water totally freaks me out. For one I’m a horrible swimmer. But that’s not what frightened me. What worried me was who in the world would be up and alert and ready to rescue an airplane full of passengers floating off the coast of California that early in the morning? Not to mention it was December. I figured if we plunged into that freezing cold water we’d only have a minute to stop hyperventilating from the “gasp reflex” and control our breathing. Maybe ten minutes of purposeful movement before our muscles went numb and unresponsive. About an hour before hypothermia would lead to unconsciousness. Maybe two hours before profound hypothermia caused death. The aircraft was equipped with slide rafts, but I worried about the slides not inflating. And if they did inflate, would I be able to find the knife embedded on the raft used to cut the rope attached to the sinking aircraft? Not if I accidentally fell into the water and became blind from all the fuel contaminating the ocean.

And they hadn’t taught us anything about sharks in flight attendant training! Oh, how I hoped I hadn’t nicked my legs while shaving earlier that morning. Silently I began to pray, making promises to God I knew I couldn’t keep. At some point I came to the conclusion that if I did become the victim of a late-night shark snack attack, it would be probably safe to assume my career as a flight attendant was over since there weren’t any one-legged flight attendants that I knew of. Since then, I have in fact met a one-legged flight attendant. She has a prosthetic leg and has been flying with it for twenty-three years. Which just goes to show you should never lose hope, even when faced with a terrible situation. And that, dear reader, is the point I wanted to make. But I know you’re more interested in how my scariest flight ever ended. To make a long story short, we landed without a problem. Later on, I found out the reason the landing felt “off” was because after a five-hour delay followed by a change in equipment, the baggage handlers forgot to load the bags, so the plane’s weight and balance was off. According to a pilot not working the flight, we should have been flying higher, not lower, than usual that night I saw my life flash before my eyes, making my scariest flight ever one that couldn’t possibly happen under the circumstances.

More than a million people travel by air every day, and yet only three people have died in the last twenty-eight years as a direct result of turbulence. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, from 1980 to 2008 there were 234 accidents involving turbulence, resulting in 298 serious injuries and 3 fatalities. Of the three fatalities, two passengers were not wearing their safety belt while the seat belt sign was illuminated. Of the 298 seriously injured, 184 involved were flight attendants. Each year approximately 58 passengers in the United States are injured from turbulence by not wearing their seat belts, while 10,000 passengers are allegedly injured by falling luggage.

During turbulence, there’s such a difference between the front and the back of the aircraft that I’ve had to call a few pilots to let them know they needed to turn the seat belt sign on. We’re rocking and rolling in the back, liquids spilling all over the place, and the pilots sometimes have no idea. Without the seat belt sign illuminated, I can’t suggest to Mom and Dad that it might be a good idea to pick up their sleeping baby off the floor without completely offending them. I’m always amazed by the number of parents who are reluctant to sit a child up and strap them in for fear of waking them up when the seat belt sign comes on. I’ve even seen some pass newborn infants across the aisle to someone else or play a game of bouncy-bounce—up in the air! It’s a wonder I haven’t seen a baby turn into a football. What’s worse are passengers who decide to stand up and get into overhead bins full of heavy luggage as soon as the seat belt sign turns on. Now, instead of just putting themselves at risk, they’ve included whoever else is seated nearby. I can’t come to the rescue if I’m strapped in my jump seat. My priority is to keep from being injured so I can operate the exit doors in case of an emergency. It’s because of this kind of behavior that one captain I know seldom turns the seat belt sign off. He claims he doesn’t always know when it’s going to be choppy and he believes it’s too crowded in the aisles to keep it off. The guy has a point. Whenever flight attendants start bugging him about letting people get up, he’ll remind them that passengers tend to ignore the sign anyway, and he has no desire to be a part of their lawsuit when they fall and get injured.

It’s a fact that people love to sue airlines. A woman once sued because she lost her psychic powers after an in-flight videocassette tape fell out of an overhead bin and hit her on the head. Things shift in flight. Be careful when opening overhead bins. Another passenger sued the airline because his wife filed for divorce after he became impotent as a direct cause of a flight attendant rubbing his thigh with a paper towel after spilling a little coffee on him. Why so many passengers order hot beverages when it’s bumpy is beyond me. In 2000 the
Los Angeles Times
reported a story about thirteen passengers who sued American Airlines after going through a rough patch of air turbulence that lasted twenty-eight seconds. The seat belt sign had not been turned on. No one involved in the lawsuit suffered physical injuries, but they did claim psychological trauma and demanded $2.25 million. The judge held the airline liable, and each person was awarded approximately $175,000. What I find most interesting about the case is two of the people named in the lawsuit are related to an Oscar Award–winning director. I can’t help but wonder if that made an impact on the judge. I can certainly say the court ruling had an effect on me. So don’t take it personally when I politely, but firmly, remind you the seat belt sign is on.

When the seat belt sign comes on, it’s the flight attendants’ job to make sure passengers are safely buckled up, but a lot of times it’s too bumpy for us to do so. That doesn’t stop a lot of us from trying. Former flight attendant Mary underwent several surgeries after being injured during four different turbulent flights. In 1978, and again in 1999, Mary herniated her lower disc after she hit the ceiling during clear air turbulence (CAT), which happens when bodies of air moving at wildly different speeds meet. CAT can happen unexpectedly, even when the seat belt sign is not on. After a turbulent flight in 2001 she had surgery on her back and left arm. In 2008 she underwent two hip surgeries. In 2003 my airline changed its injury on duty (IOD) policy. It was decided that in order to receive pay for an IOD the turbulence had to be considered severe. Because the turbulence during Mary’s last flight was not considered severe enough, even though two other flight attendants were also injured, she had to use sick hours to cover time lost from work. After a year on the IOD list (even without IOD pay), a flight attendant loses medical coverage since we have to fly a certain number of hours to qualify for benefits. So after thirty-four years as a flight attendant Mary was forced to retire at the age of fifty-six because she didn’t have health insurance. With retirement she qualified for retiree medical benefits.

Most injured flight attendants at my airline who find themselves in Mary’s position aren’t so lucky in that they are too young to qualify for retiree benefits. It’s mind-boggling to me that I could be injured at work but the injury might not be classified as an IOD unless the captain loses control of the airplane or the airplane sustains structural damage. In either of those cases, the aircraft must be grounded and inspected. That’s lost revenue for the airline. No captain wants to be held accountable for that! I’m sure you can see the writing on the wall. A friend of mine who works closely with airline management said he’s never once seen a pilot label rough air as “severe turbulence.” So if you see flight attendants sitting in our jump seats when it starts to get bumpy, we’re just trying to make sure we’re not going to be forced into early retirement!