THERE 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!
If there’s mild turbulence and a nervous passenger questions flight attendant Beth on how she tolerates it, she’ll lighten the mood by telling them that in training we had to learn to walk on a tightrope to increase our balancing skills. Most of them actually believe her! Before my friend Vicki retired, she’d tell passengers she practiced her serving skills by jumping on a trampoline while holding a tray full of drinks. I’m probably the only person who believes her, but this is because I actually know her. In the past, I used to reassure fearful fliers that airplanes don’t just break in half. But then Air France Flight 447 did exactly that in 2009. It’s still unclear whether significant turbulence due to a series of storms in the area, a lightning strike, or something about frozen pilot tubes caused the airplane to “disappear.” So now I just tell passengers to keep their seat belts fastened and everything will be A-OK. Depending on the type of rapport we may have, I might add a very unusual but quite interesting fact I’ve heard about dying on an airplane. More people have been killed falling off donkeys than by dying in an airplane crash.
What most nervous fliers don’t realize is, turbulence is normal and it can occur even when the sky appears clear. If you are a nervous flier, don’t be embarrassed to let the crew know during boarding. Flight attendants are trained professionals. If we know you’re scared we’ll go out of our way to be reassuring if the airplane does encounter a few bumps. I’ve gone so far as to sit in an empty seat beside someone and hold their hand. It’s better not to wait until you’re clutching the armrest for dear life and sweating profusely with each bump to let us know who you are. If there’s time during boarding we might be able to introduce you to the cockpit. Pilots are better able to calm nerves by letting passengers know what to expect in terms of when it will happen, why it happens, and for how long it’s scheduled to last. Aircraft fishtail during turbulence, making the back of the airplane much bumpier than the front, so one good trick is to book a seat as close to the cockpit as possible. If that’s not possible, get to the airport early so an agent can switch your seat to a more desirable location. Airlines block the best seats for frequent fliers. Frequent fliers use miles to upgrade and a lot of times their upgrades don’t go through until the last minute, so be patient with the agent if they ask you to have a seat in the terminal. If that doesn’t work, tell a flight attendant what’s wrong and we’ll try to move you. Also, don’t forget to count the number of rows from your seat to the closest exit door or window. If something does happen and it’s dark, you’ll be able to feel your way to safety.
While passengers dread turbulence, what leaves flight attendants shaking are in-flight confrontations. It’s a really big deal for us to walk off a flight or even have a passenger removed. Really, we do not enjoy rocking the boat—or in this case, the plane—but sometimes we have to. There’s no calling the cops or the fire department or an ambulance at 35,000 feet, which is why we always try to take care of potential problems on the ground.
Does it come as a surprise to learn intoxicated passengers have a tendency to turn into trouble after a few too many? The reason they seem tipsier in the air than on the ground is because of lower oxygen levels in the blood. The same amount of alcohol goes a lot further at 35,000 feet. While rarely a threat to the safety of the aircraft, unless of course they’re threatening to shoot the flight crew with a 9mm handgun like one drunken passenger did on a flight from Cuba, they do have a tendency to wreak havoc. I’m positive this is one reason why it’s against FAA regulations for an airline to board someone who appears to be intoxicated. If an airline gets caught knowingly doing so, they will be issued a fine.
It’s not hard to spot inebriated passengers when they walk on board and announce, “Let’s party and have some drinks!” Those we know to keep an eye on. It’s the quiet ones we have to worry about, the ones who ask for a cup of ice, and that’s it. That’s a big red flag that there might be a little something-something hidden somewhere. Like bartenders, we’re responsible if anything bad happens to passengers who’ve had a few too many drinks after they leave our flight. That’s why we don’t allow passengers to bring their own booze on board, why we don’t automatically serve free drinks when there’s a delay, and why we’ll cut people off if we feel they’ve had enough.
It’s not always possible for a few of us to keep tabs on so many of you, so some people do squeak by. For instance, after serving a very large first-class passenger not that many Jack and Cokes, we couldn’t stop him from coming into the galley and eating leftover shrimp tails (i.e., garbage) he picked off used passenger meal trays we were stacking back inside the carts after the dinner service. Then there was the elderly woman who drank four vodkas within an hour after takeoff. I had no idea my coworker had just served the sweet old lady a double when she flagged me down and asked for “two of those cute little bottles.” Once we realized our mistake, it was too late. Our crazy little granny with the thick Irish accent was attempting to christen the entire coach cabin with water from the lav on her dripping hands. When one of my colleagues tried to talk her into taking a seat (near the back of the cabin so we could keep an eye on her), she screamed something I will not repeat about my colleague being gay. I don’t know what surprised me more, Granny’s potty mouth or the fact that my coworker didn’t have the gay mafia waiting for her after our flight. I also always love the passengers who use their seat back pocket and/or that of their neighbor, as a barf bag. And the ones who lock themselves inside the one and only first-class lavatory—and never come out.
One hot young thing, determined to talk a couple of male passengers into buying her drinks, once made the rounds on a flight overseas until one of my coworkers confronted the underage girl in the galley. The girl responded by punching my colleague in the face. Now, if that had been me I don’t know what I would have done, but my Puerto Rican coworker, a petite young thing herself, didn’t skip a beat. I can’t tell you what happened next, but I will say I just stood there stunned because girlfriend had just messed with the wrong flight attendant.
But my all-time favorite was the sharply dressed man who took a seat in the exit row after staggering onto the airplane with an open container of alcohol. Of all the seats the guy could sit in… I asked him to hand it over, but instead of doing as told, he guzzled it down and burped in my face. Then he wanted to argue about why he couldn’t bring his own booze on board. As I was reminding him that most businesses do not allow open containers of liquor, he passed out, head smack against the tray table.
Drunk passengers aren’t the only problem. In San Francisco, an agent was called to remove a passenger who was so out of it during boarding that she couldn’t even find her seat, let alone walk down the aisle without assistance from some lucky passenger who just happened to be standing in line behind her. The whacky behavior, I’m sure, had something to do with sleeping pills, since we were on a red-eye flight headed back to New York. But because passengers have to be conscious (and wearing shoes) when they come on board, the woman was taken off and rebooked on the next flight the following morning—that is, assuming she found her shoes. Smart passengers will wait until after takeoff before using sleeping aides. Flight attendants appreciate this because there’s always a chance there will be a mechanical issue and we’ll have to go back to the gate and deplane. It’s hard enough waking someone who has chased down two Ambien with a shot of whatever they were drinking at the airport bar without having to explain to them where they are, again, and why they have to get off the airplane—again. If the backpacker who fell asleep during boarding hadn’t missed the captain’s announcement about the three-hour delay, he wouldn’t have been so confused when he finally came to and noticed we were at the gate—wow, so early! He assumed we had landed. I’m the one who had to break it to him at the aircraft door that we never even took off. Sighing, he went back to his seat and popped another pill. Flight attendants are capable of doing a lot of things, but during an emergency evacuation, there’s no way we’re going to be able to drag half a plane full of disoriented, limp noodles by the ankles through a smoke-filled cabin and down the slide. Hard to believe, I know.
And then there are the limp noodles who eventually turn cold and gray and, well… if anyone asks, they’re just “resting.” I say this because no one officially dies on an airplane, no matter how dead they actually are. When a person passes away they’re still considered “incapacitated” until a doctor makes an official pronouncement. Thirty years ago, my friend Vicki, who had never had a passenger die during one of her flights, noticed a man who was clearly asleep (wink wink). So as not to distress the rest of the passengers, she placed a gin and tonic and an opened bag of nuts on his tray table. Knowing Vicki the way I do, she probably chatted him up a few times for appearances. Depending on who’s asking, she’ll even swear she saw him take a sip of that drink. That’s her story and she’s still sticking to it.
Not everyone is as smooth as Vicki. During descent on a Sun Jet flight, one of my coworkers noticed a passenger with his seat all the way back. She asked him to put it up and quickly discovered he, well, couldn’t. Without hesitating, she dragged his lifeless body into the aisle, hiked up her tight skirt, straddled him in a way that would have made any living man envious, and started doing CPR. When paramedics came on board to take him off, she was still going at it. She couldn’t stop. Paramedics had to pull her off. Later on she got in trouble for not being in her jump seat during landing, an FAA regulation.
My only close call with death happened on one of my first international trips. I don’t remember where we were flying to but, man oh man, the food looked delicious, so much better than it did on the domestic routes. In hindsight I realize I was probably just hungry as I was fairly new and broke at the time. But back then I honestly couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to miss out on something that looked so good, which is why I confidently tapped a sleeping woman on the shoulder to wake her up. When that didn’t work, I rubbed her arm. Then I lifted her hand and let it fall—that is, flop—down on her lap. Uh-oh. Nervously I glanced at my coworker. Based on the way his eyes were bugging out of his head, I knew he was thinking exactly what I was thinking. Silently he grabbed her by both arms and gave her a good shake. No response. Our facial expressions must have said it all, because that’s when the woman sitting next to her jumped up and started screaming, “Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!”
We checked for a pulse. We checked for breathing. We cleared the row of passengers and were just about to get her body flat on the ground when out of nowhere her husband, who unbeknown to us had been seated a few rows back, appeared and jabbed her in the neck with a knuckle—at least that’s what it looked like he did. At once her eyes popped open and upon seeing us all hovering over her she began to giggle uncontrollably. My heart was beating so fast I thought I might have a heart attack myself. It’s not every day you’re serving drinks and then have a dead lady on your hands. Nor is it every day you have a dead lady come back to life, then have to go right back to serving drinks—with a smile. Right then and there, I swore I’d never bother another sleeping passenger again! In coach, that is. I didn’t care how dead they looked.
Most passengers prefer sleeping to eating, if they’re already asleep that is—until they come to and realize what they wanted to eat is no longer available. I’ve been scolded for waking passengers up. And I’ve been scolded for not waking them up. In coach, I’ll leave sleepers alone. The food, if there’s any on board, is not worth waking up for. But in first and business class it’s a different story. Not because the food is all that, but because they’ve paid a lot of money for a seat and have unrealistic expectations about the service. Now, if I’m the one taking meal preferences after takeoff, I’ll play it safe and gently touch their arm so later on, when they wake up and become upset because there’s nothing good left to eat, I can at least say that I tried. That said, I wasn’t quite sure what to do when I came upon one guy snoozing in business class. His black T-shirt had me confused because it had the word AWAKE printed in big, bold, white letters right across his chest. Pen and paper in hand, I stood there a good minute contemplating whether or not this was a personal message worn specifically for this moment so he wouldn’t miss out on the chicken or beef. And it’s because of that stupid shirt I came to the incorrect conclusion the guy had a sense of humor.
“Can’t you see I’m sleeping!” he yelled.
“I’m sorry, it’s just, well, normally I don’t wake people up, but your shirt…”
He turned all the way around in the big, cushy, leather seat so I could read the back. Turns out, AWAKE was not a comment on his state of consciousness on the airplane but the title of a movie I’d never heard of.
Most flight attendants love when passengers fall asleep, as a quiet cabin is a happy cabin. The exception to this rule is when a passenger falls asleep on the floor in the middle of the aisle. That can only mean one thing: medical emergency. Imagine my surprise when I walked out of the business-class galley with a couple of drinks on a silver linen-lined tray and noticed that every single passenger on my side of the cabin had turned all the way around in their seat and was now staring at me. No one moved a muscle. No one said a word. There were just fourteen pairs of eyes wide open. That’s when I noticed the woman on the floor. As I ran to her side, I ordered another flight attendant to page for a doctor.
When it comes to medical emergencies, I’ve been pretty lucky in that there have always been a few medical professionals on board willing to volunteer their services. Whether they’re a group of doctors on their way to a medical convention or a couple of flight attendants who once worked in nursing or as EMTs, there’s usually someone, besides me, who can help. But this time I wasn’t so lucky. No one rang their call light. I asked the flight attendant to try again, and again, as some medical professionals will wait a few seconds in hopes that someone else will respond so they won’t have to.
Thank God, I thought, when I heard not one, but two call lights ring. The man in the button-down shirt across the aisle turned out not to be a doctor, dammit! He wanted to know if he could get another gin and tonic. The woman sitting in first class also turned out not to be in the medical field, but just a concerned passenger, which would have been nice if what she cared about hadn’t been whether whatever was going on in the back would affect her connecting flight! In the meantime the unconscious woman came to, passed out again, and then came to again—and thankfully stayed that way. I learned she was an up-and-coming fashion designer who hadn’t eaten all week, so I handed her a wheat roll and went back to work. The most disturbing thing for me was not one person who had witnessed the event inquired about her well-being. They were more concerned about drink refills and whose tray I would take away first since they’d all been waiting a long time and needed to get back to work.
Although I dread medical emergencies, I’ll take one any day over a New York–Miami flight. Demanding, ballbusting, ick, hellacious, unfrigginbelievable, avoid, and the F word are a few of the words my coworkers use to describe the route. Lycratubetop and Sickcall deserve an honorable mention. It’s one of the most, if not the most, difficult routes in the system. Flight attendant Sherly needs Prosac, Valium, and a shot of vodka after just thinking about working the trip. The problem stems from combining passengers possessing two completely different yet very strong personalities. Mix them with the most junior flight attendants inside a confined space for two and a half hours, and you better believe there’s going to be drama!
I make it a point to avoid the route altogether, but if I do get the city pairing on reserve, I try my best not to smile during boarding. It’s essential to set the tone for the flight. I don’t want anyone to come to the (correct) conclusion that I’m the one they can walk all over. These passengers seem to come with the mind-set of whoever yells the loudest wins. They think the nice one is the weak link, as well as the ticket to free booze, and depending on how badly they’ve abused the crew, sometimes they’re right. One New York–based crew fought back by refusing to work after passengers booed them in the terminal for arriving late to the gate. It wasn’t the crew’s fault their inbound flight had been delayed taking off from wherever they had flown in from, causing a domino effect for flights using the same equipment (and crew) later on in the day. Passengers sometimes mistakenly think there are extra airplanes lying around the airport waiting to be had when a situation like this occurs, but there aren’t, and the best you can do is just go with the flow and try to relax. Instead, this particular group of obnoxious passengers caused the crew to deem the environment too hostile to work. They walked off the airplane and refused to go back to work, forcing the airline to call out reserves to staff the trip, delaying the flight even longer. And that’s just one New York–Miami flight.
Still, New York and Florida aren’t the only states with a reputation. Thanks to Eagle County Airport, the gateway to Vail, Colorado, has a bad rap, too. In fact the New York–Vail route is so bad a friend of mine will take Miami any day and every day over that crowd, “the worst bunch of selfish A-holes in the world,” she says. This from a girl I’d never before heard curse! But I know how she feels. It’s a route where every single person sitting in coach truly believes she (or he) should be in first class. And they’re irked about it, too, from the moment they step on board wearing Chewbacca boots and carrying Louis Vuitton luggage to the time the plane touches ground and they’re calling their drivers and ordering the nannies to gather their belongings. PETA would have a field day if they took one of these flights. The full-length furs are out of control! I’ll never forget the lady who called me over and then silently turned her back to me. It took a few seconds before I realized she expected me to help her take off her mink coat. Because the tiny closet in first class isn’t big enough to house more than a handful of these furry monstrosities, and because nobody is willing to stow them inside an overhead bin, they wind up on laps of sulking owners who are upset about the inconvenience. They take it out on me by not ordering a drink because there’s not enough room to get their tray table down. Life is really tough sometimes.
The thing about problem passengers that bothers me the most is they always seem to have problems (thus, the name). When problem passengers are on board they’ll take up all our time, as if they’re the only passengers on board. Usually they make themselves known right away, either by having to be told several times to turn off an electronic device before takeoff or by complaining about a passenger who has reclined his seat right after takeoff.
A quick aside here on reclining: anti-recliners need to understand that all passengers are allowed to recline their seats, even during the meal service. (Although I’ve heard there are some foreign carriers that do require the seats to be put back up during the meal service.) Of course, recliners should be mindful of the way in which they recline. We see laptops get damaged all the time by speedy recliners who whip back and break the computer screen leaning against their chair. And if you’re an anti-recliner, do not block the recliner with your knees or threaten to punch him in the face if he reclines one more time. This is not acceptable behavior on or off an airplane. As for those seat-blocking devices that attach to the tray table and keep the seat in front from leaning back, leave them at home. We will confiscate them. Flight attendants hear more complaints about recliners from anti-recliners than anything else. A woman wearing Coke-bottle glasses called me over to show me she could not put down her tray table because of the seat in front of her. I suggested that perhaps if she removed the very large fanny pack from around her waist it might go down. By the way she looked at me, you’d think I was the crazy one. And don’t even get me started on the big guy who had the nerve to complain about a recliner even though his own seat was reclined!
As far as bad passengers go, Tony Last-Name-Starts-with-a-D (not Danza) is by far the worst I’ve ever encountered in my fifteen years of flying. I should have known he’d be a problem the moment he stepped on board, considering he was the first person to walk on the plane and he wasn’t even sitting in first class. Even though all the overhead bins were empty, he wanted to stow his rolling bag in the first-class closet and became angry when I wouldn’t allow him to do so. It’s against FAA rules to stack bags in the closet and it was already filled with my crew bag and a passenger’s wheelchair the agent had brought down earlier. I tried to explain this to him but he wasn’t having it. He stormed off and threw his bag inside a first-class bin. I asked him to take it down and find another bin in coach closer to his seat. Even though it’s first come, first served when it comes to overhead space, first-class bins are only for first-class passengers, who, incidentally, get boarded first. He knew that, but he got pissed off about it anyway. We were off to a great start. For the rest of the flight it was one thing after another, starting with my insufficient explanation about our twenty-minute weather delay on the ground to the alcoholic drink he wasn’t allowed to finish because we were on descent and about to land. As I passed him on my way to my jump seat, he reached out and grabbed my wrist roughly.
“I want your name!”
I gave it to him. I even spelled it out for him. Then I went up to the front to grab the list of passenger names, which comes in handy during times like this. All I’d done was what the airlines hired me to do, so I wasn’t worried. But it was his word against mine, and because I didn’t trust him I wanted to write my own letter to explain how it really went down.
Well, life happens and sometimes we just forget to write those letters we had every intention of writing. What doesn’t usually happen is that we run into the very person we had planned on writing about a week later in a totally different city, just as he is cutting the line to talk to the gate agent. I wasn’t on the clock, so I wasn’t wearing anything navy, flammable, or polyester. That day I was just a regular (standby) passenger trying to get home, which is probably why Lance didn’t recognize me when we first locked eyes. But I must have looked familiar because he actually smiled at me. Too stunned to do anything else I smiled back, but just barely.
I don’t know how to explain what happened next. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m not a confrontational person—I’m not! But something weird happened to me that day. My feet suddenly began to move my body toward Lance. As if in a movie, he shifted to face me, and if you didn’t know us you might mistake us for long lost-friends, or even worse, lovers. Before I knew it I was almost upon him and that’s when I heard the dreaded words come out of my mouth.
“Ya write that letter yet, Lance?” And my feet kept walking, while my heart pounded double-time and my brain wondered what the heck my mouth had done! I regretted it as soon as I had said it. I really did.
He sounded more like a volcanic eruption than a human being, “FUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOOOOUUUUUU—YOU—YOU—YOU—YOU!”
The agent pulled me off the flight. Three managers were called to the gate to take care of the disturbance—me! At least that’s how the agent had made it seem. Lance wanted my job, and every single person traveling through the terminal that day knew it. I probably would have gotten into pretty big trouble if Lance had been able to calm down at some point, but I had pushed him over the edge and there was no coming back. Even the managers seemed a little taken back by his behavior. Eager to put an end to it, one of them assured him they’d take care of me and then sent him on his miserable way. As for me, my punishment was having to fly back to New York via Newark because the last flights to LaGuardia and JFK had just departed with Lance and without me. Flying into Newark Airport is pure torture for flight attendants living in Queens because of the amount of time and cash it takes to get home, which means in the end Lance kind of won.
Or maybe I won, because the lesson learned by far outweighed the two and a half hours lost and the sixty bucks spent making the trek back home. Problem passengers are problem passengers and nothing is going to change that. We can’t take nasty passenger behavior personally and truly, for every jerk there’s a plane full of wonderful passengers. So when a similar situation occurred the following week, I considered it a test of my newfound knowledge.
It was my last leg of the day and I had been assigned to deadhead to New York out of Miami in first class. No sooner had I taken my seat when the agent came down to tell me a first-class passenger had checked in at the last minute so she had to switch my seat to one in coach, an aisle in the bulkhead row. I collected my things and moved a few rows back.
“I wanted to sit there! Why does she get to sit there? She’s an employee!” whined a voice a few rows behind me.
“I’m so sorry,” said a working flight attendant leaning in close to me, “But a passenger is really upset that you’re sitting here. Would you mind switching seats?”
I had no problem switching seats. But it had been a really long day, I was exhausted after working a ten-hour shift, and he was still complaining in that annoying voice about why the airline would treat an employee better than a passenger. As I bent over to collect my things for a second time, I might have mumbled, “What a jerk.”
“What did you say?!” said the voice. Oh God. I stayed low, pretending to be still collecting my things. “Did you just call me a jerk?”
I didn’t know how he had heard it or why he seemed to think that the other flight attendant had said it. Slumping down in my seat, I stayed that way while the flight attendant tried to calm him down. When that didn’t work, the flight attendant went to get the captain who came back and tried to rationalize with the guy, who then made the major mistake of calling the captain a fucking idiot. This is a great way to get kicked off a plane, and that is exactly what happened. Five days later, I kid you not, the exact same passenger wound up sitting in the row directly behind mine on a flight from Chicago. I kept my head down and didn’t dare ask if he’d written a letter yet. I never wanted to have to fly back through Newark again! As I said, lesson learned. Confrontation avoided for a turbulent-free flight.