IT’S ONE THING to get down on your hands and knees to crawl inside a dirty food cart in an attempt to find something, anything—half a cashew!—to eat after the captain announces a two-hour air traffic control hold in flight due to bad weather on the ground after you’ve already flown five and a half hours across country. True story. It’s quite another thing to collect a mountain of leftover Saran-wrapped sandwiches piled so high in your arms that you can actually rest your chin on top. Simply because you might get hungry later on. Flight attendants are a lot like survivalists. We’ve learned from experience to plan for the unexpected. We’re like raccoons, scavenging to survive.
“Hey, guys, look what I saved for us!” I exclaimed in front of the cockpit door. In my arms I held two hundred gourmet sandwiches.
After a very long pause, one of the pilots, the more handsome of the two, asked, “Why?”
Why? He had to be joking. Now it was I who looked at him strangely. “In case we get hungry on the layover.” Duh. For the life of me I could not figure out why they weren’t more excited about the sandwiches! Most of the pilots I had encountered up to this point were just as bad as the flight attendants, if not worse, when it came to leftover airplane food.
The problem with these two ungrateful pilots was this. They were employed by bazillionaire Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team. We were on board Mark’s GV, a fourteen-passenger Gulfstream jet. To put it in perspective, at the time Oprah also owned a private Gulfstream jet. Because of this plane he bought online, Mark made it into the Guinness Book of World Records for largest electronic transaction ever made. And there I was, in my own black slacks and red silk blouse, in need of a serious sandwich intervention on board a $41 million private jet.
The pilot sitting in the right seat, the nicer of the two, with five kids at home and a tendency to wish people a blessed day, finally spoke up. “You know you get a per diem, right?”
Per diem? What did that have to do with anything? At my airline, the per diem was about $1.50 an hour. It wasn’t enough to buy airport food, let alone room service, much less pay the monthly rent after purchasing a few pairs of DKNY opaque tights. Sure, designer hose are a little pricey for a girl on a budget, but they were the only ones I knew of that didn’t snag each time my leg rubbed against an aisle seat, so by spending money I was actually saving money. At least that’s what I kept telling myself.
“Seventy-five dollars a day,” he said, snapping me back to reality.
“Wait… what? Oh my God—oops, sorry!—say that again!” I wanted to make sure I heard that right.
At that moment, the clouds parted, light came streaming down into the cockpit upon his bald head, and I could have sworn I heard angels singing in the background as he spoke. I almost dropped all two hundred sandwiches on the floor. Holy moly, hallelujah, it truly was a blessed day!
At my airline, it would have taken half a month to make what the Mark Cuban gig paid for two days of work. At my airline, I never would have dreamed of laying over anywhere for longer than thirty-six hours. Now I had three days off between two easy workdays. At $75 a pop, that totaled to a tremendous amount of food I could eat, and would eat, just because I could. All I had to do was keep track of my receipts.
That night, I agreed to meet the pilots for dinner at the hotel restaurant. As luck would have it the restaurant turned out to be a Benihana steakhouse. Things were looking up. I went a little crazy and ordered the shrimp and chicken combo, as well as a spicy tuna roll appetizer. Why not? For the first time in my flight attendant life, I could afford it. I even paid the extra fee for fried rice instead of white rice. Talk about living it up! To top it off I asked the waitress to bring me a Japanese beer, Sapporo. The big one.
Afterward, when the pilots made a beeline back to their rooms to call the wives and kids, I took a quick stroll across the street to a health food store I’d spotted earlier in the day. I placed a case of protein bars on the counter. Name a flight attendant who couldn’t use twenty-four grams of protein covered in yogurt? I’d need one in the morning. Back in the hotel room, I spotted a bottle of Evian water provided by the hotel in my room sitting on the dresser next to the television. After staring at it longingly for a good five minutes, I realized I didn’t have to lean over the sink and slurp water out of the tap. I could actually break the plastic seal and guzzle it down without having to worry about paying the five-dollar charge or running out to a convenience store to find the same brand in the same size before checkout. I’ll never forget how freeing it felt to crack the seal on the plastic cap. Water never tasted so good.
Without thinking, I picked up the remote and ordered a movie in my room the old-fashioned way. I pressed MENU, scrolled through a list of titles, chose a classic chick flick, and pushed OKAY. I can’t tell you how nice it was to skip spending twenty minutes unscrewing cable cords, crisscrossing the lines and then screwing them back in in a lame attempt to score free cable without getting electrocuted. Life didn’t get much better than this.
So how did I come to be lying on a king-size bed in a nice D.C. hotel, propped up against the fluffy white pillows watching the movie Serendipity starring John Cusack with the curtains drawn all the way back to reveal way off in the distance a beautiful view of a big white building, possibly the White House? (I wasn’t sure.) It’s kind of a strange story. I got the job through Mark’s brother, Brian, whom I had met on an online dating website a year earlier. Let the record state I never went out with Brian. Let the record also state that I think Brian had a crush on my sister, who was also using the same online matchmaking site, which may have had a little something to do with getting the job. Then again, Brian is a really nice guy, so he may have just been doing what he does best, connecting people, creating opportunity.
For his birthday Brian wanted to borrow Mark’s jet to fly friends and family to Vegas for the weekend, and because he knew what I did for a living he offered me the job. I didn’t have any private jet training, but apparently I didn’t need it since the plane only seated fourteen passengers and I would be listed as one on the official paperwork, a passenger who also could serve drinks. I didn’t ask. I just went with it.
I wish I could say that working on a private jet was a dream come true, but the truth is, I never dared to dream so big. The plane looked like something out of a movie. It was so breathtaking I had to photograph it from every angle—twice. Just so I wouldn’t forget every single light beige leather with dark wood grain detail. Who knew if I’d ever be given this opportunity again? Four oversized leather swiveling chairs faced each other in front of the cockpit—snap! A long leather couch with decorative throw pillows spanned the length of the cabin—snap, snap! A large wooden boardroom table at the back of the plane between four more of those first-class swiveling chairs—snap, snap, snap! On the walls were a couple of television screens. I’d been instructed to have each one tuned into a specific sports television station before Mark boarded the plane. The bathroom really impressed me the most. It was roomy, and the gold sink fixtures added a special touch. Never in my life had I seen such a cushy seat on a toilet. Like Goldilocks I was tempted to sit on it just to see what it felt like—snap, snap, snap, snap!
While the galley looked impressive at first, with its crystal wine goblets housed behind clear panes of glass, I quickly learned the space was not flight-attendant-friendly. The dorm-room-size refrigerator was too small to house the cold lobster and shrimp party trays. Pouring water into the coffee machine proved to be the biggest challenge. It was mounted on the wall so high above my head that I had no idea if I was even pouring water inside. Hence all the half pots of brewed coffee during flight. I’d thought working the first-class 737 galley with its lack of counter space was bad, but this was ten times worse! But what the galley lacked in comfort, my jump seat more than made up for. Secluded behind a wall, it felt a world away from everything else, like my own private closet. To see what was going on during the flight, I’d have to stand up and step around the corner to check on everyone. Well, that is, if I could remember to do so, because with one push of a button a small video monitor popped out of my chair. There were dozens of channels to choose from!
I had decorated the plane with a Happy Birthday sign I had created at home with colorful markers, poster board, and a deck of cards and fake poker chips. I twisted red and black streamers together and taped them to the wall. As the guests boarded, I handed out birthday hats and party blowers. A little cheesy, I know, but I considered Brian a friend. I guess I felt overly grateful to have the job. The flight from Dallas to Vegas was a short one. A few cups of black coffee and a couple of rum and Cokes, and before I knew it we were on the ground parked at the end of the tarmac next to a dozen other private jets. Some were bigger, most were smaller. The most memorable thing about the trip happened next. When the airplane door opened, a red carpet was laid down at the bottom of the short flight of metal steps. “Welcome to Vegas,” it read in black script, two lucky dice decorating the left-hand corner.
After everyone else deplaned, the pilots and I straightened up the airplane and then jumped into a rental car waiting for us at the end of the red carpet. That has to be the very best thing about flying private. There’s no traipsing through the airport, no going through security (at least not before 9/11), and no waiting around for an airport shuttle, because when you land, a valet at the airport parks your car next to the plane with the trunk and driver’s door open, the key in the ignition, the engine purring. For the first time in my life, I felt like a celebrity, not the hired help.
The plan was to work to Vegas on a Friday night and then head back to Dallas Sunday afternoon, so I figured I could stay out late after we got in and try my luck at the slots in the casino at our hotel. Imagine my surprise when I got a call early the following morning that startled me out of bed.
“Hello?” I mumbled into the wrong end of the phone.
“Plans have changed,” said a pilot. I had no idea which one it was. “Mark wants to see the team play today, so we’re going to leave in an hour.”
An hour! I threw back the covers and jumped out of bed.
“It’s just going to be Mark on board today. Go ahead and call catering from your room. The number is on the menu I gave you yesterday. Meet us down in the lobby. We’ll fly back to Vegas after the game.”
Corporate flight attendants normally keep notes on regular passengers so they know what to order from catering when they’re on board. Nothing makes a passenger feel more special than a flight attendant who not only remembers their name but also what they like to eat and drink. Since I really didn’t know Mark that well, or at all, I had no idea what he might like. That’s why I decided to order a little bit of everything! They say a way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. I prayed the same could be said for obtaining a permanent position on his plane.
Only once in my life had I ever served just one passenger on board a commercial flight. His name was Robert Redford and he sat all alone in first class on a late-night flight to New York. Business class and coach were totally full. That was my lucky day because I was the one and only flight attendant working in his cabin. My partner had been repositioned because of the light load up front. We’re taught in training that the service isn’t officially done until all cabins are completely finished, so as much as I would have loved to hover over Bob and dream about running my fingers through his beautiful thick blond hair, I knew I also had to offer my assistance in the back. Because all he wanted on a five-and-a-half-hour flight was a Diet Coke, just one, the least I could do was run through coach real quick with a pickup bag a few times. I’m only sharing this with you because even though I only had one customer to look after, there’s always something else to do, at least on a commercial flight.
Robert Redford and Mark Cuban have a few things in common. Besides being extremely nice and maybe even a little shy, they both made me very nervous because they were way too easy to please. I’m not used to that. Mark, like Robert, only wanted a Diet Coke. That’s it. Keep in mind that I have a lot of experience serving Diet Coke. You might find it interesting to learn that it’s the most annoying beverage a flight attendant can pour for a passenger in flight, because in the time it takes us to fill one cup, we could have served an entire row of passengers. For some reason the fizz at 35,000 feet doesn’t go down as quickly as it does for other sodas, so flight attendants end up standing in the aisle just waiting to pour a little more… and a little more… and a little more… until passengers sitting nearby become impatient and begin shouting out drink orders I can never remember.
“Just one second,” I’ll say, still pouring a little more… and a little more until finally I just hand them the can. I’ve actually had nightmares about frantically trying to finish a never-ending Diet Coke beverage service before landing. Who would have guessed that working on a private jet and serving a single Diet Coke to one passenger would turn out to be even more difficult?
Mark sat at the boardroom table watching television or reading a magazine. Each time I got up to check on him, he’d look right at me, smile and say, “I’m fine.” The two words were out of his mouth before I could even take three steps in his direction.
“Oh. Okay,” I said and quickly retreated back into my private corner.
Talk about awkward. I couldn’t walk by him or even near him without him knowing I was checking up on him since there was no one else on board and he sat all the way in the back. To be honest I couldn’t even figure out why I was there. I couldn’t stop wondering what I was supposed to be doing because there had to be something other than nothing! That’s when I started getting nervous. Did he have some sort of bell to ring when he wanted to get my attention? Would he just call out my name? How would I know if he needed something when I couldn’t see him? Would he just wait until he saw me again or would he get up and serve himself? Oh lord, I didn’t want that to happen!
“Really, I’m fine.” Smile.
“Just checking…”
Soon I began fixating on the glass. Should I collect it as soon as he finished his drink or wait until he pushed it out of the way? I really didn’t want to screw this up before I even began. On a commercial flight, there would have been nothing to think about. I’d walk down the aisle, pick it up, and ask the passenger if he’d like a refill. But Mark wouldn’t even allow me to get that far.
“Still good.”
“Okey-dokey.” Oh my God I did not just say that! What is wrong with me?
I’ll tell you what was wrong with me. The harder I tried to relax, the worse I became. It was no use trying to get comfortable on that sleek, luxurious plane. I’d grown too accustomed to people constantly wanting something from me. To be honest, I don’t think Mark felt entirely at ease with my popping up every five seconds, either. So what should have been a wonderful experience turned out to be kind of weird—thanks to me.
We never did make it back to Vegas that night. I drove to my parents’ house and sat around catching up for two, there, four hours—however long it takes to play a basketball game—until it was time to head back. When I got back to the airport, Mark called to tell us he’d changed his mind about going back that night. The flight was canceled. I assumed it had something to do with his team losing the game. Both pilots were thrilled—they both lived in Dallas. I overheard them telling their wives they’d be home for the night, but then they’d have to head out again the next day to pick up the rest of the gang.
“But what about all the catering I ordered for the flight?” You can take a girl off of a commercial airline, but you can’t take the commercial airline out of the girl.
“Take it with you,” said the first officer. I’m pretty sure my eyes gleamed with joy. While the captain loosened his tie and rolled his eyes (okay, so I may have imagined that last part), the FO actually helped me load it all into the backseat of my car. And that’s how my family came to eat Mark Cuban’s dinner. My mother and father thought it was delicious. My sister couldn’t believe I had brought it home!
At first it might seem like flying private is the way to go, especially when you’re a flight attendant and you board a flight early in the morning to find a pilot vacuuming the floor with a full-size Hoover. I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. He seemed to be doing a really good job, too. I’d never seen anything like it.
Note to self: Marry a corporate pilot.
After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I came to realize the pilots really do it all, from ordering fuel and loading bags to stocking magazines and hiring flight attendants. I’ve heard of some pilots even acting as flight attendants on some corporate flights. I’d love to see that! I have no idea what their pay is like compared to other pilots, but I do know that corporate flight attendants are paid a whole heck of a lot more per trip than most flight attendants who work commercial. The thing is, most are not guaranteed a certain number of hours each month, whereas commercial flight attendants can count on a monthly average base salary of seventy-five hours. I’d choose security over salary any day. And many corporate flight attendants don’t even have health insurance unless they pay for it on their own. The worst part about working corporate for both pilots and flight attendants is that it’s like they’re on reserve without the hope of ever holding off. When Mark says it’s time to go, his pilots have to go, even if that means taking Mark and his friends on a joy ride at three in the morning. It doesn’t matter what might be going on at home. Birthdays, anniversaries, recitals, all must be pushed aside. Might be why I sensed a little tension when I called one of the pilots on his cell to confirm the departure time of our trip the next day.
“Twelve o’clock!” he snapped. Then he whispered, “Don’t call me at home!” and hung up.
Guess who didn’t eat. For the record, I didn’t eat, either. I made the executive decision to not order catering for the crew.
Note to self: Do not marry a corporate pilot.
Originally I was only supposed to work the one trip to Vegas, but when Mark’s usual flight attendant couldn’t make the trip to D.C., and the pilots couldn’t find anyone in Dallas to use as a backup, the pilot who told me not to call him at home called me at home and asked if I could fill in.
“Let me check my schedule…” I held my breath as I sat on the phone pretending to look at a calendar. I figured I’d make him sweat a little before letting him know, hell, yeah, I could do it! I already had the days off.
The best part? They offered to fly to New York to pick me up!
Some airlines do not allow flight attendants to work second jobs, regardless of what that job may be. Mine, thankfully, is not one of them. But flight attendants at my airline, as well as most other airlines, are not permitted to work for another carrier. I figured if push came to shove I could argue that Mark Cuban couldn’t be classified as a carrier, being he was a man—who happened to have a plane.
After I prepared the plane for our trip to D.C., I saw four of the tallest men I’d ever seen walking toward it. Years ago I had Magic Johnson on a commercial flight. He’s one of the nicest passengers on Earth. I watched him sign hundreds of autographs at the Long Beach airport baggage claim after our flight to Los Angeles made an unscheduled landing there. He was the very last person to collect his bags and leave. But even though I’m one of Magic’s biggest fans, I’m not that into basketball. So I had no idea what the Final Four was all about or who any of the really tall men were that were now walking up the stairs. I later learned their names were Dirk Nowitzki, Steve Nash, Michael Finley, and I forget who the fourth one was (sorry!). For a quick second I thought about setting my sister up with the short one. At six feet, Nash looked little compared to the other two guys. Thank goodness I never felt comfortable enough to suggest it because while my sister is pretty, she’s not Elizabeth Hurley! Which is who I saw cuddled up next to him at a basketball game on television a few weeks later. When I greeted Dirk, the youngest and tallest of the men, the top of my head came to his… hips. Not every flight attendant can say they’ve spoken to a passenger’s crotch. Talk about awkward. It was either that or risk getting a crick in my neck, which could have interfered with my real job, and I wasn’t about to risk that! And all of the guys had humongous feet. Their shoes looked like they weighed twenty pounds each. In a way they reminded me of those circus clowns that drive the tiny cars, except instead of cars, we were on the Barbie jet and I was the tiny flight attendant. It’s nice feeling petite.
What surprised me the most about these four gigantic men were their manners. They really impressed me! Seriously, it goes down in the books as the most polite flight I’ve ever worked in fifteen years. I’ve never been treated with so much respect. They were all “please” and “thank you,” “yes, ma’am” and “no, ma’am,” which kind of took me by surprise considering I was only about three years older than them. Perhaps it was being called “ma’am” that made me feel maternal toward them, because when they fell asleep during the flight I turned out the lights and covered them with blankets, extra long blankets. I kind of wish I’d taken one of them home as a souvenir—a blanket, I mean, not a player!
I only worked two flights for Mark. That’s it. But it was the most memorable time of my flying career. Would you believe that those two amazing trips to Vegas and D.C. totaled to six individual legs over the course of just two months? By far my favorite flight was the first trip, second leg—the one from Dallas to Vegas, without any passengers. We had to go there to pick up his brother Brian and friends and bring them back. On that flight it felt like I owned the plane. I lay across the sofa and flipped through a few magazines. After I caught up on my basketball reading, I sat in Mark’s favorite chair, watched TV, and drank a Diet Coke. It’s really nice being Mark Cuban. I even peeked inside his extremely organized snack drawer and wondered if he would notice a missing candy bar. (FYI, the candy bar was still there after I left!) Now I know most of you probably already know that Mark lives a good life. But that day, my life didn’t feel too shabby, either, thanks to him! It wouldn’t be right to thank Mark without also thanking Brian for being single in Dallas at the same time as me. On that note I should also thank Match.com, and my sister who went behind my back and signed me up for the online service in the first place. Just goes to show anything can happen if you just take a chance!
Meanwhile, back in the real world of commercial aviation, life was getting better. I now had five years seniority under my belt and because the airline had been on a hiring craze for the last three years I was officially off reserve and able to hold a pretty decent line—757 transcontinental flights. Once a flight attendant can hold a trip like that, it’s the only flight we’re going to work until a senior mama retires and we can hold something even better, like a 767 transcontinental flight or a trip to Europe. Doesn’t matter how long it takes, or how many times we fly to the same city month after month, year after year: a good trip is a good trip until we can hold a better trip. For me that route was New York–Vancouver.
I’d been flying to Vancouver pretty much every month for a year and a half. I didn’t care that our layover hotel was located an hour away from Vancouver by public bus because there was plenty to do and see in Richmond, British Columbia. A lot of flight attendants who can hold a regular line establish routines at layover hotels frequented often. In Vancouver, mine included a workout at a gym that had allowed me to purchase a half-priced, monthly membership. That’s where I had met the Mongolian guy who looked just like Ricky Martin, except cuter. He worked for a Canadian airline, but on the ground. We went out a few times and things started getting hot and heavy until we decided to go to Whistler for a romantic weekend away. That’s where we realized we had absolutely nothing in common and actually kind of hated each other. I always say if you’re not sure how you feel about someone, go on vacation together. It will make or break a relationship. I didn’t kick the Mongolian down the mountain, no matter how tempting it may have been. Instead we drove back to the airport in silence. Still, the scenery was so beautiful it was worth every miserable minute spent sitting next to him.
When a coworker asked me to trade trips with her, I agreed. Not because I wanted to fly to Seattle, but because she was a friend and she wanted to work with her husband who was also a flight attendant on my crew to Vancouver. Seattle is worth the same amount of hours as Vancouver, so I wouldn’t lose any flight pay. It also departed at the same exact time, the crack of dawn, so it would be an easy trip to work. Morning flights are a piece of cake. Passengers are too tired to stir up any real trouble. Most fall asleep on takeoff and don’t wake up until an hour before landing. Afternoon flights are a little more difficult because passengers bring on board the stress of their day. Dinner flights are the worst because they drink like fish and then spend a good amount of time getting up and down to use the lav. This makes the job more difficult because when the seat belt sign comes on, nobody wants to return to his or her seat. Worse is when we’re in the aisle working and they ask if they can “squeeze by real quick.” Very few people can physically fit between a cart and a row of passengers. Luckily, I’m pretty darn quick when it comes to steadying hot pots of coffee. If I ask passengers to wait a few seconds so I can finish serving a row, they’ll stand right behind me, and I mean right behind me, as in on top of me, so that each time I reach down to take something out of the cart, my butt rubs up against them. After the third time I’ll ask them to take a few steps back. They never look happy at this request.
The first passenger to preboard our flight to Seattle that morning was wearing dark, wraparound, Stevie Wonder glasses. “She’s going to need help getting to her seat,” said the agent standing next to her for support. “She’s blind.”
“Color-blind,” the woman corrected.
I’m not a touchy-feely person, so when I go to help a passenger who needs assistance I’ll grab a bag instead of a baby or an elbow instead of a hand. Something came over me that day, because I placed her Louis Vuitton purse over my shoulder and took five warm wrinkled fingers in mine.
“My name is Heather and I’ll be one of your flight attendants in first class. You’re sitting in 6B. It’s the last row in first class, an aisle seat.”
“I was supposed to fly to Vancouver today but the flight was oversold, so now I’m being rerouted through Seattle,” she told me, giving my hand a good squeeze for someone so frail. I was just about to tell her that I was supposed to be on that flight, too, but then thought better of it. She wouldn’t care. And at the rate we were moving, we wouldn’t get to her seat for another five minutes, so I didn’t want to distract her from the task at hand.
“Only two more rows to go,” I said coaxing her on.
“You’re sensitive. You go out of your way to do what’s right. You’ve surrounded yourself with a good circle of friends. Be careful, darling, you trust too easily. Someone you know will betray you.”
I stumbled on a snag in the carpet, but quickly regained my footing before falling face first and taking my new friend along with me. I made a mental note to write it up later. “Are you some sort of psychic?”
“No, not a psychic, but I do have the gift and I enjoy giving it away.”
At row 6, I placed her designer bag under the seat for her and then moved the seat belts out of the way so she could sit down. “What else can you tell me?”
“Let’s see. You completely changed your life. Ten years ago you were going down one path and then, out of nowhere, you chose a completely different path, a whole other life. You left someone behind, someone you cared for deeply.”
Brent! My on-off (mostly off) college boyfriend. I hadn’t seen him since we got stuck our Costa Rica fiasco. We were traveling on my passes, but the flight was full so we couldn’t get on. I was freaking out because I had flight attendant recurrent training the following morning, so without thinking twice I purchased two last-minute, one-way tickets to Panama for $150 each. There we would have enough time (forty-five minutes) to connect to a flight back to Miami using my passes. I should have known something was up when I spotted the armed military guys following us around the airport terminal in Panama. They even waited outside the chocolate shop for us before trailing behind us to the gate. But it wasn’t until we were safe and sound on U.S. soil going through customs and immigration that I realized someone might be in trouble. Red lights began to blink as a siren went off. An officer yelled, “Up against the wall!” I remember turning around and looking for the guilty party, only to find out that someone was me.
“Me?” I asked just to make sure, because surely it couldn’t be me. I was a flight attendant! I showed him my crew ID to prove it. We were detained while they checked our luggage with a fine-toothed comb. That was three years ago. There wasn’t a day that went by when I didn’t think about him.
The old lady with the Stevie Wonder glasses patted my hand reassuringly. “Oh darling, he wasn’t worth your time. You’re much better off without him.”
I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me—in color. I believed her. “Thank you,” I said, trying to hold back the tears. My mascara wasn’t waterproof and I didn’t want to have to redo my makeup before takeoff.
“You about ready to board?” asked the agent standing between the cockpit and first class.
“Almost!” I called out, wedging myself between the bulkhead wall and the last row of first class and reaching between the seats for the woman’s hand before it was too late. “Tell me more. What about my future? Can you tell me about that?”
“That, my dear, is rather interesting.” Leaning toward me she whispered, “Most people are afraid of the truth. Of what lies ahead. I don’t know why. The truth is all we have.” I could see my distorted reflection in the black frames vigorously nodding back at me. “Now, listen closely. I’ve been fortunate enough to hold the hands of many famous people. The thing that sets them apart from everyone else is their powerful life force. I can honestly say that I feel the same thing when I hold your hand. You’re very creative. You’re going to do great things.” She patted my hand twice. “You have a message. Your name will be well known.”
“I’m going to send them down now!” said the agent, who hadn’t bothered to wait for my reply.
I called back, “Okay!”
Now I was confused. I had no idea what the heck the psychic passenger was talking about. Maybe she really was just a regular old crazy lady dripping in jewels and carrying very expensive luggage. But then it came to me. I could feel my heart beating wildly.
“I’m an actress! Well, really, I’ve only been doing extra work, but—”
“No. That’s not it.”
The first few passengers began walking on board. I tried to squat down so they couldn’t see me. “That’s got to be it. I’ve been taking acting lessons.”
“I said, that’s not it.”
“But I’ve been getting really lucky. Last week I got a line in a movie and—”
“You’re a writer. Tic Tac?” she asked, shaking the little plastic box at me.
A writer? I held my hand out and let a few green mints drop into my palm. “I don’t know about that. I’m not a good writer.”
Pointing a crooked finger at me, she stated, “That is not for you to decide. It is not your business to determine how good you are. That is for the world to decide!”
There was one more thing I needed to know about before the rest of the passengers made it on board. One really important thing. “What about love? Will I ever find it?”
“You’ll know soon enough.”
A passenger seated a few rows up turned around in his seat and asked, “Can you take my jacket, miss?”
I smiled at the man and said, “Oh, sure. I’ll be there in just a minute.” When he turned all the way back around, I whispered between the seats, “How soon? This month? This year?”
She took my hand in hers and squeezed. “I predict a proposal three months after the New Year.”
Three months after the New Year? But that was soon! The sooner the better, I told myself. Quickly I did the math in my head and gasped. Eight months! I did the math again, just to make sure I got that right. It was still eight months away. The UN guy. It had to be the guy who worked at the United Nations. I’d just met him online. We’d already had two dates and I really liked him a lot.
“Darling, take a deep breath. All great loves come from friendship. You must remain patient. Let it grow. Your life is about to completely change.” She yawned and closed her eyes, and didn’t open them again until we landed in Seattle.
I didn’t really believe in psychics, or even nonpsychics who just had the gift, but on my layover I could not get our conversation out of my head. I took a brisk walk down to Pike Place Market to wander around and get a little fresh air. I ordered a latte and then found a place to sit outside the coffee shop. Normally I enjoy people watching, but that day, pen over paper, I decided that if I was supposed to be a writer I should probably start writing. Problem was, I didn’t have anything to write about! For a split second I thought about writing about my job, but that would be boring. Who would want to read about that? That’s when the idea hit me: a dark comedy about a serial killer flight attendant. I decided to call it Stewardeath.
The last thing the psychic had told me was my life would completely change. Boy, did it ever. Thirty days after she walked on board my flight, something horrible happened. On September 11, 2001, I landed in Zurich early in the morning. I was on vacation. After a short nap, followed by a quick shower, I sat on the end of the hotel bed with wet hair and turned on the television. With a hairbrush resting on my thigh, I watched in horror as the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center. I did not move from that spot for hours. Being so far away only made it worse. I didn’t care that at that moment Switzerland was probably the safest place on Earth. All I wanted to do was go home.
Even though I’d been told by an airline representative not to bother going to the airport as a standby passenger, I went anyway so I could get my name on the list. I guess others had the same idea because I wound up being number nine-hundred-and-something on the list. I could have bought a full-fare ticket in coach for $8,000 that would have guaranteed a departure on the twenty-first if I weren’t broke from having to pay a hotel every night and an overpriced espresso and croissant at the airport each morning. After two weeks of checking in and out of a Swiss hotel and lugging my bags on and off a train to get to the airport and then back to the hotel every day, I finally made it back to the United States. I landed at an airport in Texas because my flight to Chicago had been canceled. Instead of continuing on to New York, I decided to stay with my parents for a while. I had the time off because my route, the flight I’d flown for almost two years, New York–Vancouver, had been wiped off my schedule for the month, never to return again because it was an unprofitable route that catered to cruise lines. I was lucky because I got a little time off that most of my colleagues did not. They had to go right back to work. Of course, there were a few that quit, like my friend and ex-roommate Jane, who was now married and pregnant, but the majority of flight attendants I knew soldiered on. I can’t even imagine what it must have been like to fly in the days right after.
I returned to work less than a month after so many people lost their lives. As I stepped out of the Kew Gardens cab in front of my apartment building in Queens, the smell in the air was strange and unexplainable. It lingered for months. The black soot that accumulated on our windowsill in the apartment had to be cleaned off every day. A pile of cardboard moving boxes sat on the curb, waiting to be loaded into a truck. Every morning they were there, the same boxes with different shipping addresses written on the label, different neighbors dispersing to different faraway cities. When I noticed a few of them were headed for Japan, I felt sad knowing the opera singer I’d never met other than a quick hello in the elevator would no longer be filling our hallway with beautiful music. As people left New York in droves and the odd smell refused to dissipate, my colleagues and I went back to work, back on the airplanes. And while we did so, memorials for coworkers who had lost their lives were set up in Operations.
During one memorable flight into New York, we were low over the city, and all the passengers were glued to the windows on one side of the aircraft to get a good look out the window at where the World Trade Center had once been. A dark hole on the ground was the only thing left. It smoldered for far too long. I wondered if the pilots were tipping the wing of the airplane in its direction in respect to what had happened.
Flying had changed. We were all scared. Conversation on the jump seat only seemed to be about one thing. During takeoff, one flight attendant sitting beside me asked, “What are you going to do if something happens?”
I had a few ideas of what I could do, but I didn’t know exactly what I would do, if, in fact, it came to that. God, how many times did I pray sitting on the jump seat during takeoff that it wouldn’t come to that? And if it did, I prayed it would happen before we finished the service because I didn’t want to have to do all that work and then die.
“Here’s what I’m going to do,” said the voice beside me. I was so busy thinking about dying that I had forgotten he was there. He motioned to the insert of soda sitting on the linoleum floor beside the jump seat, an FAA no-no. Grabbing a can of Pepsi, he made quick and aggressive throwing motions. “Bam! Bam! Bam!”
“You’re going to kill them with Pepsi?” I asked.
“It’s better than nothing!”
Every flight attendant I met had some sort of plan, and each plan was more original and ingenious than the next. Broken wine bottles, hot coffee, and seat cushions became some of the weapons we could use. One flight attendant carried packets of salt and pepper to rub in their eyes. My weapon of choice also became a can of soda. But I wouldn’t be throwing it. I would place it inside a long sock that I would swing over my head like a lasso if anyone tried any funny business on one of my flights. I kept the sock and a can of soda hidden in the seat back pocket behind the last row of seats in whichever cabin I happened to be working that day.
Meanwhile, flight attendants and passengers came together like the rest of the world did. We were a team and everyone offered their support. There were times, only a few, when questionable things would happen. Like the time the dark-skinned man kept going in and out of the bathroom with a McDonald’s bag. It felt like he might be doing a “test run” to let others know how we would react if someone decided later on to hide a bomb housed in a McDonald’s bag in the bathroom. After we reported the guy, every suit from every agency on Earth met our flight at the gate in Los Angeles. After speaking to him for an hour, they didn’t arrest him, but we later learned that he had purchased a one-way ticket with cash. His passport had also just been issued to him. Was it also a coincidence that he would soon be going to school in Florida? Maybe. Maybe not. On that same flight there were three other Middle Eastern men, musicians who walked on board with three guitars. They kept switching seats in flight. We moved their instruments from the first-class closet behind the cockpit to the one located nearest the rear of the plane. Just to be safe. There were other times when passengers did things to obviously take advantage of the situation. An elderly gentleman from the Middle East sat in the first row of coach and kept his Koran and book about weapons displayed on his tray table for all to see. We ignored him, and his evil glare, as it was all too aggressive to be taken seriously. Plus, we knew there was a lawsuit just waiting to happen.
Even now, ten years later, whenever I hear about any accident involving an aircraft I’m taken back to that day in September. Most people don’t have to think about it every time they go to work the way I do. From the moment I step out of my shoes to go through airport security until the aircraft slides into the gate, I think about what happened to those planes. They were my planes. My coworkers. My passengers.
After 9/11 many flight attendants lost their jobs. The ones who stayed took pay cuts, watched days grow longer while layovers grew shorter, and began working flights staffed with FAA minimum crew. Things we took for granted, like pillows, blankets, and even a few airlines, slowly began to disappear. At yearly recurrent training we were taught something new: karate. We talked about throwing hot coffee at lunging terrorists along with other things I’m not at liberty to discuss.
If passengers weren’t afraid to fly, they could no longer afford to do so, so the airlines had to drastically lower ticket prices. A one-way ticket could now be had for the same price as a pair of designer jeans. In July 2011 my airline advertised a fare from Los Angeles to Las Vegas for $46. That’s about the same price it costs to take a cab from JFK Airport to Manhattan. Because airlines are determined to fill every seat by offering rock-bottom airfare specials, commuters have a difficult time getting to work. I’ve seen flight attendants trying to get to work come to blows over who’s next in line for the one and only jump seat on a flight. In an effort to stay in business, free food in coach was the first thing to go. Airlines no longer had to pay for the food, or the food’s weight in fuel, or the caterers who delivered the food to the aircraft, or the extra flight attendants required to serve the food.
Slowly but surely people returned to the skies. First-class closets were taken away and replaced with extra passenger seats. Ticket prices stayed low, and everyone and their grandmother could afford to fly, many times a year. In the past it was during the summer that our flights were filled with kids, but after 9/11 our strictly summer passengers turned into year-round passengers. There’s no longer a busiest season of the year—it’s now a constant. Frequent fliers multiplied, so the airlines had to create a VIP top tier to separate the million milers from the three million milers. Flights were booked full and the lines at security grew. Passengers began losing their patience, not just with airport security but with one another. No longer did they remain seated on the plane when it arrived at the gate so those with tight connections could deplane first and not miss their flights. It didn’t take long before I started having flashbacks to an earlier time. It was like working at Sun Jet all over again, but now I had to dodge insults and keep a watchful eye on the cabin for up to fourteen hours on the job after an eight-hour layover at an airport hotel.
These days when passengers complain about “bad service,” I take it personally. There’s only so much I can do with the tools I’ve been provided. I work hard, harder than ever before, to do a job I still take pride in. The reality is that passengers are not getting bad service, they’re getting limited service—à la carte service. I’m still serving passengers the same way I was taught fifteen years ago. The only difference is, we charge $7 for a small bottle of wine and $10 for a turkey sandwich with chips in coach. My career changed to meet the demands of the flying public—cheap tickets. But now everyone seems to have buyer’s remorse, including my husband, who is a frequent flier who travels more than a hundred thousand miles each year for business. When we first met he used to joke around about hitting the jackpot: an unlimited amount of travel passes. Nine years later he prefers to pay for tickets.
And speaking of my husband—four months after the psychic made her crazy prediction he walked on board my flight to Los Angeles. I didn’t notice him right away. But as I pulled the salad cart to the front of the cabin, I spotted the best-looking deli sandwich I’d ever seen sitting on a tray table. I couldn’t believe a business-class passenger had brought his own food.
“That looks good,” I said, passing him by.
“Want a bite?”
Oh boy, did I ever! But I declined since I was, well, working. I appreciated his kindness and handed him an extra bottle of water as a thank-you. Normally we’re only catered one per passenger, but the load was surprisingly light for one that departed two days before New Year’s Eve. Then again, it was only four months after 9/11.
At the time 10J wasn’t my type. As you might remember, my type had a tendency to suck. For one, he was shorter than I preferred, even though he was (just barely) taller than me. And bald. Okay, so he shaved his head—the point is, he had no hair and I liked hair, lots of it! But he was nice. And cute for a guy who wore jeans and a T-shirt and didn’t look at all like he belonged in business class.
What I liked about him was this. The guy knew how to share—and with a flight attendant no less! This is not normal behavior on an airplane, which is how I knew he was special. I’ve had thousands of passengers borrow pens and never give them back. Some have taken newspapers or magazines lying on top of my crew bag. One even stole an egg McMuffin right out of my jump seat and thought nothing of it once he realized who the rightful owner was! Even if 10J hadn’t offered me a bite of his sandwich, I still would have pegged him as someone I could be interested in because that sandwich alone told me he was a man with a plan, a man who knew how to take care of himself, even in business class!
I come across a lot of helplessness in the premium cabins. I once had a passenger refuse a meal tray because his turkey sausage was touching his scrambled eggs. Another passenger, a famous singer, had me run for several cups of tea because there were “black thingies” (tea leaves) floating in the hot water. And then there was the woman who wanted me to discard a single cube of ice from her glass of club soda because she had asked for three cubes, not four. Although at least she wasn’t one of the ones who complain about their ice being too cold (seriously!). And in addition to saying “please” and “thank you,” 10J also made eye contact whenever I addressed him. But he didn’t flirt. I don’t like flirters because I assume if they flirt with me they probably flirt with everyone else. That or they’re about to ask me to send an extra dessert to a friend in coach who didn’t get an upgrade.
It didn’t go unnoticed that instead of taking advantage of the call light, 10J actually got out of his seat and stepped into the galley to ask for a cup of coffee. When he did so I immediately stopped talking to my coworkers about the guy I was dating at the time, but because he had overheard some of what I had said, he wanted to know more. I told him. Why not? The flight was light and there was nothing else to do. Plus, he was a straight guy and I needed a straight man’s opinion on some questionable behavior.
“I don’t care how many guys you date—one or five. If they’re not treating you like you’re number one you shouldn’t date them, and he’s not treating you like you’re number one,” said 10J, after I asked him if he thought I was acting paranoid.
And that’s when the bell rang in my head. It didn’t quite alert me that he was The One, because surely The One couldn’t be short and bald. Not that there’s anything wrong with frequent-flying, short, bald guys. It’s just that’s not what I had imagined for myself when I dreamed of walking down the aisle toward the nameless, faceless, groom that day five years earlier when Georgia mentioned the wedding I never did get an official invitation to. Anyway, I realized 10J was right. I deserved more, a lot more than a guy with a sexy British accent who dressed in fine tailored suits and couldn’t be bothered to wrap my Christmas gift—or remember we had plans. Those wise words in the galley, coupled with the fact that after 9/11 I just wanted to settle down, get married, and have kids in three years with someone who shined with goodness, made me want to give 10J a chance—if he asked. And thank God he did!
I agreed to go out with 10J, but I was worried that I might be unduly influenced by the psychic. At the three-month mark I told him not to ask me to marry him in an attempt to slow things down. I didn’t want to make something happen that wasn’t supposed to happen just because I had a crazy idea in my head. I might have even subconsciously tried to sabotage things on our second date, when I laid my cards on the candlelit table at an Italian restaurant fifteen minutes from the Los Angeles airport. Besides telling him exactly what I wanted in a life partner, I informed him that while I didn’t want to work my you-know-what off, I wouldn’t quit my job—EVER! No matter what. I was shocked that he stuck around. And even though I bought a wedding dress four months into our relationship, it was only because I really liked the dress, not because I was in love with him. Who knew when or if I’d find another one like it!
But a year and eight months after we met, we walked down the aisle in Carmel, California, overlooking the Pacific Ocean at sunset. As far as I know we still hold the record for the cheapest wedding ever held in the history of the Highlands Inn. There were only twenty-four guests, including the photographer, and you better believe I packed my beautiful wedding gown that was on sale (and discontinued) for $199 inside my crew bag.
My life completely changed again two years after the wedding when four different pregnancy tests came back negative, positive, negative, and positive again—all in the same day. Flight attendants are allowed to work the first few months of their pregnancy, but I chose to go out on a maternity leave the very next day. Although radiation has not been proven to harm an unborn fetus, I wasn’t taking any chances by flying seventy hours a month! Or even thirty hours a month. Flight attendants who do choose to work while pregnant are allowed to drop trips, no questions asked, whenever they like. At twenty-eight weeks they’re forced to go out on maternity. The best thing about working while pregnant is getting to wear a maternity uniform top. It’s a button-up dark blue “jacket” with capped sleeves and pleated flares under the bosom. It looks like a great big pleated belly skirt. One look and it deters passengers from asking for help lifting their luggage. This explains why one flight attendant I know who is no longer pregnant continues to wear it.
It was around this time that my mind turned to mush. As my pregnancy went on, I could no longer stand the thought of rewriting the serial killer flight attendant book after every agency and publishing house on earth rejected it—four times. (One agent who is famous for being snarky wrote on the bottom of my manuscript that she was now afraid of all flight attendants and that she hoped to never see me on any of her flights.) Writing a book requires a working brain, as well as time, lots of it, which was something I didn’t have, trying to juggle motherhood and a flying career. So I put my book on hold and decided to create a blog. A blog post, I figured, only requires me to use half my brain and the baby to nap on a day off.
I got my first paycheck for writing a blog about flight attendant life in 2008, seven years after I met the psychic. In 2010 an editor at HarperCollins contacted me after reading one of my blog posts and then asked if I’d be willing to write a book. So far none of my friends have betrayed me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t sleep with one eye open. And just like I promised my husband on our second date, I’m still flying—and the stories just keep getting better, like the elderly woman in business class who yelled at me for talking too loudly to another passenger, then asked me to help her get her bra on later in flight, and then—well. You’ll have to read about that in the next book!