Cruising Attitude

Cruising Attitude

Tales of Crashpads, Crew Drama, and Crazy Passengers at 35,000 Feet

HEATHER POOLE

For Cosmo

Contents

O
KAY, WHERE’S CRAZY?
That’s what I’m wondering every time I board a flight in my flammable navy blue polyester. In flight, I’ve seen passengers get naked, attempt to open an emergency door in order to get off the “bus,” reach inside a first-class meal cart and eat leftover food from a dirty plate, and get hit on the head by luggage—then threaten to sue the airline because the injury had affected their psychic abilities. Once I watched an entire group of passengers traveling to Haiti put a voodoo curse on a coworker in the middle of the beverage service. I’ve seen a woman try to store her baby inside an overhead bin. Not too long ago a drunken passenger grabbed a flight attendant’s butt—right in front of his wife! All the newspapers wrote about it. One paper even posed the question, “What is with people going crazy on flights?” That’s exactly what I want to know!

Just how crazy can it get? Well, not long ago, I was at the rear of the aircraft, welcoming passengers aboard while keeping an eye on rolling bags and overhead bins. As is not uncommon, a couple of passengers walking down the aisle looked upset as soon as they realized they were seated in the last row, otherwise known as the worst seats on the plane. (Hey, someone has to sit there.) I was explaining to one of those passengers that yes, his seat really did recline, even in the last row of coach, when another passenger, a woman wearing hip-hugger jeans and a yellow halter top that exposed a belly ring, walked up, handed me a boarding pass, and said, “Someone is sitting in my seat.”

I looked at the seat in question, 35E, and saw that Belly Ring Girl was right. Someone was in her seat. What made this particular situation a little crazy was not the fact that she had just yelled, “This sucks!”—I actually hear that phrase all the time, which, in itself, does kind of suck—but the fact that 35E just happened to be the second worst seat on the aircraft, the seat located directly in front of the hands-down worst seat, the middle seat in the last row.

“Excuse me, miss,” I said to the seated woman in 35E with the pink cardigan sweater tied loosely around her neck. “May I see your boarding pass?’

Handing me a boarding pass for another seat, a very good seat, an aisle seat at the front of the aircraft, Pink Cardigan snapped, “I’m not moving!”

Okay. I forced a smile at her. “Please, do you mind taking
your
seat, ma’am, so this young lady can sit in
her
seat? The flight is full.”

“I told you, I’m not moving!”

Well, at least I found Crazy,
I thought to myself, as she explained in detail why she wasn’t moving. It had something to do with the movie screen.

“But there’s a movie screen right near your actual seat,” I pointed out.

That didn’t matter. What did matter was that a tall man sporting a handlebar mustache now stood a little too close to me. Pink Cardigan continued to go on and on about the seat she refused to move to.

“Ma’am, you’re in my seat,” the man interrupted.

How he knew this, I do not know. Because when I asked to see his boarding pass he couldn’t find it.

Perhaps this is Crazy,
I thought to myself. It was a little crazy, three people vying for the same crappy seat, was it not?

I sighed, turned to the half-naked woman who actually held the ticket for 35E and asked if she’d be willing to take the other woman’s seat.

“Whatever. But you owe me a drink,” Belly Ring Girl said to me.

Okay. One down, two to go. That’s when Mr. Sweet Stache walked to the back of the airplane and plopped down on the floor, placing an overstuffed backpack between his spidery long legs.

“Don’t worry,” he called out. “I’ll just camp out here during the flight.”

I turned around. He smiled. I didn’t smile back. He’d said it like he meant it and that worried me. Did he actually believe he could sit there? On the floor. In front of the lav. Beside my jump seat.

“That’s not going to work,” I said. It had a little something to do with that metal thing we like to call a seat belt. I was pointing to the illuminated seat belt sign, trying my best to get through to this guy, when his eyes glazed over, he got to his feet, and he began walking up the aisle like he knew exactly where he was going. Briskly he made his way from the back of the plane right through business class and all the way up to first class, where I’m told he stopped in the middle of the cabin and announced very loudly, “Fine, I’ll eat your crappy first-class food!”

It was official. We’d found Crazy.

Later on during the flight, after the service was over and everything had calmed down, I sat on a homemade bench (two empty beverage inserts connected by an oven rack) in the business-class galley and began to eat a sandwich I’d brought from home. A passenger from coach whipped back the stiff blue curtain.

“Can I buy a business-class entrée?” She held up a wad of cash.

Wiping my mouth, I quickly got to my feet. “We don’t sell business-class food because passengers who travel in business have already paid for the food, and actually eat the food—”

“Can’t I just buy a roll or something?”

I couldn’t respond. Because right at that moment, as she stood there waving a crumpled bill to pay for the roll or something, Sweet Stache walked out of the lav with his pants undone.

Oh boy. I gulped, turned around, and prayed he’d keep walking.
Please keep walking!

He stopped.

“Water,” he said, pushing the hungry passenger out of the way. In the galley, right next to me, is where he decided to zip up his pants.

Of course, I did what any other flight attendant would do—I quickly reached for a plastic cup. Anything to make him go away! That’s when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a brown leather belt whip into the air with a SNAP! The woman who wanted the roll or something quickly disappeared.

Oh God,
I prayed,
please don’t let him be too crazy! Please say he’s just a little crazy.
Because I really didn’t want to be strangled by a belt over the second worst seat on the plane or the crappy-ass first-class food he did not eat.

“Here ya go.” I handed him a glass of water without ice, not once taking my eye off the belt, now stretched tightly between his hands.

“Thanks.” The belt slackened. He placed it on the counter, next to my sandwich.

“You’re welcome.” I let out a sigh of relief. I had not been strangled.

“Coffee.” A statement, not a question.

I peeked into the coffee pot. Great. An empty pot. “I’m going to have to brew a new pot. I’ll bring it to you as soon as it’s ready.” And I guess crazy was catching, because then I did something totally insane. I asked a question I shouldn’t have asked, the one question capable of making this crazy person even crazier. “Where’s your seat?”

“Forget it!” He grabbed the belt.

I gasped. “Sorry!”

Forcefully, he jabbed the leather through the belt loops. “Damn right you are.” And with that he took a bite of my half-eaten sandwich and disappeared back to wherever he had decided to camp out for the flight.

“Yeah, umm, can I get that roll?” asked a familiar voice behind me.

Of course, that’s not as crazy as what had happened just a few months earlier. I had been standing between business class and coach during boarding, greeting passengers and hanging coats, when a woman in her early twenties pulled me aside and said she didn’t feel well and had a fever. I was about to tell her she might want to deplane and take a later flight, when she glanced at my name tag, looked me earnestly in the eye, and added, “Do you know if there’s a first-class seat available, Heather?”

The warning bell immediately rang in my head. Whenever someone uses my name, it almost always means a special request is coming.

“I’m sorry, but there aren’t any open seats in first class available.” Just as I was about to tell her that even if there had been an open seat we still would not have been able to accommodate her up front, she waved me away with a flick of the wrist and continued down the aisle to a coach seat.

On a 767, the business-class galley is located behind business class in coach. Coach passengers seated on either side of it in the exit row are normally frequent fliers who didn’t qualify for an upgrade now hoping to score free handouts. So when the sick woman sat down right behind the exit row, I knew it wasn’t my lucky day.

She rang her call light thirty minutes into the flight. I turned around holding a linen-lined tray with four drinks balancing on top—Diet Coke with lime, water no ice, vodka tonic, chardonnay—and asked, “Can I get you something?”

“I don’t feel well. I’m nauseous.”

“Would you like a glass of ginger ale?”

“I’d prefer tea. Herbal tea. But not in a Styrofoam cup, a mug—a real mug,” she said, eyeing the oven-warmed business-class porcelain mugs lining the chrome counter.

“All we have is plain black Lipton tea.”

“Fine. Can I get something to eat?”

As my partner continued working his side (and only his side) of the business-class cabin, I called my coworkers in coach who were just about to pull the carts into the aisle to do the service to get a rundown of snacks that were available for purchase. When I hung up the phone, she said, “Do you have any uncooked vegetables?”

“Uncooked vegetables?” I repeated. I wanted to make sure I’d heard that right.

“That’s all I can eat.”

“How about a roll or cheese and crackers?” offered my colleague. As a rule, we never offer business-class food to coach passengers, but she did look a little pale and we didn’t want to divert the flight.

But this sick passenger couldn’t eat rolls. She couldn’t eat cheese. She couldn’t eat salad. She couldn’t eat nuts. She couldn’t even eat chocolate! Nor could she eat the delicious homemade combination fried rice the passenger sitting directly in front her kindly offered. (But I did and it was delicious! Thank you, Kwan.)

The only thing she
could
eat were uncooked veggies, and if she didn’t eat them now, as in
right now
, she would get violently ill—or so she said.

As soon as the flight attendants working in first class were done with their service, I went up to see if there were any leftovers available. There rarely ever are. Well, not only did I find a bowl of green peas sitting on the salad cart but the lead flight attendant actually allowed me to take the first-class peas to the princess in coach!

“It’s your lucky day,” I said, handing her the silver bowl along with a silver spoon.

Not a word was said. No thank-you. No nothing. Just two bites, an ugly face, and the bowl was handed back to me. The passenger seated beside her rolled his eyes.

No sooner did I turn my back than a call light rang. I didn’t have to walk far to turn it off.

“I need your help to get to the bathroom,” she mumbled.

Taking her elbow, I helped her to stand. As she got to her feet, she moaned, “I’m going to be violently ill.” Then she quickly took four steps to the business lav. I handed her a barf bag, shut the door, and told her I’d return to check on her in a minute.

“I’m not going to make it,” I barely heard her say from behind the locked door.

On the other side of the closed door, I yelled, “What do you mean you’re not going to make it? Do I need to page for a doctor?”

“No. I just need . . .” I leaned in closer and cupped my ears against the door. The
OCCUPIED
sign turned to
VACANT
and I almost fell inside. “Potatoes,” she mumbled. “Do you have any potatoes?”

“We have potato chips, but not potatoes.” With all ninety-nine pounds of her weight leaning into me, I helped her walk back to her seat. “Are you sure you don’t want a cup of club soda and a roll? It might make you feel better.”

“I’m sure. Are
you
sure there aren’t any potatoes on board?”

The only thing I was more sure about were my passengers in business class. They had to be wondering where the heck I’d disappeared to again.

I shook my head. We had no potatoes. And that was when the “ill” passenger, the one who may or may not have thrown up in the bathroom (depending on who you asked), which may or may not have been the reason why the sink was now overflowing with what may or may not have been water, brown water, looked at me angrily and hissed, “I haven’t asked for much on this flight!”

Okay, it’s important to point out here—at least it’s important to me that I point out—that I’m really a nice person. I am. I love my job. I do. And I’ll do pretty much anything for the passengers, within reason, whether they’re sick or not. I will. Still, this passenger had gotten on my last nerve. But I kept my mouth shut and got down on one knee, the way we’re instructed to do in training, and looked her in her red eyes and listened as she not so very nicely said, “And I’ve been pretty nice on this flight, considering the circumstances.”

I inhaled deeply and nodded my head in agreement. It took all my strength not to remind her of all she had, in fact, asked for—a first-class seat, herbal tea, a business-class mug, uncooked vegetables, help to the bathroom, potatoes, and now this, to deplane first, that’s it and nothing more. In fact, she had asked me for more than any other passenger in fifteen years of flying!

To be fair, it’s not always the passengers who are crazy. Sometimes, it’s my colleagues. Years ago, I knew there might be a problem when four out of the nine flight attendants working my trip stopped me before I could even get my crew bags into the overhead bin to say, “You’ll be working the drink cart on the left-hand side of coach.”

“Okay,” I said, even though it was not okay. I’m not big on confrontation.

I’d been awarded this trip on reserve, which meant I didn’t know the crew. Not that that mattered. What mattered was they were based in San Francisco, one of the most senior bases in the system. I am New York–based, which is and has always been the most junior base in the system at my airline. It’s where most new hires end up. At some airlines, flight attendant positions on the plane are determined before each flight based on seniority. Just because a flight attendant works the galley position on one leg of the trip doesn’t mean they will automatically get to work the same position on the next leg of the trip. If a more senior flight attendant wants to trade positions, the junior flight attendant will do so. Not at my airline. We know where we’re working long before we leave the house for the airport, and we don’t have to trade if we don’t want to. Even so, the rest of the crew felt superior enough to tell me where, exactly, I’d be working that day, even though I already knew where to work, which was not the drink cart on the left-hand side of coach.