Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase: Hilarious Stories of Air Travel by the World's Favorite Flight Attendant

Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase

By Betty N. Thesky

With Janet Spencer, Trivia Queen

Copyright © 2010 Riverbend Publishing

Discover Betty’s podcast at

www.BettyInTheSky.com

This book is available in print from

www.RiverbendPublishing.com
or
www.Amazon.com

ISBN 978-1-60639-011-5

License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. Thank you for your support!

Dedication

I dedicate this book to all the flight attendants and pilots who generously shared their stories with me. I’m privileged to know and work with such fabulously entertaining professionals!

Acknowledgments

I want to thank Nanette Weston, who took the time out of her busy schedule to draw cartoons. The cartoon on the front cover is actually one she drew of me when I first started flying…and I still love it!

I would like to thank my parents who, if they were still with us, would have loved the fact that I have a book.

Thanks to Danielle Richie for being so sweet to help vector the cartoons on short notice.

Thanks to Robert, Christy and Maria for the much needed advice along the way.

A big thanks to Janet’s husband Jerry for listening to my podcast and telling Janet about me, and of course a huge thanks to Janet Spencer because without her there wouldn’t be a book at all!

I owe a huge debt of thanks to all the podcast listeners who found my show, listened for years and told others about it! Since I never did any advertising or marketing the popularity was truly built from their word of mouth.

And finally I would like to thank Joe d’Eon for inspiring me to start podcasting!

Table of Contents

Hi, I’m Betty

Pranks, Practical Jokes, & General Leg-Pulling

Beverage Boo-Boos

Roger That! Control Tower Comedy

Lavatory Laughs

Food Follies

Dumb Moments & Stupid Moves

Animal Antics

Safety First, Laughter After!

Grumps, Grouses & Gripes

Oops! Mishaps, Miscalculations, and Misunderstandings

Cockpit Comedians

The Last Word

Hi, I’m Betty…

I work as a flight attendant for a major airline. I grew up in a small town outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. From the time I was a little girl I knew I wanted to get out of that small town to see and do everything the world had to offer.

Because my family didn’t have a lot of money and I was intent on traveling around the world, I decided a job with the airlines would give me the freedom and opportunities to follow my dreams.

When I first started flying, I was fascinated by the stories the senior flight attendants would tell. So much can happen when you trap hundreds of people in a metal tube streaming across the sky. Most of the traveling public probably never see past the uniforms to discover what a diverse, educated and entertaining group airline employees can be. For years I had a nagging urge to share these stories.

Then in 2006 I met Joe d’Eon. Joe is an airline captain who started the podcast called”Fly With Me” at FlyWithJoe.com. Joe started podcasting at the virtual onset of this new media outlet. A podcast is like a radio show people can listen to on their computer or iPod. I met Joe on the crew van driving to the airport in Maui. On our way to work, Joe had his recorder and microphone out and was asking us for funny stories. So during our flight back to the mainland, once our service was completed of course, I hightailed it up to the cockpit and told countless stories. I love old fashioned story-telling, and if you put a microphone in front of me, I’m off to the races!

As luck would have it, I flew with Joe again and he suggested I get my own microphone and recorder and become a correspondent for his show. I went out and purchased the equipment and began recording stories. Well, let’s just say my enthusiasm really outweighed my technical expertise. I had no idea how to edit audio content! As a result, the material I sent Joe was less than ideal. The ever gracious Joe politely suggested that maybe I should do my own show.

That was the humble beginning of my podcast show called”Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase” at BettyInTheSky.com. I’m amazed anyone listened to those early podcasts! I was so ill equipped to produce a show that the first couple of episodes were in mono. But with help from Joe and my faithful listeners, I managed to get the hang of it and now my show has an audience of 578,000 listeners!

Because of the popularity of my podcast, Janet”The Trivia Queen” Spencer approached me with this book project. Some of the stories I’ve included were sent to me by listeners. If you would like be included in a future”Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase” book, you can send stories to [email protected]. If your story is selected, I will send you an autographed copy of the book.

I never expected to have a book published. It just goes to show that you should always follow your dreams, aim for the sky, and remember to enjoy the ride!

Pranks, Practical Jokes, & General Leg-Pulling

Years ago it was a real coup to get a job with the airlines. Therefore, we airline employees knew we had it pretty good. So once the duties were done, the mood was generally pretty light. We enjoyed playing jokes and pranks on each other and usually the passengers never knew what was going on!

Betty:

“Once on a long full flight to Honolulu, I was chatting with the captain and co-pilot in the cockpit when the co-pilot described something he’d seen flight attendants do to entertain themselves on the ground or on flights with no passengers. It involved tucking the tail end of a toilet paper roll down the lavatory, unwinding the toilet paper the length of the plane, then flushing. The powerful suction of the lav would suck the toilet paper down, like a kid slurping spaghetti. Well, the captain just had to see this in action, even though we had a completely full flight. He told me to go set everything up and call him when it was ready. I got one fellow flight attendant to guard the door to the lav in the back of the plane while I walked backwards up the aisle, unrolling toilet paper as I went. It must have looked outrageously insane to the passengers, but it was, after all, a long flight in the middle of the day to a vacation destination, so I figured everyone would be willing to play along. I just kept telling people, ‘It’s an experiment!’ and that piqued their interest. When the toilet paper was laid out the length of the plane, I called the captain, and when he stepped out of the cockpit, I gave the thumbs-up signal to my accomplice in the back, and she pushed the flush button. Well, that piece of toilet paper lifted into the air, waved like a noodle, and SCHWOOSH! went down the lav. The entire plane erupted into applause and cheers, and the captain said it was the neatest trick he’d ever seen on a plane.”

A pilot:

“I was working for an airline that had installed a kind of a dash-cam or web-cam in the cockpit. It was focused on the instrument panel, showing only the panels and the hands of the pilots. This was so passengers could see what was going on in the cockpit during takeoff and landing. Well, one pilot who was something of a joker smuggled the arm and hand of a gorilla suit on board. When the flight was ready for takeoff, the passengers were treated to the sight of the co-pilot’s hand holding a banana in front of the instrument panel. Then a giant gorilla hand reached out to take the banana and push the throttle forward. I believe the dash-cams were phased out quite quickly following that incident.”

A pilot:

“A pilot I know who used to fly a DC-3 would shake things up on his flights by always carrying a bucket full of loose nuts and bolts. Whenever the plane would hit turbulence, he would take a handful of nuts and bolts and roll them down the aisle of the plane, and then send the co-pilot out with a wrench in one hand and a screwdriver in the other hand asking the passengers, ‘Excuse me, did you see some airplane parts come by here just now? I need those!’ The prank never failed to get a rise out of the passengers!”

A pilot:

“A pilot friend of mine named Vern is a real practical joker and loves to put one over on you. He flew regularly with another pilot named Jake, who was dubbed ‘shaky Jake’ because he was always nervous and jumpy. One day, Vern and the flight engineer decided to target Jake. Vern went to the maintenance shop at the airport and sorted through the trash till he found a big black plug that was full of wires. He took this to the plane and, before Shaky Jake arrived, he stuck that thing up under the dash near the rudder pedals, where it could be seen without interfering with anything. When Shaky Jake arrived, he looked at that mess of wires down there and said, ‘What’s that? What is that thing?’ Vern and the flight engineer just shrugged and said they didn’t know. They took off, and every so often, Shaky Jake looked down at that mysterious black-wired thing and wondered what it was. Finally he couldn’t contain himself any more, so he reached down and grabbed it and yanked it out. At the same moment, the flight engineer threw a whole bunch of switches so lights started flashing all over the instrument panel. Immediately Shaky Jake started screaming, ‘Oh my
God
! We’re gonna crash!’ and he didn’t stop hollering until Vern and the flight engineer started laughing their butts off. No harm was done, but I doubt if it made Shaky Jake any less shaky.”

Random Factoids

•  The flight deck on a Boeing 747 has 365 lights, gauges, and switches.

•  There are about 171 miles (274 km) of wiring inside a Boeing 747.

•  The wings on a Boeing 747 cover an area a little larger than a basketball court.

•  A Boeing 747 prepared for a long flight may carry as much as 30,000 lbs. (13,608 kg) of fuel at takeoff. A gallon of fuel weighs 6.7 pounds (3 kg).

•  A Boeing 747 burns about 48 gallons (182 L) of fuel for every minute it’s in the air.

•  The Boeing 747 averages about .16 miles per gallon, (.07 km/L) but since it’s carrying 200 or so people, it’s getting three times better gas mileage per passenger than an average SUV.

A male flight attendant:

“Everyone knows that at the beginning of the flight, the flight attendants have to walk through a safety demo. Part of that demo involves holding up the safety information card which has emergency procedures written on it. There’s one in every pocket in every seat, so people can see where the emergency exits are and so forth. The flight attendants doing the safety demo holds this card up high in the air so passengers will recognize it in their seat pockets. But what I didn’t know on this particular day was that someone had grabbed the safety information card I use for my demo and written, ‘I LOVE SEX’ in magic marker on the inside of the card, so when I held it above my head and opened it up, it was like a big billboard. There I was, standing in front of a plane full of passengers, holding up a sign that said, ‘I LOVE SEX’ and wondering why everyone started laughing and clapping. I was very popular on that flight.”

A pilot:

“We had a new flight attendant on board, and as a practical joke we decided to initiate her by having her page a passenger. We handed her a boarding pass with a name on it and asked her to get on the PA system and ask for that person to come forward. The name on the boarding pass was ‘Anita Mann’ and she was perfectly happy to announce: ‘
Anita Mann
, please ring your call button.’ I have no idea how many men answered that call.”

A flight attendant:

“Back in the days before rules prohibiting sexual-harassment awareness made such games dangerous, I heard of one pilot who cooked up a scheme. He brought a dozen roses on board and kept the bouquet in the cockpit with him. During the flight, he called the flight attendants to the cockpit one at a time, beginning with whoever had the most seniority. He would chat with her a while, and before long, she would ask what the roses were for. He’d reply that they could be hers if she would smooch everyone in the cockpit. Of course, she’d get all offended and leave—without the roses. Then the next flight attendant would be called up, with the same results. Finally the newest flight attendant on board would be summoned to the cockpit, and when she inevitably asked about the roses, the pilot would say, ‘Well, I knew there was a new hire on board, so I bought these roses just for you. Welcome to the team!’ and she would proudly walk out of the cockpit with the roses—and then would have no idea why everyone else on board treated her like she was some kind of hussy.”