Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase: Hilarious Stories of Air Travel by the World's Favorite Flight Attendant (12 page)

Tip from Betty

“One of my pet peeves is when passengers ask me for a pen. Now, you’d think that a pen is a pretty indispensible item, and you’d think that it’s easy enough for people to pack a pen whenever they travel. But it seems that at least once per flight, I have to stop whatever I’m doing and fetch someone a pen. The airlines don’t supply us with pens to hand out to the passengers and we don’t have a secret stash of them hidden away. I often pick up pens at the hotels I stay at and put them in my purse, but that’s the only supply of pens available on any flight. When someone asks me for a pen, I have to dig out my purse and find someone a pen. Sometimes I’m just too busy with my duties to do this for people, so I’ll say, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve already given out all my pens today.’ And a few minutes later I’ll notice them digging through their briefcase or their purse or their pockets to find their own pen. So it’s not that they are travelling without a pen – it’s that they’re just too lazy to get their own pen. When you’re flying, please bring a pen!”

Fact

Congressman, you’ve been voted out.

A gate agent in Washington, D.C., encountered a congressman one day who was deeply involved with a cell phone call. He handed her his ticket and asked her to hold the plane until he was finished with his call, then stood in a corner of the boarding area with his phone glued to his ear, ignoring the boarding calls and refusing to come to the gate when the final boarding call was made. When he finally finished his call and showed up at the gate, he was angry to find that plane had left without him. “How could you do that when I asked you to hold the plane for me?” he bellowed at the ticket agent. According to the book
The Smile High Club: Outrageous But True Travel Stories
, the gate agent replied, “When the plane was filled, I went on board and told the passengers they were going to participate in good old-fashioned American democracy by getting to vote on the departure time,” she said, “One hundred twenty-five of your constituents voted to leave on time. Majority rules!”

A pilot:

“On a flight from L.A. to Mexico we had a passenger on board who was an illegal alien who was being deported to Mexico. He wasn’t a criminal; just an illegal immigrant who was being returned to Mexico. About a half hour into the flight, the flight attendants notified me that this rather odd man was doing something strange: he was sitting quietly in his seat, calmly ripping up $5 bills and neatly stashing the pieces in his hat on his tray table. I agreed this was rather weird behavior, but it wasn’t destructive or threatening, so I asked them to keep me informed of any developments. A little while later, they notified me again, saying that now this man was completely naked, while remaining quietly in his seat, calmly ripping up $5 bills and neatly stashing the pieces in his hat on his tray table. They had moved all the other passengers away from him, and I agreed that we should return to L.A. to have the man removed from the flight. Everyone thought this guy was crazy, but afterwards I concluded that he was certainly crazy—crazy like a fox, because he didn’t get deported after all. At least, not on
that
day.”

Fact

Memorable airport abbreviations:

The abbreviation for Sioux City, Iowa, is SUX.

Helsinki is HEL

Syria is DAM

Fukuoka, Japan is…um…nevermind.

A flight attendant:

“I was on a flight when suddenly a very insistent ringing of the call button sent me running to the back of the plane. There I found a very well-dressed professional looking man, his lap full of his briefcase and papers, sitting and pointing out the window. ‘There’s a little man sitting on the wing of this plane and he’s been there for a very long time!’ he said. ‘Well,’ I replied, ‘As long as he’s out
there
, and not trying to get in
here
, everything is OK.’ I didn’t hear a peep out of him the rest of the flight.”

Tip from Betty

If your flight is delayed and you get snippy with the flight attendants because, after all, they’re getting paid overtime to just sit there – well, guess again! Most flight attendants are paid only from the time a plane pushes back from the gate until it opens its doors at the next city. The most stressful part of every work day – the boarding and the deplaning – is not on the clock for most flight attendants. They don’t get paid anything at all if a plane is delayed while the passengers are still in the terminal, and they’re paid a fraction of their regular salary if the loaded plane sits on the tarmac for more than an hour. Therefore, flight attendants are just as frustrated at delays as you are.

You Know You’re a Flight Attendant When…

1.      You can eat a four course meal standing at the kitchen counter.

2.      You search for a button to flush the toilet.

3.      You look for the “crew line” at the grocery store.

4.      You can pack for a two week trip to Europe in one roll-aboard.

5.      All your pens have different hotel names on them.

6.      You never unpack.

7.      You can recognize pilots by the backs of their heads—but not by their faces.

8.      You can tell from 70 yards away if a piece of luggage will fit in the overhead bin.

9.      You care about the local news in a city three states away.

10.    You can tie a neck scarf 36 ways.

11.    You know at least 25 uses for air sickness bags, none of which pertain to vomit.

12.    You understand and actually use the 24-hour clock.

13.    You own two sets of uniforms: slacks that fit, and skirts that don’t.

14.    You don’t think in “months”—you think in “bid packages.”

15.    You always point with two fingers.

16.    You get a little too excited by certain types of ice.

17.    You stand at the front door and politely say, “Buh-bye, thanks, have a nice day” when someone leaves your home.

18.    You can make a sentence using all of the following phrases: “At this time,” “For your safety,” “Feel free,” and “As a reminder.”

19.    You know what’s on the cover of the current issues of
In Touch, Star,
and
People
magazines even though you don’t subscribe.

20.    You stop and inspect every fire extinguisher you pass, just to make sure the “gauge is in the green.”

21.    Your thighs are covered in bruises from armrests and elbows.

22.    You wake up and have to look at the hotel stationery to figure out where you are.

23.    You refer to cities by their airport codes.

24.    Every time the doorbell rings, you look at the ceiling.

25.    You actually understand every item on this list!

Oops! Mishaps, Miscalculations, and Misunderstandings

In a typical day as a flight attendant you better be prepared for whatever gets thrown at you. This chapter includes your airplane leaving without you, dresses and pants falling down, underwear in the aisle, ticking bombs, burning money, and TNT! Just a typical day at work!

A flight attendant:

“A co-worker was pulled aside by security because her bag tested positive for TNT. They searched her bag thoroughly, and all they found was a glycerin suppository. That’s how we found out that glycerin suppositories have a chemical make-up similar to TNT. For the rest of the trip, we called her the Blonde Bombshell.”

A pilot:

“The story is that William Shatner was scheduled for a flight, and airline officials invited him to use the Crown Room, which is a private club in the airport reserved for upper-crust passengers who pay extra for a membership. Well, some time after that, he was taking another flight, and he went to the Crown Room expecting the same service. This time, however, the attendant had not received any instructions concerning him, and wouldn’t let him in. He said, ‘But I’m William Shatner!’ and got only a blank look in return. ‘You know,
Captain Kirk
!’ The attendant turned to him and said, ‘I don’t care if you
are
an airline pilot—if you’re not a Crown Room member, you’re not getting in here!’”

A flight attendant:

“Jackie Kennedy Onassis flew to Hong Kong to meet her sister Lee Radziwill. They arranged to meet at the airport and then fly out together. They met in the Clipper Club in the airport, which is a private room where the airline treats their upper-class patrons to food, drink, and entertainment while they wait for their flights. Then they discovered there was a problem with Lee’s ticket, and someone had to iron out the snafu. Jackie O. asked the agent who was on duty in the Clipper Club for help, but he said that he couldn’t leave the Club unattended. Jackie insisted that she was familiar enough with how the Club operated so that she could cover for him while he was gone. So he went with Lee to fix the ticket problem while Jackie greeted guests who came to the Club. I have often wondered what people thought when they entered the Clipper Club to find that their hostess was Jackie Onassis!”

A flight attendant:

“I was on a 747 flight out of Denver with four flight attendants on the plane. One of the flight attendants got off the plane to go check someone’s carry-on bag in the cargo hold, and while she was gone, the door closed and we began to taxi out. While we were giving the demo, we looked out the window of the airplane to see the flight attendant running alongside the plane in the snow, waving and yelling and trying to catch up to us. ‘Did you notice that we’re missing someone?’ I said to the other flight attendant. ‘Yes, but try to keep it low-key—there’s a supervisor on board!’ Well, it’s hard to keep it low-key when someone is running alongside your plane, waving and screaming. The plane stopped and the air stairs went down so she could get on board, and my co-worker said, ‘Tell her to try to be inconspicuous when she gets back on.’ Well, she had to walk the entire length of the plane to get back to her station, and everybody on board broke into applause.”

A flight attendant:

“We were flying from Bermuda back to New York and there was a very classy woman sitting in first class. She was wearing a tropical island kind of dress, a wrap-around affair. When we arrived and first class was disembarking, she reached up to get something out of the overhead bin and just at that moment whatever was holding her dress up suddenly let go and the dress landed in a puddle around her feet—and she was not wearing a single stitch of clothing underneath. In a panic she collapsed into her seat and we quickly threw a blanket over her but she sat there mortified until the last passenger had disembarked. By then she had regained her composure, and as she put her dress back on, she told us, ‘I guess that’s why your mother tells you to always wear underwear.’”

A flight attendant:

“One day I was working a flight and we were busy boarding the 30 or so passengers. I was carrying a bin full of ice to the back of the plane when I was stopped by a rather heavy-set man who was struggling to get his bag into the overhead bin. While he was stretched full-out, reaching upward to the luggage compartment, his belly flattened out. I guess his belt had been cinched around the roundest part of his stomach, because just at that moment his pants fell down and landed on the floor around his ankles. He couldn’t reach down to pull them up because he was still trying to shove the bag in, and I was so happy my hands were full of a bin of ice because that absolved me from the responsibility of having to pull his pants up for him. And his underpants were ragged and full of holes so they left nothing to the imagination. I guess he didn’t listen when his mother told him to wear clean underwear!”

Betty:

“A flight attendant I know had been working a couple of long, hard shifts and she was heading back to her hometown for her days off. When we have days off, we just grab whatever empty seat is available on a plane heading home. So she felt really lucky to get a first class seat home. It was a long flight, and it was night. She thought she would read a little, so she pulled a book out of her bag in the overhead bin. She fell asleep almost right away, and slept for nearly the entire flight. When she woke up, she noticed in the dim light that there was a pair of dirty underwear right in the middle of the first class aisle. She was disgusted and wondered what kind of a slob would put their underwear on the floor in the middle of a plane. Then she looked at them closer and she realized they were her underwear—she had accidentally pulled them out of her bag when she got her book out. She grabbed them, hid them, and then spent the rest of the flight pretending to be asleep because she was so embarrassed.”