Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase: Hilarious Stories of Air Travel by the World's Favorite Flight Attendant (3 page)

A pilot:

“One of the practical jokes we pull on new flight attendants is to hand them a garbage bag and tell them to go take an air sample for us, because the air conditioning technicians are concerned about allergens or contaminants. They walk up and down the aisles filling the bag with air, then tying it off so it can be delivered to the lab.”

A female flight attendant
:

“I was on a flight that had several legs. We were preparing for our fifth or sixth leg of the trip, and we had two legs left. I looked down at my nylons, and I noticed I had a run in my stocking. So I said to the other flight attendant, ‘I need to go change my nylons!’ and she said, ‘What? For two lousy legs?’ and I replied, ‘Well
, I
don’t think my legs are lousy!’”

A pilot:

“A favorite prank of Air Force pilots, which crews have been playing for years, on all sorts of aircraft, is when a pilot emerges from the cockpit, walking backwards very slowly, carefully unwinding two balls of string. When he gets to the first passenger, he tells him in a loud voice that he has to go back to the toilet and so the passenger should hold on to these two bits of string, keep them tight and try not to pull them. Then the pilot quickly walks off before the passenger can say anything. Of course, the string isn’t really attached to the flight controls; the flight engineer is holding the other end of them. But the passenger doesn’t know that. To start with, they’ll hold them very still, but usually after a minute or two of nothing happening, the passenger will carefully give one string a gentle tug. The flight engineer will feel this and tell the co-pilot, who will bank the aircraft fairly sharply in that direction. The engineer usually feels an immediate corresponding tug on the opposite bit of string and then nothing further as the passenger is now convinced he is flying the aircraft! After a few minutes, the pilot comes back from the toilet, thanks the passenger for doing such a great job, and carefully takes the bits of string back.”

Betty:

“Every job has aspects that are boring and repetitive. For flight attendants, it’s saying ‘hello’ three hundred times when passengers board, and then ‘good-bye’ three hundred more times when they disembark. One flight attendant I know said that he could probably say anything at all as people deplaned and, as long as he was smiling, no one would ever even notice. So the next time we landed, he bade people farewell by saying, ‘
Neeboop! Loonup! Felspit
!’ while continuously smiling and nodding. No one noticed or, if they did, no one mentioned anything. And the thing about it was that his good-bye smile was bigger than ever before!”

Random Factoids

•  At 13,313 feet (4.1 km) La Paz airport in Bolivia, in the Andes Mountains, is the planet’s highest commercial airport.

•  The longest runway in the world is at Edwards Air Force Base in California. It’s 7.5 miles (11.5 km) long.

•  The longest flight in the world is the nonstop flight from New York to Hong Kong which travels 8,439 (13.581 km) miles over the North Pole in 15 hours and 40 minutes.

Beverage Boo-Boos

“Can I get you something to drink?” You would think that must be one of the simplest questions you can ask a person. Well, that’s the beauty of the traveling public…they always surprise you!

Betty:

“One of the things that really irritates flight attendants are headphones, especially when people refuse to take them off when you’re trying to talk to them. Both the noise-canceling headphones and loud music headphones can completely cut off communication when a flight attendant is trying to serve a passenger and it makes the situation much more difficult than it needs to be. One day I was trying to serve drinks to a man wearing noise-canceling headphones but he couldn’t hear me and I couldn’t get his attention. So I was joking with the other passengers, saying, ‘I could say anything in the world to him right now and he wouldn’t hear me.’ But they cautioned me, saying he might be able to read my lips. So I started thinking up things I could say that would look like I was saying, ‘something to drink?’ Then I leaned over to him and said, ‘Do you need a shrink?’ and he said, ‘Diet Coke!’ Well, everyone laughed (except for the guy who was still completely oblivious) so I continued on down the aisle, now looking forward to serving someone else with headphones. To the next person wearing headphones I said, ‘Are your toe nails pink?’ and he replied, ‘Just water!’ Now I enjoy meeting people who are worlds away underneath their headphones, because I can ask them if their feet stink and hand them a cranapple juice with a big smile on my face.”

A flight attendant:

“I asked one lady if she would like something to drink, and she replied that she would love some tea. I asked her, ‘How do you take your tea?’ meaning, with sugar, cream, or lemon, but she looked at me blankly and replied, ‘In a cup!’”

Betty:

“We serve plenty of coffee on every flight, but flight attendants also drink lots of coffee themselves, especially since we’re often short on sleep or flying at odd hours. On one extremely early morning flight I was sipping my own coffee while also serving predeparture drinks for the passengers. I always drink my coffee with creamer and a sweetener. Well, I was still pretty bleary when a first class passenger asked for coffee with cream but no sugar. I served him, and a few moments later went to sip my own cup of coffee. I was perplexed because suddenly my coffee wasn’t sweet any more, and I had already drunk half of it. Suddenly with a sinking feeling I knew I had accidentally served my coffee to the man in first class. I looked and sure enough, I could see my lipstick marks on the side of the cup. He hadn’t yet taken a sip of the coffee and hadn’t noticed the lipstick, so I hurried over and grabbed the cup right out of his hand just as he was about to lift it to his lips. I said, ‘You know what? That cup was the bottom of a pot, and we just made a fresh pot, so let me take this one and I’ll be right back with a better cup of coffee for you.’ I got back to the galley and heaved a huge sigh of relief. That close call woke me up more than the coffee did.”

Cola Wars

Frank Steward, in his book
The Plane Truth: Shift Happens at 35,000 Feet
tells of the time he offered a first-class passenger a drink: “What can I get you to drink?” I asked. “A Coke, please,” the businessman responded. We no longer served Coke and I was tired of the question, “Is Pepsi all right?” so I merely handed him a Pepsi. “I’m sorry; I asked for a Coke.” “Same thing,” I replied, trying to be cute. I couldn’t quite understand why this man went into a fit, until I found out that he was vice president of Coca-Cola.

Random Factoids

•  The #1 requested in-flight drink? Bottled water, which recently surpassed cola.

•  Those beverage service carts the flight attendants push up and down the aisles each weigh about 250 lbs (113 kg).

A flight attendant:

“One of the things we really hate is accidentally spilling something on one of the passengers. One flight attendant accidentally spilled tomato juice on the expensive white pants of a lady in first class. She was horrified at what she had done, and asked the passenger if she had a spare pair of pants to change into while she made it her mission to get the tomato juice out of the pants. When the lady changed, the flight attendant took those pants into the lav and used club soda and hand soap to scrub them till they were white again. But then they were soaking wet, and she didn’t want to hand sopping pants back to the lady. So she turned on the galley oven, opened the oven door, draped the pants over a coat hanger, and hung the pants to dry in the rising heat. Then she got called away to serve other passengers, and by the time she got back to the galley to check on the pants, the heat was melting a hole in them. So now she had to go give the lady her pants with a three-inch hole, but hey—at least the tomato juice was out!”

A flight attendant:

“When I was newly hired I was a lot slower at beverage service than the more experienced flight attendants on the crew. Back then we would fill a bin with beverages and then put it on top of our cart. Well, I was in a real hurry so I put the bin on top of the jumpseat just for a minute before transferring it to my cart, and then I went to get something out of the bottom of the jumpseat. I had forgotten that when you pull the bottom of the jumpseat out, the top of the jumpseat flattens—so that entire bin of beverages tipped over and landed right on top of the head of the lady sitting behind it. All kinds of juice and soda pop went streaming all down her face, soaking her hair. I was mortified and humiliated, but instead of getting mad about it she just said, ‘Don’t you worry about it, honey! It’s a wig!’ and she pulled her wig off her head, shook out the juice, and put it back on her head, saying, ‘See? It’s wash-and-wear hair! No harm done!’”

A flight attendant:

“I was doing beverage service in first class and was serving a man who was seated next to his girlfriend. When I asked him what he wanted to drink he said, ‘Do you have apple juice?’ and I said,
‘I do!’
He said, ‘Do you have cranberry juice?’ and I said,
‘I do!’
He said, ‘Do you have Bloody Mary mix?’ and I said,
‘I do!’
Then he turned to his girlfriend and said, ‘See how easy it is to get a flight attendant to say ‘
I do’
?”

Betty:

“I was working a flight with an attendant who tended to be a little bit silly. As we were serving beverages, she handed a passenger a soft drink and then spun around, turning 360 degrees, and then went back to serving more drinks. I said, ‘Um, excuse me, but did you just twirl?’ and she said yes, and I said, ‘Why?’ and she just shrugged and said, ‘It’s fun!’ and the passengers in the area all started laughing. Well, it was a long flight at the end of the day, and the mood on the plane had been a little crabby with grumpy passengers and tired children, so we concocted a scheme to use twirling to cheer everyone up. Whenever we’re doing beverage service, I serve two rows of passengers and the other flight attendant serves two rows of passengers. When we’re finished serving and are ready to move the beverage cart forward to the next group of passengers, we’ll typically say something like, ‘ready, Freddy!’ Well, we decided that instead of saying something to indicate we were ready to move the cart, we would just twirl instead—I would twirl, then she would twirl, then we would move the cart. This little bit of nonsensical silliness made everyone on the plane laugh, especially us. By the time everyone had received their drinks, mission was accomplished and everyone was in a good mood again.”

A flight attendant:

“Sometimes all it takes to make our day is a polite ‘please’ or ‘thank you.’ One day a grandmother, daughter, and granddaughter boarded together. As soon as I started drink service the little granddaughter started screaming for a cola, even though she was several rows back. I didn’t feel like giving in to her hollering so I continued to serve passengers in the proper order while she continued to yell for a cola. I did my best to ignore her, and wondered why her mother and grandmother weren’t using the opportunity to teach her some manners. When I got to the row ahead of her, she was still shouting for a cola. By then I was determined to make her wait her turn. When I served her grandmother, the kid was screaming for a cola. When I served her mother, she was screaming for cola. Finally it was her turn, and as I handed her a drink I said, ‘What’s the magic word?’ She looked at me blankly. Her mother looked at me blankly. Her grandmother looked at me blankly. Then her mother and grandmother turned to me and said simultaneously,
‘Abracadabra?’”

Random Factoids

•  Why do flight attendants have the right to cut off the flow of booze? Because if you’re drunk during an emergency, you’re useless.

•  By one estimation, alcohol is the top leading cause of ‘air rage.’ The second leading cause is the cell phone ban.

•  Your tolerance for alcohol drops by about 30% when you’re at 30,000 feet, so a few drinks will go a long way.

•  It’s been estimated that 75% of all in-flight disputes arise from the reclining seat issue.

•  A study showed that when both men and women are fighting for control of the arm rest, men win about three times as often as women.

Betty:

“The beverage carts we push up and down the aisles are very heavy and it can hurt a lot when a passenger’s elbow or a foot or some fingers accidentally get squished. Because the aisles are so narrow, this is a serious concern. Therefore, I am constantly saying, ‘Watch the cart! Watch the cart! Watch the cart!’ as I go up and down the aisles, giving people warning. One night on a late flight when I was very tired, and the cabin was dark and the aisle was littered with arms and legs and feet that I needed to navigate around, I walked from the front of the plane all the way to the back saying, ‘Watch the cart! Watch the cart!’ When I got to the back of the plane, I suddenly realized….
I didn’t have a cart!’”