Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase: Hilarious Stories of Air Travel by the World's Favorite Flight Attendant (4 page)

Do you have change for a hundred?

A. Frank Steward in his book
The Plane Truth: Shift Happens at 35,000 Feet
tells it like it is: “Ninety-nine percent of flight attendants who are handed a hundred-dollar bill for a four-dollar drink despise you and your attempt to get a free drink. Eight out of ten will actually try to collect the change, just to spite you. I now carry 97 one-dollar bills as a way of countering such attempts.”

Roger That! Control Tower Comedy

Maybe it’s because of the penguin suit of a uniform or the military background, but you generally expect pilots to be serious in nature. But pilots as a whole have really surprised me. They have all kinds of funny stories. I flew for many years not knowing all the funny exchanges that go on between the cockpit and the control tower. Read on and see for yourself…these guys are funny!

A pilot:

“A 747 flight was coming into Kennedy Airport when the air traffic controller needed to open up some space before the final descent. He directed the pilot to do a ‘right 360’ which is a common command and simply means that you do a big circle in the sky and then get back in line. The pilot got all uppity and started berating the air traffic controller, saying, ‘Do you have any idea how much it costs in fuel to turn a 747 airplane 360 degrees?’ The air traffic controller replied, ‘No, I have no idea.’ So the pilot hollered back, ‘It costs over $400!’ The air traffic controller came right back on and said, ‘Good!
Give me a $400 turn to the right!’”

A pilot:

“Several years ago I overheard this exchange between the control tower in Boston and a commuter plane:

Pilot
: Request a direct to Pittsburgh.

Boston
Center
: Your request for a direct routing is on request, but first, we have a request.

Pilot
: OK, what is your request?

Boston
Center
: Please take an extra-strength Bloody Mary to seat 13C.

Pilot
: Boston Center, let me get this straight. Our request for a direct routing is on request, and your request is for an extra-strength Bloody Mary to seat 13C, correct?

Boston
Center
: That’s affirmative.

A few minutes of silence went by.

Pilot
: Boston Center, an extra-strong Bloody Mary has been delivered to seat 13C, free of course, as well as an extra bag of peanuts.

Boston
Center
: Cleared direct Pittsburgh.

Pilot
: Boston Center, OK. Who the heck is in seat 13C?

Boston
Center
: The wife of the controller next me. She is going to Pittsburgh to visit family.

Pilot
: Boston Center, tell him she will be well taken care of.

A pilot:

“When I was in the military I was an aircraft commander working with a pilot and we were practicing touch-and-go maneuvers, which is when you land only to take off again and circle around and land once again. On this day, there was a woman controller in the tower, and she was good. And she knew she was good. The pilot put down his landing gear a tiny bit early—maybe a few seconds sooner than normal—and the controller got on the radio and said, ‘Zero Foxtrot Zero One, is there any reason why your wheels are down?’ I thought she was being way too picky, so I grabbed the microphone and replied, ‘Yes, there is. We have discovered that it tends to cushion the landing considerably!’ Everyone in the plane cracked up, and we didn’t hear any more criticism from her for the rest of the day.”

A pilot:

“Germans tend to be very fastidious and punctual and they like everything to be perfect. If you are not doing things the way they think things ought to be done, they will correct you. One day we were taxiing out to a runway in Frankfurt, heading for a runway that was quite a distance away. Ground control cleared a Lufthansa flight to follow the Clipper to Runway 1-A, meaning they were to pull in behind us. Well, the Lufthansa 737 floored it and pulled right out ahead of us, forcing us to slam on the brakes to avoid them. We thought it was because the Lufthansa was on their home ground and they just naturally assumed they would get preferential treatment. Then we heard Ground Control saying, ‘Lufthansa, I told you to follow ze Clipper!’ and the Lufthansa pilot replied, ‘Ve did not see ze Clipper!’ There was a short pause, and Ground Control said, ‘Roger…’ Then Ground Control said to the Lufthansa, ‘Turn right at Taxiway Lima…Turn right at Taxiway November…Turn right at Taxiway Papa…Turn right at Taxiway Hotel…’ and basically boxed him in behind us. Then Ground Control said, ‘
Now
do you see ze Clipper?’”

A pilot:

“In Germany a very precise air traffic controller came on the air and asked the Lufthansa pilot if he was familiar with the airport layout. The pilot said no, so the control tower said, ‘Turn right at the next intersection!’ and the pilot replied, ‘Roger!’ A few minutes later the control tower said, ‘Lufthansa, I told you to turn right!’ ‘We did turn right!’ barked the pilot. ‘Well, then,’ said the control tower without skipping a beat, ‘You’re sitting in the cockpit
backwards
!’”

A co-pilot:

“Radio traffic was really busy when we were trying to take-off one day; you just couldn’t get a word in edgewise. The pilot needed some information, so he asked the tower, ‘Do you have a temperature?’ The air traffic controller replied, ‘No, I don’t have a temperature, just a little headache, but thanks for asking!’”

Random Factoids

•  The windows in an air traffic control tower are always tilted outward at exactly 15 degrees from vertical in order to reduce reflections.

•  About 27,000 flights take off each day across the U.S.

•  Worldwide, about 28 million jobs revolve around flying, both in the air and on the ground.

•  About 40 percent of the world’s trade goods are carried by air.

•  There are more than 200,000 airplanes registered in the U.S. including military, private, and commercial.

JOKE

An air traffic controller was surprised one day to hear a very calm voice coming from the pilot of a small aircraft saying, “Control Tower, I am out of fuel.” The air traffic controller immediately shifted into emergency mode and began spitting instructions: “Reduce air speed! Commence gliding! Do you have the landing strip in sight?” There was a slight pause, followed by the pilot’s response: “Um…Tower, I am parked on the south ramp…I just wanted to know where the fuel truck is located.”

Random Factoids

•  A typical jet burns 800 gallons (3,028 L) of fuel per hour in flight.

•  Larger planes such as a 777 will burn 2,000 gallons (7,571 L) per hour.

•  The higher a plane flies, the less fuel it uses because there is less atmospheric resistance where the air is thin.

•  About 5% of fossil fuels used worldwide each year are used by commercial aviation.

FACT

The German words
‘flieger abwehr kanone’
mean ‘aviator defense cannon’. During World War II, the first letters of these three words, ‘flak’, were used to describe the unwanted opposition of anti-aircraft fire encountered by pilots. Now it means criticism, as in, “The decision to delay the flight is likely to draw flak from the passengers.”

A co-pilot:

“I was flying with a captain from Houston, a southern country gentleman. Everyone loved him, but one of his quirks was his very slow, deliberate, southern drawl. Well, we were flying up to New York City and he was on the radio to the New York Center. Everyone at the New York Center talks like they’re speed reading—very, very fast, rattling off commands so quickly you can hardly catch them. This Texas gent was completely unfazed. He just picked up his radio mike and said in his slow, deliberate Texas drawl, ‘New York Center, this is 123. Do you hear how fast I’m
talking
? Well, that’s how fast I
listen
!’ Even New York Center got a chuckle out of that one.”

A passenger:

“The German air controllers at Frankfurt Airport are renowned as a short-tempered lot. They not only expect pilots to know gate parking locations, but also how to get there without any assistance from them. So it was with some amusement that we listened to the following exchange between Frankfurt ground control and a British Airways 747, call sign Speedbird 206:

Speedbird 206
: ‘Frankfurt, Speedbird 206! Clear of active runway.’

Ground
: ‘Speedbird 206. Taxi to gate Alpha One-Seven.’

The Speedbird pulled onto the main taxiway and slowed to a stop.

Ground
: ‘Speedbird, do you not know where you are going?’

Speedbird 206
: ‘Stand by, Ground, I’m looking up our gate location now.’

Ground
(with arrogant impatience): ‘Speedbird 206, have you not been to Frankfurt before?’

Speedbird 206
(coolly): ‘Yes, twice in 1944…
but I didn’t land
.’”

A pilot:

“Two aircraft were approaching the same airport at the same moment. One was American Airlines and the other was United. The air traffic controller asked them who wanted to land first since they were both an equal distance from the airport. The American Airline pilot had a date and was in a big hurry to land, but didn’t want to seem rude. So he got on the radio and said,”American, why don’t you go first?” The United pilot realized he’d been had.”

A pilot:

“There are several models of Fokker airplanes, and their model numbers are keyed to the size of their motors. One captain was instructed by the tower to follow the Fokker down the taxiway, but there were two Fokkers on the tarmac. So the captain radioed the tower asking, ‘Do you mean the little motor Fokker or the big motor Fokker?’”

A pilot:

“I was waiting for takeoff when I overheard a radio exchange between another pilot and the tower. The airline had just acquired a number of the new Fokker 100 airplanes, and the guy in the tower was really curious about them. He was asking the Fokker pilot all kinds of questions about the Fokker models. He asked the airline captain how many Fokkers the airline had acquired, and they guy said they’d purchased several dozen so far, but the plane he was piloting was the very first Fokker the airline had purchased. ‘No kidding?’ said the air traffic controller. ‘It’s really the very first one?’ and the pilot answered, ‘Yes. In fact, we call it the Mother.’”

Radio Repartee

Tower: “Northwest 351, you have traffic at 10 o'clock, 6 miles!”

Delta 351: “Give us another hint! We have digital watches!”

Tower: “TWA 2341, for noise abatement turn right 45 degrees.”

TWA 2341: “Center, we are at 35,000 feet. How much noise can we make up here?”

Tower: “Sir, have you ever heard the noise a 747 makes when it hits a 727?”

From an unknown aircraft waiting in a very long takeoff queue: “I'm *#!@& bored!”

Tower: “Last aircraft transmitting, identify yourself immediately!”

Unknown aircraft: “I said I was *#!@& bored, not *#!@& stupid!”

A DC-10 came in too fast and thus had an exceedingly long roll out after touching down.

San Jose Tower noted: “American 751, make a hard right turn at the end of the runway, if you are able. If you are not able, take the Guadeloupe exit off Highway 101, make a right at the lights, and return to the airport.”

Control Tower to United 329: “United 329, your traffic is a Fokker, one o’clock, three miles, eastbound.”

United 329: “Approach, I’ve always wanted to say this… I’ve got the little Fokker in sight.”

Tower
: “Eastern 702, cleared for takeoff, contact Departure on frequency 124.7”

Eastern 702
: “Tower, Eastern 702 switching to Departure. By the way, after we lifted off we saw some kind of dead animal on the far end of the runway.”