Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase: Hilarious Stories of Air Travel by the World's Favorite Flight Attendant (6 page)

An airline mechanic:

“A couple years ago, we were tending an aircraft that had developed a pressurization leak. In order to find the leak, we had to close up the aircraft and then pressurize it. We found the leak and fixed it, but we forgot to depressurize the plane. We discovered this later that evening when the maintenance guy who’s in charge of emptying the lavatories walked up to us, absolutely covered from head to toe in blue goo and sludge. Seems that when he had opened the valve to empty the septic tanks, all that pressure finally found an outlet.”

Random Factoids

•  When an air cabin is pressurized, it actually expands the aircraft, like a balloon filling with air.

•  The air inside the cabin of a plane is completely replaced with outside air about once every 5 to 10 minutes.

•  Pilots are often barred from having beards because the beard prevents an oxygen mask from fitting tightly on the face.

•  The average air temperature outside the plane at 35,000 feet (10.7 km) is about 60 degrees below zero F. (-49 degrees C.)

Betty:

“Sometimes on a plane we have to use our wits to find solutions to problems that arise, just like MacGyver used to on the TV show. One day the first class lavatory door was sticking, and it was sticking really badly, so that one person on the inside had to coordinate with another person on the outside—one pushing, one pulling—in order to get the door open. It was really inconvenient because we had a full flight and there were only three bathrooms on board. What we really needed was some lubricant, but we don’t carry any WD-40 on board. So I started thinking of what we had available that would act as a lubricant in a pinch. It was a morning flight, and we had breakfasts to serve, so I wondered if a pat of butter would do the trick. But I didn’t want to just spread it on the floor of the bathroom for fear someone would slip, and then we’d have a whole new problem. So I got a maxi pad out of the lav. The lavs usually have maxi pads, and it’s amazing how many uses we find for them. I peeled the adhesive strip off and stuck it to the bottom of my shoe. I spread the butter all over the maxi pad, and then used my foot to rub the door jamb back and forth. I kept on rubbing in order to blot up most of the butter. And, sure enough, it did the trick! When we deplaned and a new crew came on board, I told an incoming flight attendant, ‘If the door sticks, just put butter on a maxi pad!’ and they looked at me like I was nuts. I guess it’s not that often that you need to use the phrase, ‘Put butter on a maxi pad!’

“When I was laughing over this story to a male flight attendant, he told me he uses maxi pads all the time to catch the drips from the air conditioning units that trickle down through the overhead bins and drip on the passengers. He told me, ‘People give me the strangest looks when they see me coming out of the lav with maxi pads in my hands!’

“Then there was the time when I desperately needed to improvise a diaper. Usually when that happens, I look for another parent who’s traveling with a baby and ask if they have a spare diaper. This time, there were no other babies on board. So I pulled the synthetic pillowcase off of the disposable pillow and ripped two holes for the legs in the bottom of it. I put a maxi pad in between the leg holes, and it worked really well! Later when a toddler threw up all over himself and his shirt, the parents didn’t have any spare clothing with them. So I pulled a pillowcase off the pillow, poked a hole for the head and two for the arms, and that kid looked downright stylish in his pillowcase shirt!”

A pilot:

“One of the things we used to do in the Coast Guard was marine environmental patrols. We were flying a Falcon 200 out of Mobile, Alabama, heading out over the Gulf of Mexico. We were checking for buoy lines and oil spills and carrying a crew of five. Well, our sensor systems operator had a bad case of the runs and was in a lot of discomfort because there weren’t any bathrooms on board. The flight commander suggested he use the box that his lunch came in. So the guy removed his lunch and relieved himself into the box. As you can imagine, the odor permeated the aircraft and you can’t just roll down a window. So the commander had the brilliant idea to open the drop hatch, which is normally used to drop pumps and rafts and rescue gear to vessels in distress, and toss out the box. So we went down to 100 feet, ran through the drop check list, opened the hatch, and the dropmaster tossed out the box. But the force of the wind blew the box back inside the plane where it rolled and tumbled and flew all around, spraying poop everywhere. Suddenly all the commander could hear over the intercom system was guys screaming. He says,
‘Dropmaster, check in!’
and all he heard was screaming.
‘Loadmaster, check in!’
and all he heard was screaming. He thought men were
dying
back there. Finally they got the drop hatch closed, but it was such a mess that we had to abort the mission and divert back to Mobile.”

Food Follies

I remember when every stand-up comedian had an airline food joke. Now on most flights there is no food at all, or you have to purchase it. Who would have thought that we would miss the good old days…of bad airline food?!

A flight attendant:

“It was a long, late flight from New York to Los Angeles. A lot of the passengers were sleeping, so when I made an announcement that we were serving snacks, I spoke quietly into the PA mike so I wouldn’t disturb everyone. I said we had peanuts, cheese and crackers, granola bars, and Biscoff cookies. I then started serving, but when I reached one lady and asked her what she wanted, I had to burst out laughing when she said, ‘What the heck—I’d like to try some of your pissed-off cookies!’”

A flight attendant:

“I was on a long flight to Hawaii and we were serving steak and potatoes for dinner. One passenger called me over and got very indignant over the state of his baked potato. ‘What’s wrong with it?’ I said. ‘Well, just look at it! It’s a bad potato! Can’t you see how bad this potato is? I want a good potato!’ So I picked the potato up, gave it a couple hard slaps while scolding, ‘
Bad
potato!
Bad
potato!’ and then I handed it back to him. ‘If this potato gives you any more trouble, you just let me know!’”

A passenger:

“I was on a flight coming back to the U.S. from Europe. Shortly into the flight there was an announcement that there would be two options for the in-flight meal: a beef dish or a chicken dish. I was listening to my iPod as I saw the flight attendant come down the aisle asking each passenger which dish they wanted. When he got to me and I saw him ask me (although I couldn’t hear him with the iPod on), I replied, ‘Chicken!’ I saw him look somewhat confused, and I saw his lips repeat the question, so I replied again, louder, ‘Chicken!’ I now noticed he was trying very hard to keep from bursting out laughing, so I finally took the headphones off to actually listen to his question. It turned out he was not taking meal orders as I had assumed, but was passing out customs forms. He was not saying ‘Beef or chicken?’ to each passenger, but instead asking, ‘American citizen?’ Of course, the worst part was that he was French. Now with a smirk and a smooth Parisian accent he said, ‘For ze last time, sir, are you an American citizen, or a chicken?’”

A flight attendant:

“I was working a flight from New York to Frankfurt which happened to have Mother Teresa and her entourage aboard. They had bought coach class tickets, but the airline upgraded them to first class at no extra charge, and I was working first class that day. Well, first class on an overseas flight got a full seven-course meal, so I wheeled out the hors d’oeuvres cart, but she didn’t want any of that; then I brought out the salad cart, and she had a salad; then I bought out the entrée cart, followed by the cheese and the fruit and so on. Her eyes got really big and she turned to me and said, ‘I cannot eat all of this! Young man, what do you do with all the uneaten food from this flight?’ and I had to tell her that company regulations dictated that we had to throw it all away. I felt really bad about having to tell her that and I felt like maybe I should get a really big box and collect all the leftover chicken and steak for her. Instead, we ended up taking up a collection among the other passengers on the plane. We raised about $500 for her, and gave that to her instead of a ‘to-go’ box full of leftovers.”

Random Factoids

•  Los Angeles International Airport dumps about 8,000 tons of wasted food annually.

•  Airlines and airports recycle only about 20% of their waste.

A flight attendant:

“One of my co-workers was working first class when Chet Atkins was aboard. She had just finished serving him his meal when he called her over saying, ‘Excuse me miss, I know this sounds like a terrible cliché, but there’s a fly in my soup.’ She looked, and sure enough, there was a fly in his soup. So she turned to him and said,
‘No pets are allowed on this flight!’”

A Tip From Betty

When we finish serving the passengers and are collecting the trash, it’s easy to get the trash from the people in the aisle seats and even from the people in the middle. But collecting the trash from the people in the window seats is much harder because I have to bend over and reach out to get it. This means bending over hundreds of times in a row, especially since I often have three flights on any given day with several hundred passengers each. So it means a lot to me, and really eases the strain on my back, if people will lift up their trash and hand it to me instead of expecting me to bend over and get it. Sometimes the snootier passengers refuse to do this and just wave their hand dismissively at the trash on their seat tray and expect me to collect it for them. When this happens, I will turn to the person next to them, or the person in the next aisle over, and say, ‘May I take your trash, please?’ After seeing other people lift their trash up and hand it to me, most people generally get the idea. If they still don’t get the idea, I just start moving away from them and taking my trash bag with me up the aisle. That’s then they finally pick up their trash and wave it at me to get my attention— and that’s when I collect their garbage without straining my back.

A passenger:

“I was flying on an Australian airline. The flight attendants were picking up trash, and one of them went up the aisle with her trash bag saying, ‘Rubbish? Anything I can take off your hands, such as old boyfriends?’”

A flight attendant:

“I was a brand-new flight attendant and it was my very first day on the job. This was back when we still served in-flight meals. It was a short flight out of Denver, only an hour and a half, and every seat was full. It was my job to serve the coach class passengers their meals. Because it was the holidays, we were serving turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes, peas, salad, and a really yummy pumpkin soufflé. And because it was a short flight and a full plane, the other flight attendants told me I was going to have to hurry as fast as I could to get all the meals served on time. So on my first trip down the aisle from the galley to coach class, I was carrying two meal trays. I thought that the doorway that separated first class from coach was wide enough for me and two meal trays. Because I was in such a hurry, I walked into that doorway at full-speed-ahead and it was not wide enough for me and two meal trays! I smacked into it so hard that the meal trays bent when they hit the wall, and turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes, peas, salad, and pumpkin soufflé went flying through the air. The soufflé landed on the head of a first class passenger, and his toupee and the soufflé landed on the floor together. I was so horrified that I spent the rest of the flight locked in the bathroom wondering if I should reconsider my choice of career.”

A flight attendant:

“When I answered a call button, a male passenger told me in a very concerned voice that his nuts were swollen. He said I should notify the captain right away. I was a little taken aback, but he didn’t expound upon his problem so I figured it must be a ‘guy thing’ and that the captain would know what to do. So I went to the cockpit and told the captain that a man was complaining about having swollen nuts. The captain was very confused and said, ‘Well, does he need medical help? Is he in pain?’ I didn’t know, so I went back to ask him. ‘The captain wants to know if you require the immediate assistance of a doctor.’ He looked very perplexed, and then he held up the snack packet that we had handed out earlier, showing me that the foil wrapper was taut and swollen from the change in air pressure. He said, ‘My peanuts are swollen and I’m sure that indicates a problem with the cabin pressure, and I thought the captain should know.’ When I understood, I burst out laughing, and when he understood what I had misunderstood, he laughed right along with me.”

A male flight attendant:

“Years ago the airline I work for used a beverage cart that was very poorly designed. The beverages were stored in drawers, but the drawers were as long as the beverage cart, and they opened from either end. The flight attendant in front of the cart could pull the drawer open, or the flight attendant in back of the cart could pull the drawer open, which made it cumbersome and difficult to coordinate the service. Also, if you weren’t careful, you could easily pinch a fellow flight attendant’s fingers if you opened your side of the drawer while they still had their hands in it. You had to be sure you could see their hands before opening the drawer, or you had to announce your intention to open the drawer, and of course each person had to open the drawer dozens and dozens of times. Once I was working with a British female flight attendant. I had opened the drawer, and then started rearranging some items on top of the beverage cart while the drawer was still open. To make extra room on top of the cart, I laid a bag of peanuts on top of the open drawer. The other flight attendant, because she could see both my hands, grabbed the drawer to pull it open, at which point I called out, ‘Wait! My nuts are stuck in the drawer!’ Her eyebrows went sky-high as she turned to me and said in her very proper British accent, ‘I beg your pardon?’ and I replied, ‘
Wrong nuts
!’”