Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase: Hilarious Stories of Air Travel by the World's Favorite Flight Attendant (7 page)

A male flight attendant:

“I was working the beverage cart starting at the back of the plane and moving forward, and a lady flight attendant was working her beverage cart starting at the front of the plane and moving back, and we met in the middle row of the plane, back to back. She was serving her final passenger, but she was short a couple packs of peanuts. So she turned to me and asked, ‘Do you have two nuts?’ and I thought about that for a second before responding, ‘Well…Yes.’ And she said, ‘No, the
other
nuts!’”

A pilot:

“We were about to takeoff when some fun-loving flight attendants decided to put one over on the passengers. They laid a whole bunch of snack packets on the floor of the airplane in the aisle and announced over the P.A. system that they were tired and needed a rest so they were going to deliver the snacks using the easiest method possible. When we took off and banked, the snacks slid down the aisle all the way to the back, and the passengers picked the packets up off the floor and handed them around. Then one flight attendant picked up the mike and announced, ‘OK, pick up your feet because here
come the drinks!’”

Facts:

* Otto Schnering, inventor of the Baby Ruth Candy Bar once promoted the product by hiring a chartered airplane to do a massive Baby Ruth candy bar drop over the city of Pittsburgh in 1923. The ploy worked, and sales took off. Encouraged, he did similar airplane drops in cities in 40 different states and included his new candy bar, the Butterfinger.

* During World War II British airmen put ice cream mixtures in cans in the rear compartments, where the plane's vibration combined with the freezing temperatures at high altitudes yielded especially delicious ice cream.

A flight attendant:

“I was serving on a 767 and on this particular flight about half of the passengers were Buddhist monks, all decked out in their saffron robes. I guess there were about a hundred monks on that flight who happened to be of a particular sect that requires they never take anything directly from the hand of a woman. This was a problem because we only had one male flight attendant. Thankfully, the monks brought with them a bunch of ‘helpers’. The monk would hand the ticket to the helper, the helper would hand the ticket to us, we would check the ticket and hand it back to the helper, and the helper would hand it back to the monk. When we were serving meals, we handed the trays to the helpers and the helpers handed the tray to the monks. Every time we would walk up and down the aisles, the monks would lean into their seats, lest their hand accidentally touch a woman. It was very odd.”

A flight attendant:

“There were two young sisters traveling on their own on one of my flights. One was probably about six years old, and her little sister was about four. I was passing out the peanuts and snacks and when I gave the big sister her peanuts she very politely said, ‘Thank you, sir!’ I then gave a package of peanuts to her little sister. The big sister turned to the little sister and said, ‘Now, what do you say to the nice man?’ and the little sister stretched out her arm to me with the peanuts in her hand and said, ‘
Open it
!’”

Random Factoids

·
        
110 million cubic yards of dirt was moved to construct the Denver International Airport.

·
        
330 million cubic yards of dirt was moved to build the Panama Canal.

·
        
Total area of Denver International Airport, in square miles: 53 (137 sq/km)

·
        
Total area of Manhattan Island, in square miles: 22.4 (58 sq/km)

·
        
900 miles (1,448 km) of highways could be built with the amount of asphalt used to build runways and ramps at the Denver Airport.

·
        
Miles of fiber optic cables running through Denver International Airport: 5,300 (8,529 km)

·
        
Highway miles from Miami to Seattle: 3,362 (5,410 km)

Dumb Moments & Stupid Moves

Every time I think I’ve heard it all, someone surprises me. People can ask the dumbest questions! And I’m not just talking about the passengers. Even though flight crews work above the clouds, we are not above having our own less than stellar moments. I personally am guilty of more than my share of stupid moves, but hey, at least they make good stories!

Betty:

“Occasionally when the doors shut, they don’t seal tightly. It’s not dangerous when this happens, but it will sometimes cause a high-pitched whine or hissing that can be annoying. When I was a new flight attendant, this happened at the rear door. I went up to tell the pilot about it. He reassured me that his instruments indicated the door was safely closed, even if it was whistling, but he suggested that if I wanted the squeal to stop, I could stuff a lemon in the door. We always carry lemons on board for use in cocktails, so I went to the galley and got a sliced up lemon. Then I stood in front of the door and tried to figure out what I was supposed to do with the lemon. So I called the pilot and asked him,”What do I do with this lemon?” He laughed and said,”I didn’t say
lemon
; I said
linen
. Stuff a linen napkin in the door!”

A pilot:

“On a flight from New York City to Miami, a flight attendant came up to the cockpit and asked me what the large body of water on the left side of the plane was. Thinking she surely must be joking, I told her it was Lake Michigan. She said, ‘Oh,’ and left. A few minutes later she was back, asking in all seriousness, ‘Is that fresh water or salt water?’”

A flight attendant:

“On a flight from San Francisco to Hawaii, a passenger summoned me and asked, ‘Are we going to see water the entire way to Hawaii?’ and I replied, ‘Well, I sure hope so, because if we don’t, that means we’re not going to Hawaii!’ I told her to be certain to alert me if she saw mountains or lakes or anything other than water so I could raise the alarm. She looked out the window, sighed heavily, and said, ‘I can’t believe we’re going to see nothing but
water
the entire way to Hawaii!’”

Betty:

“One of my sisters called me because she was invited to a wedding in Maui and she wanted to fly to Hawaii for the weekend to attend. She lives in Florida, and I told her the trip would take so long, just getting down there and back, that I didn’t think she should go just for a weekend. She thought that was ridiculous, so I helped her make the travel arrangements. There were a bunch of flights just to get from Florida to California, followed by the five-hour flight to Hawaii. As soon as she got back home, she called me and said, ‘It took me so long to get there! Why didn’t you tell me it was such a long trip?’ I reminded her that I had warned her over and over again. Then she explained to me that as soon as they took off from Los Angeles, she had expected to be landing any minute and simply could not believe how long it took to get there. She had grown up looking at flat maps of the U.S., and on a map in an atlas (instead of a globe), they usually move the Hawaiian Islands right next to California to save space. She thought the Hawaiian Islands were to California what the Florida Keys are to Florida.”

A passenger:

“I grew up in Louisiana and I clearly remember the first time I ever flew on a plane. I was flying to Birmingham, Alabama, so the plane had to fly over Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama to get there. But I was confused, so I called the flight attendant and asked her, ‘Where are the lines?’ She didn’t understand what I was talking about, so I pointed out the window of the airplane and asked her again, ‘Where are the state lines? The state lines that are drawn on all the maps?’ I had grown up looking at the state lines on all the geography maps and I thought, right until that very moment, that those lines could actually be seen on the land.”

Joke

Not realizing that Indianapolis is on Eastern Standard Time and Chicago on Central Standard, a man inquired at the Indianapolis airport about a flight to Chicago. “The next flight to Chicago departs at 1:00 p.m.,” the ticket agent said, “and arrives at 1:01 p.m.” “Would you mind repeating that, please?” asked the man. The agent repeated the information and then asked, “Would you care to make a reservation?” “No, thank you,” he replied, “but I do believe I'll stick around and watch that thing take off!”

Betty:

“I’m based out of L.A. and, like everything in L.A., the airport is crowded and congested. Because of that, most of the gates are ‘tow-in’ gates, which means the airplane will land, taxi close to the gate, then shut the engines down and wait for a tug to tow them to the gate. This is to avoid problems with backwash from jet engines. Most pilots have a standard announcement they make so passengers won’t get out of their seat while waiting for the tow. One day, right after the captain made his announcement, I heard someone from a few rows back exclaim in disgust: ‘Holy
crap
! I can’t believe we made it clear across the country and now we’ve broken down and have to be
towed
!’”

Random Factoids

•  The two busiest airports in the world are O’Hare in Chicago and Hartsfield in Atlanta. Both service nearly 1 million flights annually.

•  About 35,000 people work at O’Hare Airport in Chicago.

•  At peak periods, air traffic controllers at O’Hare Airport will handle 210 flights per hour.

•  Airplanes takeoff and land at the rate of one every 37 seconds at O’Hare Airport.

•  More hot dogs are sold at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport than at any other location on the planet – 2 million annually.

A flight attendant:

“Some years ago they invented Braille emergency instructions for blind passengers that explained all the safety features of the plane in raised dots. Shortly afterwards, a handicapped man and his travel companion pre-boarded, and I handed him a Braille emergency book, explaining what it was. He didn’t understand, so I ran his fingertips over the dots while explaining it was a Braille instruction manual. That’s when his travel companion leaned over and said, ‘He’s not
blind
. He’s
deaf
.’”

A flight attendant:

“My girlfriend was serving on a flight out of Billings, Montana, when the call light kept going off. She walked to the back of the plane to find a businessman who was holding the call button down while speaking into the air vent, saying, ‘I would like a Coke and my wife would like a Sprite…’ He really thought that was how you placed your order on a plane!”

Fact

A passenger on a plane reported seeing a UFO with a yellow light that blinked irregularly while on a flight. He claimed the UFO followed abreast of the plane for the entire flight. Investigators called to the scene found a firefly caught between the two panels of glass in the window where the man had been sitting.

A pilot:

“We were flying over Meteor Crater in Arizona—a huge hole in the ground left when a meteor slammed into the Earth thousands of years ago. The highway passes the crater, with an access road that leads to the edge of the crater where people can visit a museum and look into the hole. I was reading from a pamphlet that tells all about the crater, and I pointed out the window to show it to a flight attendant. She looked out the window and exclaimed, ‘Wow! I can’t believe how close it came to hitting that road!’”

A co-pilot:

“Once we had a brand-new flight attendant on board who knew nothing about how to fly a plane. One day in mid-flight on a cross-country trip, she asked the captain how he managed to find his route clear across the country. It just so happened that there was a contrail perfectly outlined below us by the sun and the atmospheric conditions, so the captain pointed at the contrail and said, ‘We just follow the lines!’ She leaned to the window and looked at the contrail and said, ‘What a good idea!”

A flight attendant:

“I was working on an L-1011, where the galley is located on the lower level, and whoever is in charge of fixing the meals puts the hot meal cart in the elevator and sends it up to the top level where the passengers are seated. However, on this flight the elevator was out of order. We had a real can-do attitude and wanted to serve the meals in spite of the broken elevator. The only way to do this was to use the emergency escape hatch located under the carpet in the passenger cabin above the galley. We piled cushions and pillows around the hole so no one would accidentally fall in, and then handed each meal tray up though the hole in the floor to another flight attendant who would then run it to the next of the 300 passengers. But wouldn’t you know—a drunk guy stumbled up the aisle and ended up falling right through that hole in the floor, landing in the galley below. We were certain we were going to be sued as we picked him up and dusted him off and checked for injuries. But he was just relieved, saying, ‘Oh, thank
God
! I thought I fell through the bottom of the
plane
!’”