Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase: Hilarious Stories of Air Travel by the World's Favorite Flight Attendant (9 page)

“We agreed the flight wasn’t in any kind of danger, so we decided to proceed to Chicago. When we finally landed, my instructions were to have these passengers remain seated and make sure the bin with the squirrels was not opened while all the other customers deplaned. Then about 15 supervisors and maintenance workers entered the aircraft and approached us. The workers taped up huge plastic tarps which spanned the full distance between the ceiling and the floor all around the bin. When they opened the bin, three of the four flying squirrels were found in the backpack all in good health, but ‘Rocky’ was missing. Apparently it took them five hours to find him, finally locating him in another bin halfway down the aisle. The aircraft’s next flight was cancelled due to the fact that it took them five hours to find the missing squirrel, plus many hours to inspect all the wires and connections for damage from the squirrel.

“Last thing we heard, the couple was charged with the money the airline lost due to this incident. I can’t help but wonder if it wouldn’t have been cheaper for them to have chartered a private jet for themselves and their squirrels—or at least to have hired a squirrel sitter and left Rocky and his friends at home.”

A pilot:

“As I was doing my pre-flight walk-around, checking the plane before takeoff, I noticed a really big animal carrier that was plainly marked in large letters:
‘Do Not Look in the Air Holes.’
Of course, that just made me curious so I had to go look in the air holes. Well, there was a large gorilla in there, which I suppose was being transported to a zoo. And he was staring right back out at me through those air holes. What I didn’t know was that gorillas interpret direct eye contact as aggression.

Well, everyone else on the tarmac was also reading the signs saying
‘Do Not Look in the Air Holes.’
and then going over to look in the air holes, so there was a steady procession of baggage handlers and maintenance workers staring in at this gorilla. The gorilla started to get really angry, rocking back and forth in his carrier. You just can’t have a moving package on board a plane—especially not one that large. In the end, the gorilla had to be transported by ground, all because of the signs saying
‘Do Not Look in the Air Holes.’”

A flight attendant:

“I was just out of training and my first assignment was from Boston to San Juan. During the flight several passengers in one center section of seats kept getting dripped on. We all assumed it was condensation from the air conditioning system, so we kept wiping it down and trying to keep it from dripping.

“When we landed in San Juan, we arrived at the gate and I went to disarm the doors when I heard a fellow flight attendant start to scream, ‘
Rats
! We’ve got
rats
!’ It turned out that an eccentric woman had placed her two ferrets in an empty overhead bin and they had urinated and defecated all over the bin during our flight. What was dripping on the passengers, and what we were wiping up, was not water, but ferret pee.”

A flight attendant:

“A passenger named Greg got a call from his wife when he arrived at the airport for his flight. She was worried because she could not find their cat, Joe, anywhere. It was a large white cat and she said, ‘You don’t think he might have jumped in your bag while you were packing, do you?’ He assured her that was impossible. He’d packed a big duffle bag the previous evening and stuffed it in the trunk of his car, where it had been all night long. He hadn’t heard any meowing when he pulled it out or when he checked it. The duffel bag was now in the cargo hold, but he didn’t think Joe the Cat could possibly be in it. But as the flight got underway, he got to thinking and started getting worried because he had packed the bag in the dark. His friends started teasing him about ‘the cat’s in the bag’ and he made them promise that if he found the cat dead in the duffle bag, that they wouldn’t tell his wife but would just help him bury the body in an undisclosed location so she would never know. His flight landed in Los Angeles and he retrieved the duffle from baggage claim, opened it up, and out climbed Joe the Cat, none the worse for the wear—just hungry, thirsty, and a little confused. The bag had gone through X-ray screening at security and apparently nobody noticed a cat skeleton in the bag. Fortunately, Greg had friends in Los Angeles who met him at the airport and took the cat home with them until he could round up a pet carrier and pay the fee to have him flown back home. All his buddies were saying, ‘Just stick him back in the bag! It’ll be free!’”

A pilot:

“We were flying from Seattle to Pullman in an unpressurized turboprop. We had four crates of little white laboratory mice on board destined for the university. Somewhere near Yakima we ran into some turbulence, and one of the crates tipped over, releasing about 20 mice. There were 14 seats on the plane, all of them occupied by college girls on their way back to school after the holiday. There were no cargo doors on the plane, only a curtain, so we could not contain the mice and they ran through the plane. It was an eruption! With the discovery of the first mouse, the screaming started and soon the girls were standing on their seats, hitting the mice with shoes, and the whole scene was complete bedlam!”

A flight attendant:

“We were flying from Seattle to San Francisco when we were diverted to Sacramento. We explained to the passengers that there would be an unexpected delay, and that they were welcome to get off the plane in Sacramento, stretch their legs, and reboard after an hour. Everyone on the plane disembarked, with the exception of a blind lady who was traveling with her seeing-eye dog.

“The captain went back to speak to her, asking if she would like to take a walk around. She said no, she was fine, but that her dog would really appreciate a chance to get a little exercise. So the pilot (who happened to be wearing sunglasses) escorted the dog off the plane and walked around the airport and back to the plane again. You have no idea how much people stare when they see a pilot with a seeing-eye dog, especially when he gets on the plane. We had passengers trying to rebook and others wondering if they should abandon ship.”

Safety First, Laughter After
!

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are here primarily for your safety.” We announce this at the beginning of every single flight. This is an absolutely a true and valid statement—but we are not above having some fun now and again. In this chapter we have a dead guy, lots of oxygen, and even a visit from the “Jetway Jesus!”

Betty:

“Throughout my career I have seen numerous cases of miraculous cures that happen on board an airplane. It has something to do with the airline wheelchairs. People in wheelchairs are always boarded first. Not only do they get on the plane first, but they also get the best spots to stow their luggage. But when we arrive at the destination, people in wheelchairs are always kept until last so they don’t hold up everyone else who is disembarking.

“Now, I’m not saying that everyone who orders a wheelchair is faking, but I can’t begin to count the times people have boarded the plane in a wheelchair, too sick to walk on their own, but by the time we arrive they’ve been miraculously cured of their ailment and are among the first to stand up and get off the plane. We attribute this phenomenon to the ‘Jetway Jesus’.”

A flight attendant:

“On a flight returning to the mainland from Honolulu, a passenger alerted a flight attendant to the fact that something was wrong with the man next to him. The flight attendant checked the guy and realized right away that he was deceased. She got some help from the other flight attendants and they moved the body into the galley, then called for a doctor.

“A doctor on board came forward, checked for a pulse, and pronounced the man dead. So the flight attendant went to the captain and told him one of the passengers had died. The captain said, ‘Are you sure that he’s dead? Because if he’s dead right now, we have to turn around and go back to Honolulu. But if he’s dead in about 20 minutes, we can keep going.’ So the flight attendant said, ‘Let me double check!’

“She went back to the doctor and said, ‘Are you in a big hurry to get back?’ and the doctor said, ‘Well, I have to be back at work tomorrow.’ She said, ‘Well, if this passenger is dead now, we have to turn back. But if he’s dead in 20 minutes, we can continue on to L.A.’ The doctor checked the passenger again and said, ‘You know, I think I
do
feel a pulse…’”

Fact

Is there a doctor convention on board?

When Dorothy Fletcher began having chest pains while flying to her daughter’s wedding in Florida, the captain asked if there was a doctor on board. Fifteen people stood up. Dorothy had the good fortune to get sick on board a flight that was carrying heart specialists to a convention in Orlando. She got plenty of attention while waiting for the plane to make an emergency landing in South Carolina. After spending five days in the hospital, she continued on to Florida, where she made it in time for her daughter’s wedding.

Betty:

“One of the things all flight attendants dread is the in-flight medical emergency. When people are stressed, or they forget their medications, even healthy people can become faint.

“I was working a completely full flight with only four flight attendants on board. I was serving meals in first class and had delivered six of them when an elderly man with a pacemaker passed out. Because I was the lead flight attendant, I had to take charge of the situation. I notified the cockpit, asked another flight attendant to get out the portable oxygen tank, began to jockey passengers around to make room for the man to lie down, and paged for a doctor. Fortunately there were two doctors on board, and one of them was a cardiologist.

“Although the man regained consciousness, the cardiologist wanted to hook him up to the defibrillator just to monitor his heartbeat. He also hooked the man up to a blood pressure cuff and started an IV. So now he was attached to an oxygen tank, a defibrillator, a blood pressure cuff and an IV that was hanging from the overhead bin on a coat hanger.

“For me, running back and forth to collect all this equipment, while also keeping the cockpit informed and comforting the sick passenger, was very stressful. With a full flight and only four flight attendants on board, there was no chance we could get the rest of the meals served until the situation was resolved. I made a PA announcement that meal service was temporarily suspended.

“Just when I thought it couldn’t possibly get any more stressful, that’s when one of the first class passengers, who had received one of the six meals, asked me—in the middle of all this running around—to fetch him another pat of butter for his roll. I couldn’t believe that someone could be so callous as to ask me to take time out from dealing with a possible heart attack victim to fetch him an extra pat of butter!

“Then, just in case I needed a little more stress, the man who was hooked up to an oxygen tank, a defibrillator, a blood pressure cuff and an IV, announced that he had to go to the bathroom—so I had to figure out how to get him and all this medical equipment to the lav and back again.

“Fortunately, the doctors concluded that he had suffered from a sudden drop in blood pressure which had caused him to black out, but he was not having a heart attack. He turned out to be fine, but I sure needed a good stiff drink after that.”

A flight attendant:

“A few years ago a friend of mine was on a flight back in the day when we still had the old style of headphones, which were little plastic nubbins that fit in your ears. She answered the call button to find a little old lady who looked just like someone’s grandma. She was sitting in her seat with these ear phones stuck up her nose, and she asked the flight attendant why she wasn’t getting any oxygen. She had been feeling short of breath and thought this was how they delivered oxygen to passengers.”

Fact

How do planes fly?

Simply put, it’s because air speeds up when it passes over the curved top of a wing. As it speeds up, the air molecules are spread more thinly over the top of the wing. The air molecules on the bottom of the wings are thick. The thinner the air, the fewer molecules press against any single point on the wing. The fewer molecules there are pressing down, the lower the pressure.

Patrick Smith describes the science behind flight in his book
Ask the Pilot– Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel:
“There’s also something in Flying 101 known as Bernoulli’s Principle, named for Daniel Bernoulli, an eighteenth-century Swiss mathematician who never saw an airplane. When forced through a constriction or across a curved surface, a fluid will accelerate and its pressure will simultaneously decrease. Our fluid is air, which moves faster over the top of the wing, which is curved (less pressure), than it does along the flatter surface below (higher pressure). The resulting upward push contributes to lift.”

If you hear that a plane is flying 500 mph, it means that this is the speed that the air is traveling over the wings (called ‘air speed’) but this is not necessarily how fast the airplane is moving over the ground (called ‘ground speed’). If a plane is flying with an airspeed of 500 mph but it is heading into a 50 mph headwind, it will have a ground speed of only 450 mph. But if it’s flying with a 50 mph tailwind, it will have a ground speed of 550 mph.