Fasten Your Seatbelts: A Flight Attendant's Adventures 36,000 Feet and Below (15 page)

ear of flying can be totally debilitating for some people. I’m not sure if it’s a control issue or simply a fear of crashing. Whatever it is, it’s real.

Through the years, I’ve met survivors of airplane crashes who shared their amazing stories with me. It is astonishing that despite a fear of crashing, they get back on an airplane and fly again. The following excerpts are some of the stories survivors have shared with me.

In 1990, an Avianca airplane ran out of fuel. It crashed just before landing in New York. Two weeks later, I met a male passenger who was on that flight. He came on board with crutches and had bandages all over him. His right ear was gone. I asked how in the world he could possibly fly again. He said he was sleeping when they crashed. He woke up in a helicopter, which was taking him and another passenger to the hospital. That’s how he found out. Because he had no memory of the crash, he was able to fly.

A United airplane lost all hydraulics on its aircraft. The captain and first officer did a miraculous job landing the airplane. Unfortunately on impact, the airplane crashed and cartwheeled into a corn field in Iowa. I met a male passenger who had been on that flight. He said he was sitting in the rear section of the airplane. He asked the agent before they took off if he could switch seats further up and moved. His original row was where the majority of the passengers were killed and had he remained there, he would not have survived.

Another passenger told the story of how his plane crashed in Little Rock, Arkansas. He was sitting in first class and survived, while a young woman in the same row did not make it. After the airplane crashed and stopped moving, he asked the flight attendant who was strapped in her jumpseat if she was okay. She tried to get up but couldn’t. Looking down he noticed her toes were facing the wrong direction. He carried her out to safety. It was pitch black outside with the rain pounding on his face while he waded in swampy water. I asked how he could get on an airplane again. He said he doesn’t travel on Tuesdays and that it is therapy to talk about the experience.

An Alaskan airplane had a problem with its horizontal stabilizer. This equipment must be in working order to land the airplane. The captain knew the severity of the situation and decided to circle above the ocean instead of circling over land while
trying to troubleshoot. They eventually crashed into the ocean. A month later, I met a young man on my flight. He stopped me in the aisle. “Hey look,” he said, as he showed me a cover of TIME magazine with his face on it. His parents were on the Alaskan Airlines airplane that went down. They were missionaries helping to construct several buildings in Mexico. He and his wife intended to adopt his parent’s commitment to helping others. I asked how he was doing. “I’m okay, but my younger sister is having a hard time.”

My mom and I were flying from Atlanta to Raleigh. It was very foggy upon landing. As we were driving out of the airport parking lot, we noticed police cars, ambulances, and fire engines racing around. “Mom, something really terrible has happened here,” I said. We quickly drove home and turned on the television. A special bulletin came on the screen. An American Eagle plane had crashed in Raleigh. There were no survivors.

looked forward to flying my trip from Miami to Paris. There were two flight attendants working the business class section of a 767 aircraft. I was working the left aisle attending to a total of fourteen passengers for the next eight hour flight.

When passengers board the airplane, I instinctively check them out and get a feel for their personality. A stylish woman with long, straight, blonde hair, dressed like the latest cover of Vogue walked on the airplane. She dropped her name brand suitcase in the aisle and waited. A man behind her stood for a moment and then dutifully picked up her luggage and placed it in the overhead bin. She sat in the first row of business class on my side. The chivalrous gentleman proceeded to coach. Wow, so much for presumptions. I mistakenly thought the male passenger was her well-trained husband.

I offered champagne and orange juice for the pre-departure service. When I reached the first row, the lady interrupted
my service and barked, “Take this coat.”
How rude
, I thought. She could have cared less that I was carrying a silver tray full of beverages. I told her I would hang her jacket when I was finished doing pre-departures. She threw me a look of icy displeasure. A few minutes later, I offered her some orange juice or champagne. “I’ll take a club soda with lime easy on the ice,” she snapped.
Looks like I have a real winner here
. I dubbed her the “Ice Princess”.

The flight attendants like to gather around and talk about what’s going on and who’s causing trouble. It’s therapy to get it out of our system. So I shared how horrible this person was with the business class galley flight attendant, Kathy.

The unfriendly passenger had on a stunning fur-lined suit. I am sure she was something in life, or she thought she was, but usually the truly wealthy people are quite down to earth. In fact, a lot of the time we can tell who is sitting in first class on a full fare ticket and who is an upgrade by the way they act. It is almost as though the upgraded passengers think if they are rude and arrogant that will prove they are worthy to sit up there. I handed out menus to everyone.

After we took off, I asked for her dinner preference. I knew what was ahead. “How is the fish prepared? Is the chicken breaded? Does the pasta have any meat in it?”
Oh brother, how am I supposed to know?
Airplane food comes frozen, with tin
foil placed on top of an oven-safe dish. Our job is to heat it up. The menu explained in detail how it was prepared and the ingredients. I tried to appease her and was as helpful as I could be, but nothing I said seemed to meet with her approval. After completing the preferences for the rest of the cabin, I shared with Kathy the on-going misfortune of having this difficult passenger on my side.

We prepare everything from a cart for our food service. The business class aisle flight attendants work alone on the cart while the galley flight attendant checks on us from time to time to see if we need anything. To look more professional, we wear a black-and-white checked serving jacket, which has two pockets on the front.

Our first course is an appetizer. It usually consists of shrimp cocktail, salmon and cream cheese, or prosciutto and melon. We serve a salad that comes with a choice of dressing (usually creamy peppercorn or vinaigrette). The dressings are placed in the first drawer with ladles in a glass container. We always begin our service with the first row.

My first passenger, of course, was the Ice Princess. I asked her which dressing she would prefer. “I want the creamy peppercorn, on the side. I reached over and poured some water into her glass. What I didn’t realize was when I leaned over, the dressing’s ladle hooked onto my jacket’s pocket.

I leaned back and the ladle of dressing launched into the air; flinging the creamy dressing all over the first row. It was all over the window, the floor, and of course to my horror, all over the Ice Princess’ fur lined suit.

Both our mouths gaped open and she shot me a look that could kill. I looked up frantically trying to get Kathy’s attention. She witnessed the whole thing and was doubled over with laughter.

In a panic, I pushed the cart back to the galley and ran to the restroom. I gathered some paper towels and rushed back to her. The paper towels smeared a white trail on her suit. When Kathy finally gained her composure, we found some linens and soaked them in our world famous remedy for stains: club soda.

Back I went to aid this horrible woman’s wounds that I inflicted. She, as expected, didn’t handle it gracefully! She was so upset she couldn’t eat her entrée on which she so carefully deliberated.

The show had to go on and I delivered the rest of the passenger’s trays. All of a sudden I was seized with a fit of uncontrollable laughter. I am not saying I am glad it happened, but sometimes life has its own way of balancing out. I gave the Ice Princess a cleaning voucher along with my apologies. A free bottle of red cabernet hopefully eased some of her lingering anguish.

mells on the airplane are just part of the job. The A-300 aircraft smells like a barn in the back. Flights from Seattle to Miami are a gas fest because the passengers are continuing on after a fourteen hour flight from Tokyo. And of course, you know we are in trouble when we see a passenger bring a newspaper or book into the lavatory. It all makes for a pretty stinky job sometimes. We have all learned to take this in stride but every now and then our nose turns out to be our friend.

Those of you who have flown know when you are sitting on the runway, you may occasionally experience residual exhaust fumes from the planes ahead of you. That is normal. This following incident, however, was not normal.

The captain always tells the flight attendants during the briefing: “You are the eyes and the ears of the aircraft. If there is anything abnormal, let us know.” In this case, we were the ‘nose’ of the aircraft.

We were on a Super-80, which holds 132 passengers. I was flight attendant number one flying from Orange County to Chicago (about a four-hour flight).