Category: Uncategorized
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Attention passengers… can you hear me?
I’ve been a flight attendant for 20 years. In other words I’ve spent a lot of time talking to myself. Some of my best conversations happen with myself. Sad but true. Twenty years ago, when I first started flying, almost every passenger said hello during boarding. Oh how times have…
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Sometimes normal can be messed up
Whenever I hear people talk about something being normal I think about the first airline I worked for. Sun Jet International Airline. Sun Jet was a low cost carrier that never flew anywhere international. At Sun Jet we didn’t have to pack underwear because we didn’t even have layovers. Well…
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Flight attendants are not “totally” having sex on planes
35,000 FEET — Have you ever asked a sushi chef about his sex life? Have you ever seen a Starbucks barista in lingerie — on television? Have you ever wondered if the cashier at your grocery store has been hooking up with the other cashiers in the freezer, or maybe…
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When you’re ghosted, there’s nothing to do but wonder
You know you’re a flight attendant when you can easily say the word “goodbye” in six different languages. To say we meet a lot of people is an understatement — I greet at least 200 passengers a day. If we have four flights in a single day, that’s about 500…
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What being a flight attendant taught me about human trafficking
A few years ago, on board a flight from Los Angeles to New York, a group of young girls wore nothing but jeans and T-shirts — in the middle of winter. They didn’t speak English, and they didn’t speak to each other the entire flight. I remember thinking it…
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How Christmas Can Be Hard on Flight Attendants
We were walking the dog when my son said, “Why does it feel like my childhood is over? Does this mean I’m … a man?” I thought about it for, oh, half a second, and said, “In a way I guess it does.” I tried not to laugh, but it…
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15 Gifts For Flight Attendants
There’s nothing like practically living on an airplane to change what you wish for every year. “All I want for Christmas is job security, being able to hold my first choice work schedule, two weeks vacation, a raise, longer layovers, more wide-body flying, faster flying times, grateful and polite passengers…
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Bad Passengers
During boarding, when I’m standing in front of the flight deck door greeting passengers, I always smile and say, “Hello.” Sometimes I’ll ask how passengers are, only to be reminded why I maybe shouldn’t ask that question. “This airline sucks,” said one passenger, after I wished him a “Good morning.”…
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How not to get kicked off a plane
Last month the New York Post ran a story about a passenger who was kicked off a flight for“no good reason.” The “no good reason” turned out to be … well, they didn’t know. Which I suppose is how they came up with “no good reason.” In a passenger-recorded video, we don’t…
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We’ve come a long way, baby! Or have we?
I don’t know what you do for a living, but imagine if I told you I needed your Body Mass Index, or BMI, to decide whether or not you were fit to do your job — a job you were doing every day, a job nobody had complained about. You might…
Heather Poole 