Irony: NWA pilots land late because of scheduling discussion

by Tom Johansmeyer on

The investigation into the overshooting Northwest Airlines flight continues. The National Transportation Safety Board has found that the pilots were distracted by conversations and the use of personal laptops when flying 150 miles past Minneapolis. One of the topics being bandied about was scheduling, though I suspect it didn’t involve the impact of a late arrival because of a missed airport.

According to the NTSB, “The pilots said there was a concentrated period of discussion where they did not monitor the airplane or calls from (air traffic controllers) even though both stated they heard conversation on the radio.” In the report generated by its investigation, the NTSB continued, “Both said they lost track of time.” Meanwhile air traffic controllers and airline dispatchers were trying to contact Flight 188 for more than an hour. Neither pilot realized something was amiss until they were asked about it by a flight attendant.

Delta was pretty quick to announce that the pilots were involved in activities not related to flying and that they could be fired for it. For now, the fliers are suspended pending the results of the government’s investigation (and one by the airline itself).

Galley Gossip: Can an average Joe date a flight attendant?

by Heather Poole on

Hi my Name is Mark and I’ve wanted to date flight attendants for years, but like a lot of guys I don’t get the chance to chat with them much. When you see one that’s friendly and smiles a lot and is nice, those are the ones you want to kidnap and take home to mom and can I keep her….LOL. There are many that are snotty and hateful and you want to tell them what they can do with their job. My opinion is that the job gets the best of them and they get big headed. My question is this, is there a dating site where an every day Joe like myself can find a flight attendant for dating? Is there such a thing? Can you write me and let me know or I’ll keep looking, I guess.

Mark,

The answer is yes, an average Joe can date a flight attendant. Just like an average Joe can date a nurse or a lawyer or a sales clerk or whoever it is Joe wants to date. All he has to do is ask! It all boils down to the approach. Of course Joe’s personality has a lot to do with it, too. Always remember, nice guys get nice girls, and you’ll be fine. They do!

You mentioned that you don’t often get a chance to chat with many flight attendants. Well that’s your first problem, Mark, and it’s a big one! Communication is the key to any relationship, especially if you want it to last. If you aren’t able to say hello and make small talk with the one hovering over your seat waving a beverage napkin, how on earth are you ever going to ask that special someone out? My advice to you is to start by opening the window. What I mean by that is ask a simple question like, are you laying over in (insert city)? Do you know of anywhere good to eat in (insert city or airport)? Ask an open ended question that the flight attendant can easily answer. Simply say something other than what you’d like to drink. Don’t forget to say please and thank you, and try making eye contact when you do so. Kindness goes a long way.
As for kidnapping a flight attendant, I do believe you’re joking. (At least I hope you are) And that’s a good thing – the joking, not the kidnapping! It means you have a sense of humor. Flight attendants prefer fun passengers over miserable passengers. As for taking your flight attendant home to mom and “keeping her,” please don’t use that line ever again. Most women I know won’t find it funny. Only because mom is the last person we want to meet at the end of a long work day. Not to mention, we don’t like to be “kept.” Against our will. In a tent. In the backyard. Regardless of what mom may think. I’m just saying…

It’s unfortunate to hear you’ve come across so many unpleasant flight attendants. But telling a person where to stick their job, regardless of how unprofessional they are, isn’t exactly the best way to react. It’ll only scare off any other flight attendants you may be interested in. Personally, I don’t know many flight attendants who are snotty and hateful with big heads. Big hair, maybe. But a big head? No, not a one. I mean we pick up trash at 30,000 feet for a living from anywhere up to fourteen hours a day after a ten hour layover at a dumpy airport hotel! What I do know are a lot of flight attendants who are tired and hungry and often times treated not very nicely by aggrevated passengers looking to take out their frustrations with the airline on someone, anyone! And that person usually ends up being the flight attendant who gets stuck listening to the complaints for hours on end. Take advantage of that situation, Mark. Be a breath of fresh air and become the guy who understands how hard the job can be. Flight attendants love to be understood.

While there are dating sites like crewdating.com, I recommend using a regular on line dating site. Only because you don’t want to limit yourself to just women who wear navy blue polyester, do you? Keep your options open! You never know who you might meet. Back when I was single and dating on Match.com, I dated quite a few doctors who were interested in flight attendants, but I also dated men who were interested in dating just me. I ended up marrying a guy I met the old fashioned way – on a flight. Eight years later we’re still going strong.

If you’re truly serious about dating a flight attendant, Mark, check out the following letter from Lewis, a guy who knows what it’s like, really like, to date a flight attendant, and you might just change your mind. Life with a flight attendant might not be what you think.

Good luck!

Heather

PS. Lewis walked down the aisle last year with a wonderful woman who works on the ground, not in the air, and is now living happily ever after.

A LETTER FROM LEWIS …

Dear Heather,

I thought I’d add a different perspective…what it’s like to be the guy who is dating a flight attendant. ALL red-blooded American men dream of dating a flight attendant. My turn finally came and I was in awe. I then was rather surprised that the glamorous life we were led to believe didn’t really exist. I found flight attendants have one of the toughest lives out there, and to this day I don’t understand how they endure it. My suspicions are…those who can’t take it drop out in the first year, leaving those who can.

I had absolutely no idea that flight attendants (god forbid one slip and say stewardess) didn’t merely go to the airport in time for a morning flight, fly during the day, only to return and sleep in their own bed each night. I was introduced to the world of “trips,” “bidding,” and “seniority.” Since Delta hadn’t hired in many years, my particular flight attendant with many years seniority was still at the bottom of the list, meaning her four day trips frequently consisted of frequent short hops.

I was horrified…and mystified…that essentially flight attendants get paid door closing to door opening. ALL that work-heavy time boarding….is their “contribution to the airline.” All the time waiting with the door open for a mechanical delay is on them. All the time waiting for the last granny to deplane and wait for a missing wheelchair…again on them.

They report two HOURS before a flight….out of the “goodness of their heart.” I was even surprised they weren’t paid on layovers. My strongest belief is that flight attendants should be paid from the second they check in on the first day of their flight until the second they check out on the last day of their flight…even if this means the semi-artificial high flying time pay is reduced. I AM aware that those with seniority would take advantage of this and suddenly WANT the short hops, leaving those with less seniority with the longer flights, but even still…I feel that since they are on company time and rules even when on a lay-over…they should be paid.

It’s not as easy as a flight attendant may feel on their companion. They are gone for four days, on a average, for a trip. The night before a trip, gosh forbid their partner turn on the TV…they need their rest….and forget romance that night either. The night they return, they have a desperate need to get rid of the frozen smile on their face, and have zero desire to talk…they HAVE been talking for four days. The first night home, their companion is to have wine, dinner, a hot bath ready and to ready mute, but at their beck and call. Now six out of seven days have been used. The day after a trip, their companion better be darn ready to go out on the town…it’s their night to party, shop, enjoy the town.

I was extremely surprised to find out a flight attendant wasn’t ecstatic to hear from their loved one at length during a lay-over. I THOUGHT, how nice, they’re alone in a room in a hotel, so they would appreciate a long phone call for companionship. Instead they are working at removing the fixed smile, have been talking all day, can’t really have a drink to relax, and basically want to be alone, probably catching a sports event on TV. I was even surprised that sports was big in their lives until it dawned on me….they can’t really get into a TV series, as they will miss so many episodes, so they learn to watch something that is a one-time event.

So, their life is tough, and their companion has to be totally understanding. I was absolutely unable to understand when economic times got tough, that somehow the airlines felt the flight attendants must be the source of their economic difficulties, so removed crew meals. Let me get this straight…away from home, so no access to your own fridge….so you have to BUY a ridiculously-priced airport sandwich? Let me get this straight, no crew meal, so you have to serve meals to all the passengers, but not get to have one yourself? At Least the CEO’s did away with their own corporate dining rooms. (AS IF.)

Then some bright guy figured out….hey, they have nothing to do after passengers deplane, let’s have the FLIGHT ATTENDANTS clean the plane! Ignore the fact that they aren’t getting paid at that point and essentially every flight attendant I’ve ever met has chronic back and knee problems.

Still, I just can’t help it. I still adore flight attendants. I still am in little boy awe of these goddesses of the sky. I think their absolutely PERFECT grooming and make-up is so appealing. (I’m aware that that perfect grooming comes at a price of yet ANOTHER hour of their own time in their room preparing for the flight…but wow, the results!)

I found it funny how basically EVERY flight attendant will name the SAME city-city flight as the horror flight, the OMG NO I have to fly from this one city to THAT one city? MOST of the flight attendants also have the same celebrity they chose for horror stories. I was sad, that even though International flights have the best pay, the best time spent for hours paid, that it wounds flight attendants with the time changes and hours, so they get burned out.

Congratulations on your blog, and keep up the good work.

Lewis

Galley Gossip: Flight attendants under investigation for bomb threat

by Heather Poole on

Like I mentioned in my last post, Fly-Girls, a flight attendant docu-series airing soon, it’s rarely ever a good thing when flight attendants are in the news…

It happened a few seconds after the Captain on my flight from Miami to New York introduced himself and then asked if I had brewed a pot of coffee. I had, in fact. I always do whenever I’m working the galley. I poured him a cup and told him my name as we boarded a full flight on a 757.

After taking a sip, he whipped off his hat and hung it on a hook against the back of the cockpit door. Nonchalantly he said, “Did you hear about the bomb threat today?”

Immediately I stopped counting meals, chicken with rice and cheese tortellini, and spun around to face him. “What happened?”

“A flight attendant found a note in the lavatory. It said there was a bomb on board the flight.” And with that he was gone, too busy chatting away with a mechanic who had stepped into the cockpit.

Of course the first thing that came to mind when the pilot uttered those two oh-so-innocent words, “flight attendant”, was oh no, please don’t let it be a flight attendant who wrote the note. The next thing I thought was, I wonder if the crew was on reserve.

The only reason I suspected the crew was because something similar had happened a few years back. Even in that case, so many years ago, when I heard on the news that the flight attendant under investigation had been on reserve when she left a note in the lav, I had to laugh. Just because being on reserve does make one a little bit crazy. At times. But usually not that crazy, not bomb writing crazing of course!

When I mentioned to a friend, and lawyer, what had happened on the American Airlines flight from Boston to Miami, as well as whom I hoped the suspects would not turn out to be, he said, “Tell me, how does ‘we will get fired’ ‘we will go to prison’ get left out of the thought process before writing that kind of note?”

Good question.

Then I reminded him, as well as myself, that the flight attendants in question are innocent until proven guilty.

Two days later I am now unhappy to report that what I had prayed would not be the case seems to be kinda-sorta happening. The crew is now officially under investigation. The details are as follows…

  • A flight attendant found a message scrawled on the bathroom cabinet that read, “Bomb on board – Boston-Miami”
  • The aircraft was evacuated and luggage was searched by a bomb sniffing dog at an isolated area at Logan Airport. No bomb was found
  • FBI interrogated two crew members; a male and female flight attendant
  • Passengers were transferred to another flight and continued on to Miami

And here’s the kicker, the same two flight attendants under investigation for this bomb threat were on another flight from Miami to Boston just two weeks ago when a similar bomb threat was found. I kid you not.

Again, innocent until proven guilty.

But if these two are guilty, just how dumb are they to do it (period) on two different flights they’re crewing – two weeks apart! Do you think maybe, just maybe, they might be dating? I mean how else do two people get involved in something like this? Or do you think they’re roommates? Best friends? Or two disgruntled coworkers who just so happened to hold the same line last month? Seriously, what do you think?

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Photo courtesy of Purplemattfish

FBI hunts for close in Miami-Boston bomb threats

by Tom Johansmeyer on

The FBI is looking for common denominators in bomb threats on American Airlines flights between Miami and Boston. Two cases have arisen, prompting the FBI to dig a little deeper. The most recent incident occurred on Wednesday, when a flight attendant found “bomb on board, Boston-Miami” written on a bathroom cabinet. A search of the luggage yielded no bombs or other weapons.

On September 17, a flight attendant found a threatening note in the lavatory – the plane had departed Miami at around 9:30 PM and had to head back only 40 minutes later. Again, a search of the plane turned up nothing.

Too coincidental to be a coincidence, it seems, the FBI is looking for any common threads that may exist.

Galley Gossip: Fly Girls, a flight attendant docu-series airing soon

by Heather Poole on

The first thing I thought when I heard about the new flight attendant show called Fly Girls was, why didn’t they ask me! Not that I really want to be on a reality show. It’s just…well…it would have been kind of nice to have been asked.

The second thing I thought was, I wonder if any of the “fly girls” are guys? Because guys do fly, and that Virgin America flight attendant over there, the one donning the inflatable yellow life vest, is lookin pretty fly to me. I’m just saying…

The third thing I thought was, oh no. Because whenever flight attendants are in the spotlight it’s rarely a good thing. People seem to have a love hate relationship with flight attendants. Actually, it’s more of a love to hate type of relationship. Don’t believe me? Just go and read a few of the comments the Galley Gossip post flight attendant pet peeve #1, answer please! generated.

Just last week I read about Dave Vontesmar, a flight attendant who drives over 30 miles from his home in Phoenix to the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport while wearing a monkey mask. He does this in order to illegally pass through the photo-enforcement gantlet on Interstate 17. Vontesmar truly believes the DPS is required to identify the driver of the vehicle, not just the vehicle, so he’s fairly confident he won’t have to pay the fines that the monkey mask wearer, whoever that may be, accumulated for 37 violations, an amount that could easily rack up to over $6,500.

Of course the first thing I thought when I read that story was, what if passengers wore monkey masks on board our planes? Would they, too, be exempt from following the rules. Of course this only reminded me of the time I actually had a monkey on board my flight. She sat in business class and was one of the most well behaved passengers I’ve ever met. But that’s another story.

This story is about Flight attendants and how we, flight attendants, already have a bad rap. Not that some of us don’t deserve it, because Dave and his monkey mask are a big part of the problem. I’m just saying, do we really need a reality show that could possibly make us look even worse? Because you know there will be drama. You know there will be sex. And you know this show is going to be a huge hit! Don’t believe me? One of the executive producers is Colin Nash. Name doesn’t ring a bell? Perhaps you’ve heard of one of his other shows, The Hills?

Here’s what Mike Bruno of EW.com had to say about the show…

The CW announced today that its new docu-series Fly Girls, which gives a glimpse into the lives of five “beautiful Virgin America flight attendants,” is set to debut midseason. The network describes the series as being “about real, down-to-earth young women who happen to have landed in an exceptionally glamorous, high-flying career filled with exotic locations and handsome strangers.” In eight half-hour episodes, the show will follow the flight attendants to Las Vegas, South Beach, and New York City, as well as give a peek into their shared home-base “crash pad” in Los Angeles.

Now here’s what worries me…

  • It’s a “docu-series” That’s a fancy name for reality show. It also leads me to believe that most of the show will be scripted. Just like The Hills.
  • Use of the phrase, “beautiful Virgin flight attendants” Need I say more?
  • And then there’s that last bit in the second sentence – “filled with exotic locations and handsome strangers.” Oh you better believe I’ll be tuning in to watch! Just to make sure they get it right, of course.
  • Note the locations listed: Las Vegas, South Beach, and New York City. You know what that means, don’t you? Las Vegas equates to clubbing and South Beach has got to be code for bikinis. New York can only mean one thing – shopping! Hmm…I’m flight attendant and I’m based in New York and I like to shop, so maybe, just maybe….kidding, people! (Kind of)
  • As for their shared home-base “crash pad” in Los Angeles, I can’t wait to see that. Something tells it’s going to look more like one of the luxurious digs featured on The Bachelor than a real life crash pad. Anyway, don’t the producers know a “crash pad” is only used by commuting flight attendants, not flight attendants who are based in the city in which they live? Seriously.

I’m sure Fly Girls is going to be a great show. I know I’m going to watch it. I mean who wouldn’t want to watch, and I quote, “real, down-to-earth young women who happen to have landed in an exceptionally glamorous, high-flying career.”

Wait a minute, did they actually use the words ” exceptionally glamorous career” to describe the job?

Forgive me, I almost forgot, it’s a docu-series.

Photos courtesy of Xeni and Moody75