It was a long trip and it was broken into three fairly distinct parts so I've decided to post them separately for your benefit. It's not really fair to come to a blog expecting a post and have me force feed you a book.
The crews going to Narita are typically old…excuse me, I mean senior. Among flight attendants, they’re known as “area code flights” because in a company with over 15,000 FAs, their seniority numbers are only three digits. While I have to bid for 20+ schedules and consider myself lucky if I get one of them, they only have to bid for 2 or 3 and it’s unusual if they don’t get their first choice.
Keeping that in mind, I had a pretty junior crew with only 2 area codes. Most of my flying partners only had about 20 years and had picked up the trip out of open flying (Open flying requests are trips posted by flight attendants who have them in their line but don't want to work them for one reason or another).
Still, the most junior person, other than myself had 14 years which means I got to sit in the undesirable economy jumpseat that faces the passengers. It’s not too bad when the people sitting in the seats in front of me are friendly, not so nice when they don’t speak English and take off their shoes to wiggle their smelly toes. On the way to Narita, I got the toe wigglers.
The flight wasn’t full. There were about 30 open seats in the back of the plane and a few open seats in First and Business. Since Narita serves connections all over Asia, the plane is usually oversold with tons of stand-bys. However, since Bangkok has been a little unsettled recently, and by unsettled I mean in complete turmoil that had protesters barricading the airport, we lost a few passengers (today they finally reopened the airport so we’ll be enormously oversold for the next few weeks in that market).
There was a man in the first row of economy who either has a screw loose or knows something I don’t because he still thought he was connecting to Bangkok. The customer service agent came on and tried to convince him that the airport was closed. We tried to tell him. The people sitting around him tried to tell him. He just smiled, nodded his head and said, “That’s alright.”
“But sir,” the very frustrated customer service agent said. “The airport is closed. Closed. No flights in or out.”
He smiles. “That’s alright.”
He paid for the ticket so we can’t pull him off the plane but don’t say we didn’t warn him.
14 hours is a long time to be on an airplane and there isn’t much to do between services. Fortunately, flight attendants are masters of the art of small talk. We can chat with the best of them. But chatting only lasts so long, even for seasoned pros. Eventually it turns into one of two things: earnest conversation or jumpseat legends.
I prefer the jumpseat legends.
Flight attendants have a lot in common with fisherman. We work really hard in short bursts then stand around for long intervals, thinking up ways we can exaggerate our stories.
I started with one of my favorite stories.
There was a man on my flight returning from Kuwait. He claimed to be a contractor which could be Blackwater or one of the construction companies. He didn’t specify. Either way, he apparently enjoyed his Jim Beam. Kuwait is a dry country, like Iraq and a few other middle-eastern States so he hadn’t been enjoying his Jim Beam for a few months. We have lots of Jim Beam. Well, we had lots of Jim Beam before he got on board.
If you’ve ever been on a flight and felt ignored by a flight attendant, it might not have just been paranoia. Drunk passengers are no fun to deal with and can pose a safety risk so sometimes we pretend we can’t hear you when you’re asking for your third drink in 20 minutes. We’re not lazy (most of the time), we’re trying to keep you relatively sober.
Some people are persistent. There’s a pretty constant stream of flight attendants through the business section of the airplane so eventually the passengers see all 13 of our smiling faces. For the smart drinkers, that can be 13 drinks without anyone but the person next to you knowing about all of them.
It was half way through the flight and I had served him about 5 drinks. But he must have been mooching off of other flight attendants as well. He was a big guy. Five drinks in 6 hours isn’t really anything to worry about but 18 might be. I thought he was fine. He thought he was fine too, until he got up to use the lavatory.
He stood up and stumbled and probably would have ended up face down if he didn’t find the galley wall first. He looked surprised but he straightened himself up, gave me a guilty smile, and started pulling on the lav door, just above the sign that said push. When he finally switched to push, he pushed too hard and the door flew open and he fell inside, locking the door quickly behind him as if that would make it look like he meant to jump in the bathroom.
He wasn’t done yet. After taking a little longer than normal in the bathroom, he opened the door. I was standing in the galley and I stopped to watch him. He raised his hand and waved to me, doing his best impression of sobriety, and then took a step forward out of the bathroom. Only he didn’t. It seems that he forgot the order of walking. Lift the foot then move it forward. He got the move it forward part but forgot the lift. He stumbled out of the bathroom and there was no galley wall to stop him from falling. I made a half-hearted attempt to catch him- something like "oh no, you're falling. Let me catch you... oops. Too late." He ended up on the galley floor. I helped him up, being the nice guy that I am and walked him back to his seat and made sure that he buckled in.
“Thanks,” he said. “Can I ask you a favor?”
“Yes sir,” I said. “What can I do for you?”
“Can you get me a Miller Lite?”
“Not a chance.”
He’s the only person I ever cut off.
I like telling that story to flight attendants. I get appreciative chuckles and knowledgeable nods. Positive reinforcement. My mother would say, "simple pleasures are the best."
From there the conversation jumped to in-flight emergencies. I knew I’d lose this one in a contest of oneupsmanship. The worst thing that’s ever happened while I was on board, besides the drunk contractor, is a few people passing out, some cuts and bruises, and children projectile vomiting.
But I didn’t know how terrifically I’d loose.
I hadn’t considered how many flights you can work in 40 years. At an average of 5 flights a week (a low estimate) multiplied by 52 weeks a year multiplied by 40 years, you get 10,400 flights. Try multiplying that by an average of 150 passengers per flight (another low estimate) and you get over a million and a half chances for someone to get seriously ill, injured, or incapacitated.
One of my flying partners was the purser on a flight 20 years ago that had a bomb threat called in. The flight crew had to search the entire plane for a bomb at 30,000 feet. That included digging through trash, overhead bins, and under everyone’s seat. Try explaining that to the passengers. Do you just get on the PA and say, “Pardon us ladies and gentleman. We’re going to be tearing the plane apart looking for a bomb?”
Not if you’re Cheryl. You keep the passengers calm and actually impress them with your devotion to customer service by telling them someone lost their diamond engagement ring and you’re trying to find it. Smart and effective.
My other flying partners had people die, people almost die, people break bones, smack their head on something and pass out from blood loss, lose control of their bowels, and other equally uncomfortable or dangerous situations. There was even a woman who was on a flight with a retired race horse in the cargo hold that died in-flight.
I’m glad I got to tell my story first because there's no use trying to beat a dead horse.
After 14 hours in the air, we landed safely in Narita and made it to the hotel. On most layovers, everybody pitches in a dollar and tips the driver. But tips insult the Japanese. I mention it because it’s fascinating to me that a culture can be insulted by money. It’s a strange concept for an American. Also because it another one of those simple pleasure.
It’s winter so it gets dark at about 5 in Narita, which is the same time we get to the hotel. Nothing to do but eat dinner, have a beer from the automatic beer machine, and get some well-earned rest.
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