It might not be desirable to you, but it’s the solution that works. I mean, on one hand you want a device that means the passengers leave you alone the entire flight, on the other you’re saying that you hate it when they ignore you.
Me? I typically sleep through the thing and wake up in the air after a 20 minute nap. Then I don’t need to feign attention and won’t fall asleep during my movie.
I love posts that keep me guessing as to whether they are sarcastic.
Honest question here. Is there a place as a non employee I can go and be trained to bust open an over wing door, deploy a slide, and hustle rubes through it?
Cause I REALLY want to do that (in a non emergency situation)
(Can I yell GO GO GO!!)
Wow I’ve never had a job where the customers ask what they can do to keep the employees happy, even if they are just saleswarriors practicing up on backstabbing.
Well, we do have a surprising amount of power and authority in the cabin. For example, we have the legal ability to restrain and detain, and not following a lawful instruction or order from a member of the cabin crew is a federal crime.
Nah just kidding, practically nobody knows that. It’s just that some people like to be nice to us, and we do deal with people by the planeload, many of them pissed off thanks to things out of our control, such as the TSA, and usually for 12 hours at a time. And no matter how much of a fuckface someone is to us, we’re responsible for them, and it’s our job to keep them safe to the best of our ability if something does happen.
The burnout rate is immense. The suicide rate amongst cabin crew is basically twice the rate of regular population. Stress is enormous and constant. Mistakes are not well tolerated, particularly in our primary function. Being a Flight Attendant is far from an easy job, and even the most backstabbing pack of saleswarriors look like kittens hardly off the teat, compared to the flying public.
Oh, I almost forgot - The reason people are asking is because they think if they’re sweet to us, they’ll get free stuff, like upgrades and so on. Which isn’t very common, no matter how sweet you are, but hey, we’re not going to discourage it if it makes them treat us like people occasionally.
Yup. I’ve come to the same conclusion as you on aerotoxic syndrome, as well as chronic lyme and “windmill sickness”.
I’d say that if there’s any credibility at all to the idea of aerotoxic syndrome, it’s that people often fly in an anxious state and end up in an unfamiliar place, and those two factors are often sufficient to cause psychosomatic symptoms, like upset bowels and headaches etc.
That’s about the size of it, I think. I mean, I’m open to it’s existence - but until the medial establishment can prove this mysterious syndrome to exist, I remain skeptical.
Yes! It’s expensive, but there are training schools not attached to Airlines, and some do have not only doors and the like, but also slides, door simulators, cabin simulators and so on. The only thing they don’t have is slide deployment simulators - if they have slides, they’ll inflate them with compressed air, because blowing a slide is crazy expensive - they’re about 20K to repack, though it varies from airframe to airframe.
(Can I yell GO GO GO!!)
Curiously, your emergency calls have to be perfect - word for word. But yes, if you went to a training school, that’s one of the things they teach you.
That leads me to a crazy idea.
Buy surplus decommissioned equipment - pieces of airplanes and so on.
And make an amusement park attraction.
I see you’ve also passively banned sleeping on planes.
Well, it’d need some modification to not be dangerous - those slides can get you going wicked fast and burn you pretty bad if you touch them with bare flesh, for example, and I’ve seen more than one person pulled off balance by an opening door, only to stumble and faceplant into it - but that would be pretty cool.
One of the best slides I’ve ever slid(?) was a simulation top-deck 747 evac slide. SO much fun when there’s no impending doom. Here’s a video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX08GwWBKxM
Weird coincidence - I found that video just looking for one to illustrate what I mean, but watching it, turns out I know and trained with some of those people before they signed on with Emirates. Small world, eh?
Plus, cabin simulations could be cool, have like a museum exhibit sort of thing going on. I’m no imagineer, but I figure something could definitely be made of it.
No so much defensive as annoyed that the entire aviation industry (in the US at least) is an exercise in paying for mild torture. Given that there seems to be very limited competition, a race to the bottom as far as customer satisfaction is concerned, in search of 60 bucks off ticket price seems pretty ridiculous to defend (at least to me personally).
Imagine if all London cabs were twice as small, four times as expensive, and were the only way to travel about in London. But some of the cabs are slightly cheaper and instead of seats they have 5 inch wide poles for you to sit on. Joy!
Hyperbole, yes. Ridiculous, no.
Jetblue was at one time mildly ok, but has turned into a bad delta/united/bullshit clone on a smaller scale.
Obviously nothing against you, flight attendants ( after all one of my friends is black… er gay… er I mean a flight attendant) My beef is with flying in general due to no fault of yours or flight attendants.
Working in that close of proximity with TSA and the people they piss off… That is one reason to be genial with FAs. Think TSA pisses you off going through it? I know FAs have to deal with every bit of anger the TSA creates including yours.
So kudos to you!
No so much defensive as annoyed that the entire aviation industry (in the US at least) is an exercise in paying for mild torture.
Trust me, we are absolutely aware. As a large group, we do our best to make it better for you, but we’re often limited in what we can do, and when all you’ve got for lunch is bread and shit, no matter how good of a chef you are, you’re still going to end up with a shit sandwich.
[quote=“bonetithed, post:32, topic:57158”]
Imagine if all London cabs were twice as small, four times as expensive, and were the only way to travel about in London. But some of the cabs are slightly cheaper and instead of seats they have 5 inch wide poles for you to sit on. Joy![/quote]Funnily enough, we get screwed by this too. More people means greater workload for the same pay, and on top of that, they’re always trying to reduce the amount of flight attendants legally required on flights, so they can get away with less of us, doing more of the work.
We’re on the other side, but we have nothing but the greatest sympathy for our customers, even when some of them are being real knobs.
[quote=“bonetithed, post:33, topic:57158”]
Working in that close of proximity with TSA and the people they piss off… That is one reason to be genial with FAs. Think TSA pisses you off going through it? I know FAs have to deal with every bit of anger the TSA creates including yours.[/quote]Yeah, that’s about the size of it. We’re the public face of the company, the pointy end of a vast machine that exists to get you where you need to go, and quite often will make that experience quite unpleasant. But we’re also the public face of the industry, which includes things like the TSA, some of the…I wouldn’t say sillier, because there’s very little about aviation laws that’s silly, and hasn’t been created to solve a legitimate problem, but I would say behind the times.
From the moment you step through the front door of the airport, till the moment you step out the door at the other end of your journey, the buck stops with us, basically. We’re trained for it, those of us who don’t burn out in five minutes flat are experienced and used to it.
But - We still appreciate you for trying to work with us, even when you’re having a bad time, and we really appreciate when you’re nice to us. End of the day(or at least, shift) we hit the couch, flick on some TV (For me, Aviation documentaries and investigation shows like Air crash investigation were always a favorite, which is common), you don’t remember all the assholes. You remember that guy who bought along a package of Favorites(you know, the chocolates in the big purple box), or that sweet little kid who said her pleases and thank-yous, and the people who just generally treated you like a human being.
So thank you, and remember - by being nice, you’re really improving someone’s day.
And, just between you, me and the internet - despite all that? Still the best job in the world, and there’s not a day I don’t miss it down to my bones.
You have replied a few times in this thread, but have yet to answer one point which has been raised by several contributors.
How come phones and tablets are so distracting, yet books and sleeping are fine?
I guess it depends what you mean by aviation laws. I’m not sure if the security theatre offered by the TSA is technically organized in a set of laws. But the vast majority of it is exceedingly silly.
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