Day 86 - Cruising Attitude - A list of the things I learnt about flight atttendants and flying

14 May 2017 100daysofwriting · airplanes · books

I finished reading Cruising Attitude today! It was a really easy read, with lots of light hearted humor and some really gruesome experiences, both of the author herslef and her friends, who play a major role throughout the book.

There are a lot of things about the flight attendant profession that I learnt from the book, I can’t make an accurate, exhaustive list of them, but I will try to make some list that I can refer back to, later:

• They get paid far less than everyone thinks they do
• They have to bring their own food from home because the snacks on a flight are not for them and they can eat first class food, ONLY if it is left over and if the pilots don’t want it (some crews might not even offer the pilots food!)
• A turn-around is a trip in which you go from one place to another and return on the same day
• They try to save money everywhere, including the places they stay at while they are in a city
• Seniority decides what trips you get to make, and what places you get to server within the same flight
• Flight attendant training is a highly stressful few months in which they teach everyone everything that a flight attendant needs
• FAA minimum crew is the minimum number of people that MUST be present on a flight. ( ~ 1 attendant per 50 passengers)
• Captains sit on the left side of the plane and they get paid a LOT more than First Officers
• The Captain and the first officer are served different food, in the off chance that the food was poisoned. The captain gets to decide what food he wants to give (from the offered ones) to the FO
• Seniority is everything in the pilot world also. It decides if pilots have to fly before, on or after holidays, what kind of trips they have to make, what side of the plane they sit in and what food they get to eat
• Turbulence is of 4 categories: light, medium, extreme, severe. Turbulence is rarely rated as severe
• DO NOT press the call light unless it’s an emergency. Flight attendants appreciate if you flag them down while they pass by you or walk up to the galley to ask for coffee or the like
• Each flight attendant is required to walk through the cabin once every 15 minutes.
• Food is almost always served from the front of the plane to the back, with some exceptions (which were later phased out? I am hazy here.)
• When flight attendants use their passes to travel, they are non-revving (Non-Revenue Travel)
• Non-revving attendants are always on standby until the last moment when that it becomes clear that a passenger is not going to be able to make it to the flight anymore
• As the plane lowers, air pressure increases and this pushes the ear drum inward. “Chewing gum helps, as does swallowing or yawning during descent”. Blocked Ears are a common reason due to which flight attendants are grounded. Continuing to fly with blocked ears, can cause severe damage. #
• “Airplanes fishtail during turbulence, making the back of the plane much bumpier than the front. So, one good trick is to book a seat as close to the cockpit as possible.” – p.201
• On long flights, it is a good idea to take sleeping aides (like Ambien) AFTER take-off. In the off chance that there’s a mechanical problem, and everyone has to move to another plane, doing that without Ambien is more conveient.

I went through the whole list of my “Notes” section on my Kindle and it was rather small, for a 260 page book. I didn’t highlight a lot in this book, I wonder if that is because of the care-free, amateur writing!

This book provides a rather unique biographical perspective into the lives of flight attendants and I definitely recommend it if you have a few spare hours. Perhaps when you are passing through an airport? The setting would be near perfect.

POST #86 is OVER