Being a flight attendant at home

So imagine you´re at home, doing some fancy cooking (not really...just warming up something in the microwave) and then suddenly - bamm! - you see that your device caught on fire!! We go so often through fire fighting training that when something like this happens, we just tend to remain calm and instantly react following a certain procedure.

So, first thing that came to mind was:

"Ohhh shiiitt!"

Then,

1. Switch the device off.

2. Close the microwave door.

3. Inform the captain...

Oh wait..I´m at home, there´s no captain!!

And just like that, the small fire was extinguished in just a few seconds..

Needless to say that unfortunately we had a fatality - the microwave didn´t survive..

:)

OMG! - I just saw my pilots ding dong..!!!!!

Why do this things happen to me???! And I´m not even kidding..

At 38´000 feet, stupid me opened the lavatory door although being occupied and saw my first officer doing his business.. Jeezz, this is the second time lavatory A surprises me with a ding dong.

And before you say "that was your fault!", keep in mind that that toilet flush was broken and unusable, the pilot had been advised, we all decided to close and lock the lavatory and before I even unlocked and opened it I actually knocked at the door to be sure no one was inside (useless I thought, because no one could have been there - but still) . And I got no reply and everything was silent. Until I opened the door and saw his baby maker.

Historical screw-ups #2

On November 3, 1973, a National Airlines DC-10 aircraft was operating as a scheduled passenger flight between Miami and San Francisco with intermediate stops at New Orleans, Houston and Las Vegas.

At about 4:40 p.m., while the aircraft was cruising at 39,000 feet (12,000 m) 65 miles southwest of Albuquerque, the No. 3 engine fan assembly disintegrated in an uncountained failure. Its fragments penetrated the fuselage, the Nos. 1 and 2 engine nacelles (which contain those engines), and the right wing area. The resultant damage caused decompression of the aircraft cabin and the loss of certain electrical and hydraulic systems.

The flight crew initiated an emergency descent, and the aircraft was landed safely at Albuquerque International Airport 19 minutes after the engine failed. The 115 passengers and 12 crew members exited the aircraft by using the evacuation slides. As a result of the accident, one passenger died and 24 persons were treated for smoke inhalation, ear problems, and minor abrasions. The plane was repaired and was later flown by Pan Am.

One passenger, G.F. Gardner of Beaumont, Texas, was partially sucked into an opening left when a cabin window failed, after it too was struck by engine fragments. He was temporarily retained in that position by his seatbelt. "Efforts to pull the passenger back into the airplane by another passenger were unsuccessful, and the occupant of seat 17H was forced entirely through the cabin window." The New Mexico State Police and local organizations searched extensively for the missing passenger. A computer analysis was made of the possible falling trajectories, which narrowed the search pattern. However, the search effort was unsuccessful, and the body of the passenger was not recovered until two years later, when a crew constructing tracks for the Very Large Array radio telescope came upon his skeletal remains. So keeping your seatbelts buckled on during a flight, really can save your life, keep that in mind next time you fly!

Because he "just" wanted to test it..

.. a 64 year-old passenger decided to activate the escape slide of a Boeing 757-300 emergency exit before departing from Stuttgart (Germany) as the cabin crew were performing the safety demonstration (at least someone´s paying attention, right?!). Thus, 234 passengers and 8 crew had to leave the plane and fly to Egypt with a replacement aircraft. The whole action caused a 5-hour delay and the passenger is now facing a 5-digit bill for the cost he has caused to the airline.

Sh*t, I did It again..

Dear 10C:

I´m so ashamed and embarrassed for calling you Sir - you´re a woman, and I truly apologise.

It´s just that on that flight I had a man who looked like a woman and a woman who looked like a man, and things just got confused. It was a stupid mistake, and I hope you didn´t take it personally.

Things to keep in mind - the adventures flying into TLV

I bet you - each and every single flight attendant once answered while being asked - why do you want to become a flight attendant? - with:

"Oh, I love learning new cultures and people from all over the world".

But very few will actually know what such a statement means - It can be really, really, reeeeeaaaaallly frustrating and challenging sometimes. So flight attendants that quickly flip off with passengers from a different culture from theirs really makes me upset sometimes. That happens in my airline as well, so I always make sure to motivate my team and go through a few basics at briefings when flying  to some "special" destinations. Tel Aviv is certainly one of them.

Not only because a kosher meal service can be a little bit challenging (for instance, each passenger has to personally open his own meal before you can put it on the oven and cook it - imagine this on a full aircraft), but specially because you have to be really very careful with anything you say.

PLEASE never ever repeat this faux pas I once heard:

Flight attendant: - "Would you like some water?"

Jewish passenger: - "yes, please."

Flight attendant: - "With gas or without gas?"

No need to say what happened next. Please bare World History while flying with passengers from a different culture from your own.

Oh, and if you are a female flight attendant, don´t be chocked if the first question you hear from a very strong religious jewish passenger is:

-"Do you have your period (yes, as in menstrual bleeding in case you´re wondering) right now?"

And if you give yes as an answer, don´t take it too personally if that passenger will despise you the entire flight. And please, don´t touch or talk to him neither - it will only make things worse..

Incident of the week #3

Many passengers take for a fact that they can breath and operate normally on an airplane at 38.000 feet but only a few know, that they are flying in a "can" - a ticking bomb that could blow up anytime.

An incident that could have lead to that, hadn´t the crew noticed it on time, happened this week on a Sat Airlines flight from Khabarovsk to Yuzhno Sakhalinsk (Russia). Just after taking-off, the flight deck noticed that the aircraft wasn´t pressuring as it should. So the crew had to perform an emergency landing in Yuzhno Sakhalinsk. After performing a rapid descent, the aircraft landed safely about 30 minutes later an neither of the 18 passengers nor crew were injured. The aircraft was grounded and the return flight postponed to the next day. Funny enough, only a week prior to the incident, a similar loss of cabin pressure happened in the same region, to the same aircraft type, to the same airline.
A loss of pressurisation can lead to a slow decompression that can lead to a rapid decompression. The correct thing to do is immediately descend to a lower flight level and if necessary proceed for an emmergency landing. Not only through the cockpit instruments, signs of a slow  decompression are shown - also in the cabin. That´s why flight attendants always should be vigilant. If passengers start showing signs of fatigue, tiredness, headaches, pain in the ears - also possibly bleeding, dizzinness, etc, and in the cabin unusual noises, such as whistling or hissing sounds are heard, the cockpit crew has to be immediately contacted. One of the most extreme crashes because of an undetected slow decompression happened in Europe, to the Helios Flight 522 on 14 August 2005 - worth reading an article about it.

Did someone haunt our flight..?!!

Flight: 4-leg flight

Aircraft: E190

Crew: 2 lovely pilots on the flight deck and 3 SFA in the cabin. Well.. make it 4!

Pax: 85 / 76 / 61 /51

Having 3 SFA scheduled for a flight is a rarity. Even more scarce is having each single cabin crew on that flight suffering from a misterious event of a wrecked mishap;

One of us killed a phone by stupidly having it dropped down. No, of course not just on the galley floor - but on the freaking toilet bowl. Nope, that´s not it. The funniest thing is just realising it after hours and endless hours of an intensive surch! Don´t even ask.

One of us totally smacked her head on the frame of the tinny little service door (3R), while being nice and helping the caterer. Even though dealing with doors is something we do every single flight she was able to do such a hugh bump exactly in the middle of her head that during service every single passenger couldn´t stop staring at her forehead. Having each single colour of the rainbow in it - from blue, to green, to red to lila - didn´t really help, neither using a mass of make-up to try to cover it up.

One of us also had an event with a door and slammed her pointing finger in it. Her finger/fingernail began to bleed and went from red to a darker violet colour. The pain was so excrutiating during flight (with the constant cabin pressurization for start and landing) that after the second leg and back on our base she had to call Crew Contact and another SFA was assigned to fly the last 2 legs.

You have now only one guess to find out which one of this wonderfull  fortunes was the one to actually happen to me!