Heather Poole: Cruising Attitude

Our mechanical delays were legendary. We never canceled flights—ever! Why would we, when under the charter system, we could not collect revenue until a flight had flown? We were allowed to delay a flight up to forty-eight hours. It was printed on the back of the ticket in small print that no one ever read. Once, in the middle of a long, creeping delay that would eventually result in the nonunionized crew “laying over” on the airplane, each of us sleeping three seats across, an angry male passenger followed me into the ladies’ room in the terminal. I had no idea he’d done so until I’d already sat down, which is the moment he chose to lay into me. The man gave me a piece of his mind through the stall door! I was too afraid to exit, let alone flush, so I just stayed there—literally, not going—until he disappeared. To this day, fifteen years later, I am reluctant to get off an airplane to use a public restroom during a ground delay.

But it’s not like we hadn’t been warned. During two weeks of training at a three-star hotel that the airline didn’t pay for but required us to stay at, our one and only instructor informed our class of twenty: “Our passengers do not always communicate the same way you and I might in the same situation.” There was a pause, a really long pause, before she added, “You’re going to hear a lot of words you probably don’t hear throughout the course of a regular day.” A pilot who was sitting in to answer questions about how airplanes fly began to laugh so long and hard that the instructor ordered him out. Immediately she moved on to the next subject.

But I don’t mean to make it sound all bad! At the time I found myself on the line, Sun Jet was a small airline with only sixty flight attendants. Because of that, we got to know each other well and formed a tight bond that flight attendants at larger airlines rarely experience. We were there for one another, all of us, including the pilots. Every day it was us against them—the passengers, the company, you name it, we fought it.

Despite everything, we had a great time. The rules were simple. Last crew back to base had to buy the other two crews a round of drinks after work. Each afternoon three crews would fly out of the Dallas–Fort Worth airport between the hours of four and five o’clock. Newark, then Long Beach, then Fort Lauderdale, all scheduled to land at midnight back in Dallas. As soon as we touched ground at our destination, we’d rush the passengers off as politely as possible, pray the cleaners would be quick (they always were, which explained why the aircraft was never quite clean), reboard another full flight as quickly as we could, and race back to base, keeping tabs on each other through an air traffic controller in on the joke. At the end of the night we’d all meet up, pilots included, at a restaurant bar a few miles away to share stories about passengers who had been taken off in handcuffs. Until one night, a passenger who’d been escorted off by police—and who I assumed had been arrested—actually beat us to the bar and ended up sitting in a neighboring booth. Talk about an eye-opener. I learned a lot about how airlines work that night. Kick ’em off one flight, throw ’em on the very next flight. Depending on the airline, they might even get an upgrade.

At Sun Jet a week didn’t go by when passengers weren’t being kicked off our flights. One such fool locked himself inside the lavatory seconds prior to departure.

“Sir, are you okay in there?” a colleague asked, knocking on the bathroom door. “You need to come out now! We’re about to depart!”

When the passenger refused to exit or respond to our calls, my colleague did exactly what we had been taught in training and unlocked it from the outside. As she pushed open the door, a guy jumped five feet into the air, causing the needle shoved into his arm to pop out, blood splattering everywhere, including all over my colleague, who immediately ran off the airplane. I’m surprised she didn’t quit her job right then and there. The airplane got pulled out of service—and the passenger probably wound up enjoying a beer with the inbound crew, I’m sure.

A few days later, while helping to clean the airplane, a flight attendant stuck her hand deep inside a seat back pocket and discovered a used and haphazardly discarded needle. I shudder to think what would have happened if one of our unaccompanied minors had found it. I wondered if the needle had belonged to the infamous porn star who came on board scantily dressed with bruises all over her malnourished body, the one who had draped herself all over every overly excited male passenger who recognized her, and they all did, including the two old geezers in the cockpit who wouldn’t release her from their grip until she agreed to say “cheese” for their camera.

Drug addicts and porn stars weren’t our only problems. The elderly were out of control as well. While prepping the cabin for an emergency landing— an emergency landing! —an elderly woman screamed, “Where’s my muffin? I want my muffin! I don’t care what the hell is going on with this damn plane!” After the aircraft was safe and sound on the ground, I turned the TV on at home and witnessed the old bat still making a stink about her damn muffin to a local news reporter.

And then there was the eighty-something-year-old woman who decided to disrobe after takeoff because she “wanted to get off the bus.” I don’t make the connection, either. But she attempted to do this by wrapping her wrinkled fingers around an emergency exit door handle while screaming, “Let me off this thing!” I’m not sure which scared the passengers more, seeing someone so frail freaking out nekkid or watching a young male coworker wrap himself around her uncovered lady bits to try with all his might to unsuccessfully pry her fingers off the door—a door that cannot be opened in flight regardless of how badly an elderly nudist may want to get off.

After I grew accustomed to working with the traveling public, passengers became the least of my worries. Once, while taxiing to the gate, I’ll never forget how scared I felt as smoke began to fill the cabin. Passengers quickly grabbed their bags and managed to exit the aircraft without further incident. The smoke dissipated before maintenance arrived. They never did figure out what could have caused it. But they did a great job of giving up on solving a “problem” they couldn’t find.

“I am not flying a broken airplane!” the captain, an older guy with a couple of airlines under his belt, shouted to someone over the phone. Because he said it like he meant it, I gave him a thumbs-up. He gave me a wink. The company gave him an ultimatum. Cursing under his breath, he hung up the phone and growled, “Tell the agent we’re ready to board.” An hour later we were back in the air on our broken plane.

Things were run so badly at Sun Jet I’d actually get nervous when I didn’t hear the computerized voice in the cockpit calling out, “Terrain, Terrain, pull up, pull up!” from the other side of the door when I was strapped in my jump seat on approach. Once a jump seat fell off the wall during descent. The two flight attendants sitting beside the cockpit door followed procedures and moved the first row of passengers to the floor. There was nowhere else to put them. Surprisingly, and without argument, the passengers did exactly as they were told. They lay down flat on their backs. The crew placed their legs over the passengers and manned the exit doors from the closest passenger seats.

Each Tuesday at the Long Beach airport, our airplanes were greeted by a middle-aged man in a dark suit. For most airlines, FAA inspectors check employees’ flight manuals to make sure they’re up to date and dole out hefty fines if they’re not. At Sun Jet, we never once handed over our manuals; we usually handed over the plane. Well, just for a couple of hours until maintenance could come and change the white lights that led to red lights that did not lead to an emergency row, but instead led to a row two rows behind the exit.