Your Crew Just Met

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Believe it or not, even though your flight attendant crew obviously works for the same airline, there’s a good chance that they met each other for the first time the morning of your flight.

We don’t know everyone, hell, at my past airline there was 7,000 flight attendants, and I never met one of them based in the East coast bases. We never worked with them, we never used their crew facilities, there was literally thousands of people I never knew who worked the same flights and planes as I did.

Then there are those people who you meet, that you never want to meet again. That’s in any job though — except that as a flight attendant when you’re working with someone you’re probably working together for the next 2, 3 or even 4 days.

There’s a news story breaking right now in New York about an American Eagle flight that had to return to the gate because the flight attendants were arguing with each other and couldn’t get along. First of all, of course what they did was unprofessional. However, it might have been for the better good of everyone on board… hear me out.

The number one thing they teach you in flight attendant training is “CRM” or “Crew Resource Management.” It’s explained that throughout history certain crashes could have been avoided if the crew properly communicated. So you have to imagine that if these women “agreed to disagree” and decided not to speak to each other “just for an hour” like one of the passengers said (clearly not knowing that it’s probably  more than that) a situation could have developed, that could have been avoided if the flight attendants just communicated and worked together.

With that being said, who knows what sparked the situation on board or why the women were so loud and uncontrollable that the plane had to go back to the gate (give it a few hours and I’m sure someone will have cell phone footage), but some airlines have “no-fly lists.” Its a preference in the crew member bidding system that allows you to avoid working with particular people. Like I said, this isn’t like a normal job. You can be stuck working with someone you don’t like in a pressurized tube, in the hotel van and on layovers for 4 days. Some airlines opt to not allow the use of the no-fly list because it’s not representative of being a “team” and a “team player” but realistically, not everyone is going to get along.

Anyway, if this situation was something that could have been settled and put to rest in the terminal and off the plane it should have been, if one of these crewmembers asked to be replaced, they should have been and if these two have been known to not get along the airline shouldn’t have forced them to work together.

That’s just my two cents.

  • Tiffany Hawk

    When I was at United, we had 26,000 flight attendants. I can count on one hand the number of times I flew with the same flight attendant more than once. I do remember one person out of those 26,000 that I would have loved to put on a no-fly list if we had such a thing! But with that many of us, I never had to fly with her again anyway. This story reminds me of one I heard back in my day – two flight attendants met and discovered one was dating the other’s husband, a pilot of course. ;-)

  • FRANK

    I know what sparked the situation. How many flight attendants continue to use PED’s after, they, yes, they walk the aisles and bark at passengers to turn them off.?
    I”ve watched fellow crewmembers use PED’s for———————> TAKE OFF. Yes, texting away on their own phones for take off. Hidden in a book. seriously, how MADDENING to confront your own crew to follow the rules!!!!!!!!