Two hours into the flight, as we prepared to open the flight deck door for a bathroom break, the passenger seated in 5A made his way to the front galley. The other Flight Attendant and I both informed the passenger to use the restroom in the back. He ignored our request twice. Finally, he turned back and headed to the aft. After the flight deck break was completed the passenger stopped me. He told me that he didn’t understand why he wasn’t allowed to the use the restroom in the front.

Find out what happened next on Flightster.

[Click here to Continue Reading]

It’s no secret that being a flight attendant comes with short layovers, little sleep, a lot of work, time zone changes, unruly passengers, long days, and scheduling snafus. But, do the positives of the job outweigh the negatives?

That’s the question I posed to the readers of Flightster.

The media has been covering my career steadily for the last few weeks and more and more people are starting to learn about what I do on a daily basis. Light is starting to shed on the fact that we really are on board the aircraft primarily for your safety and everything else comes second.

There still seems to be many folks though who claim “if you’re not happy with your job, then quit.” So, I put it on all the line.

Head over to Flightster and find out what my job is really like. What it means to become a flight attendant and live like one, then, you decide. Leave a comment there and tell me if you think the positives outweigh the negatives and, if you’re not a flight attendant; feel free to post any questions you may have about the career there. I’ll do my best to answer them as quickly as possible!

[Click here to read my post on Flightster]

I’ve written about it here before, flight attendant’s bid for their monthly schedules. Your preferences are inputted into a computer system and then in seniority order it assigns flight attendants to trips. Usually, if you bid for the same types of trips every month, you’ll end up working with a lot of the same people. However, most of the time you end up working with different people each month.

There are some airlines though that allow their flight attendants (and pilots) to “Buddy Bid.” Buddy bidding allows flight attendants to specify a preference in their monthly schedule bid such as “AWARD FLYING WITH EMPLOYEE #: XXXXX.” This tells the computer that you don’t really care where you fly, as long as you fly with that specific employee. It usually drops the more senior buddy down to the more junior buddy’s seniority and assigns the trips from there. The regional airline I worked at allowed us to do that, but my current one doesn’t.

Mr. Brad

But, there are ways around it. My current airline allows us to bid specific flight pairings. So, if you and your “buddy” bid for the same pairing there’s a chance that you may end up working together. You both just have to hope that no one in between the more senior buddy and the more junior one bids for the same trip. Bidding this way also takes some research and practice. Before I started buddy bidding I had my junior friend do a “test bid” (build his schedule for a month the same way I do) to see if he could hold the same type of trips I usually bid for. Luckily, he usually can hold Wednesday through Saturday flying.. Which is what I love to do.

For the most part, we end up with 1 or 2 trips a month together. I wouldn’t trade that for anything. Flying with your friends makes flying more fun and less of a job. But at the same time, it also spoils you.

My last four day trip was one of the trips awarded with my “buddy,” Brad. Brad and I have been friends for about 4 years now and though we’ve worked at the same airline for most of those 4 years.. We hardly ever flew together. But now, we make it a point to at least try to make it happen. In addition to Brad, I lucked out. The other flight attendant awarded the trip was Savannah, whom if you remember loved my PACKiT. Savannah and Brad had worked together before separate from myself, and the fact that we were all now on the same trip was something the three of looked forward too. We all liked working with each other in pairs, but we had never worked as a trio.

The four days went by quickly with layover in New York, Los Angeles and

Mr. Brad, Myself and Ms. Savannah

Seattle. We spent time on each layover just hanging out with each other, which is something I came to find out none of us really do any more. It seems we’ve all become “slam-clickers.” A “slam clicker” is now an industry term for a crewmember who doesn’t hang out with other crewmembers on layovers and lets their down “slam and click” closed behind them. But, since we were all flying together.. We never slam clicked on each other. We had a pretty long layover in New York and made the best of it out at a bar on Long Island.. And inhaled some decently tasting Thai food in Seattle. And, as for working the flights — we had a typical New York – LA flight with a few issues, but as the lead flight attendant on board I was never nervous or questioning how they handled situations because I already knew how they worked and what their personalities are like since we’re also friends outside of work. Additionally, we helped each other cope through the experience.

All said and done, buddy bidding is definitely something I’m going to continue to do. And, we’ve already made it known that the three of us want to continue to work together.. and have begun trading our trips around to make that happen for September. After working with your friends it’s a huge adjustment getting back into the groove of working with people you don’t know. Trying to figure out their work ethic and customer service style and coming up with a good ice breaker to ensure the three of us work together for the duration of our trip can sometimes be challenging. But for the most part it’s never a problem and I always get along with my co-workers. You can always judge how well liked someone is by looking in “open time” (a list of uncovered flying). If you’re in there a lot it can sometimes mean people don’t want to work with you.. But if you’re hardly ever in there, like myself, I like to believe it means you’re well liked or maybe it’s just that people can’t drop their trips with you because of “low staffing.” For now, I’ll believe the former part of that sentence.

To parents: Play-dough should not be used by children on board an aircraft. It sticks to everything and gets everywhere. And no, I will not clean it up and, yes, I will be giving you a few cans of club soda and towels to do it yourself.

To parents: In the middle of the flight it’s not okay to come up to the front of the aircraft from coach and ask if Little Baby Matthew can see the pilot. No one can see the pilot in flight. Further, don’t get annoyed with me when I tell you “no” and say “let me guess there’s a charge for that too.” Yes, in fact there is a charge for that. A charge of breeching the flight deck in flight. It comes with numerous years in prison and a hefty fine. Though you will get something free…free pat-downs every time you fly for the rest of your life.

To coach passengers: It’s not okay to come to the first class to use the bathroom “because there’s a line in the back.” If everyone else in your cabin has to wait in line, you do too. You are not anymore important than they are and the rules still apply to you. To the back to the back to the back, back, back!

To read the rest of them, click here.

In the comments section of that post a woman named Melissa from “PACKiT” left a comment saying:

You have to check out these new lunch bags from a company called PackIt. The lunch bags are lined with gel. They fold up compactly and you store them in the freezer. when they are frozen you can pack them with anything Yogurt, fresh foods, even sushi!! because they keep food cold for up to 10 hours! The perfect bag for flying!!

The perfect bag for flying? Who better than a flight attendant to put the PACKit cooler to the test?

I contacted Melissa and she graciously sent me a PACKiT. I’ll cut to the chase and say, I’m never flying without it. Period.

Skeptical, I traveled my last four day trip with both my eBag and my PACKiT. In the PACKiT I placed frozen Chicken Tortilla Soup, string cheese, Turkey Chili and a small container of salad. I commuted from Phoenix to San Francisco and ate the salad when I arrived there. Shockingly, the soup was still frozen solid. I flew from San Francisco to New York went to sleep, and the next day on the way to Los Angeles I decided to make the soup. I took it out of the PACKiT and it was STILL partially frozen. This is the first time, in a very long time, that anything frozen I’ve traveled with has stayed frozen for so long!

Needless to say, when I offered my crew some of the soup they were shocked at how well it kept in the PACKiT. Hell, even the trip I’m on right now, one of the Flight Attendants, Savannah, is amazed at how well it works.

For those Flight Attendant’s who currently have an eBag, the PACKiT is agreat companion. I packed my PACKiT with all of my cold/frozen food, and then placed it inside the eBag. I then put my room temperature snacks and food along side of it. It works perfectly. The PACKiT keeps your frozen food frozen and because you’re putting it in the eBag you still have room for additional food and supplies.

For Flight Attendant’s that don’t currently have a cooler and are looking to get one, the PACKiT is great for 2-3 day trips. It’s big enough to fit yogurt, veggies, fruit, and small containers of salad and food and not so large that you feel like you’re lugging an extra bag around with you.

In the end, if you can’t tell, I love it! And no, I’m not being paid to say that! I won’t work another 4 day without it.

For more information you can visit: PACKiT.com

I made the mistake of bidding a trip which had me working a flight from New York City to Orange County, California. I say it’s a “mistake” because in one metal tube we combined the “I want it now” of New York with the “I want it my way” of The O.C. When these different cultures combine, it creates a flight attendant’s worst nightmare.

The second we started boarding I knew we were in for it.

[Click here to Continue Reading]

I’m heading to work tomorrow and beginning a four day trip. I’ll be flying to Washington DC, Seattle and Boston. In Washington I only have a 10 hour layover, which is barely enough time to shower and relax, never mind eat then sleep and on day two.. I work from DC to Los Angeles, then up to Seattle.. but I wait around for a plane in Los Angeles for two and a half hours and I really can’t afford to eat at the airport anymore. So what’s a flight attendant on a budget to do when you need to eat but don’t have the time or money to go out and buy food on the road? Pack it!

$40 for four days is my budget. Mind you, we are offered crew meals on board while working, and though it is a nice gesture, it gets old. There’s only so many times you can eat the same thing over the course of four days so a lot of us pack food as well. Also, most of our hotels either have a refrigerator in our room or we can request one from the front desk. This makes packing cold food an option as on board the aircraft we can place dry ice in our coolers to keep our stash cool until we land.

So where does someone on a budget shop for good food? Fresh&Easy! For those of you that don’t have a Fresh&Easy, I’m sorry. They’re amazing. Great prices, great food, name brand products.. just all around amazing. Not to mention they regularly have coupons in store and by mail that makes their store even more of a value. So, I perused the aisles looking for items that I can make using the airplane’s oven, and the other products on board (water, milk, etc).

Click to enlarge

Some items that I selected include: EatWell Turkey Chili, bananas, GoFigure Crunch cereal, Fresh&Easy Garlic and Parmesan pita chips, Hormel Delights Chicken Alfredo, Fresh&Easy Cranberry trail mix (it’s seriously amazing), and Apple Cinnamon cereal bars.

I also bought dinner for tonight a nice pepperoni pizza and salad along with some necessities such as bread and toothpaste.

All of which came in under $40! I didn’t even get to use my coupon!

Click to enlarge

That’s right.. it all cost less than $30! I’ll show you the receipt later. So now that I have everything.. it’s time to pack it.

A flight attendant’s best friend is their eBag crew cooler. Which, ironically, eBags has discontinued for the time being. They claim that they sold out of them and need to make more, there are also some rumors that they were redesigning it (why, I don’t know.. it’s seriously amazing!). Regardless, if you’re lucky enough to have one you can attest to how amazing it is for packing food and keeping it fresh.

So, here’s the blank canvas ready to be filled with all of my food for four days. Though you think it all won’t fit.. you’re wrong! Sure there’s some repackaging that needs to take place but it will all fit.

First I removed some of the cereal bars from the box and I’m only taking three of them with me.

Click to Enlarge

I also put some pita chips in a ziplock bag and am only taking 3 of 5 bananas with me. Still, a lot of food will be getting into this bag. Now because I’m traveling with some cold food I also put some drinkable brita water into a water bottle that I placed into the freezer. I’ll place the water bottle on the bottom of the bag to help me transport the food from my house to San Francisco in the morning. Once I get to San Francisco I have a  refrigerator I can put my lunch bag in until it’s time for me to board the aircraft and head for Washington. So.. here’s how I packed my bag. Now.. remember that the front pouch is filled with coffee and tea that I already owned.

Coffee and Tea.

Hormel delight, repackaged cereal and 3 cereal bars.

Added the cold food: turkey chili, and lean cuisines..along with frozen water bottle.

Finished it off with hummus, trail mix and bananas (under the mix).

$27.19!

Like I said, that $27.19 even includes things I needed besides the food for work. My dinner tonight, came at SUCH an amazing price. $2.00! It was marked down from $4.. amazing.

Pizza!

In the end.. yes.. you can pack for a four day with $40. Sure, I don’t have 3 meals a day and I have a lot of snacking options. But, like I said, I’m lucky enough that my airline gives us crew meals so that also cuts down on the amount of food I have to back. But, these snacks and meals can easily hold me over on a layover until I get back on the plane the next day and save me from spending $15 for a BLT or worrying about where I’m going to eat on a very short layover.

Conversations such as this upset me because the passenger is viewing my response as negative and frustrating even though I answered their concern to the best that I’m allowed to do.  I can see why, I didn’t give the passenger permission to use the restroom and I didn’t flat out tell her no.  I did that intentionally because according to the FAA I’m not allowed to say more than that.

You see, a lot of what your flight attendant says or does is mandated by the FAA and their airlines “inflight emergency manual.”…

Click here to read more.

June 17: On the night of June 17th, I commuted to Los Angeles to be in position to work my trip departing the next morning. It was a trip I was looking forward to because I was working with one of my best friends Aimee, and a good friend Billy.

My routing for the 4 days was: LAX-DC 15hr layover | DC-San Francisco, sit at the airport for 2 hours then deadhead (fly as a passenger) to Las Vegas 16 hour layover | Las Vegas-SF-DC 10 hour layover | Then, DC back to LA. In 4 days that was 10,612miles worth of flying, or 23 hours and 27 minutes.

You can still see the tags! ha!

June 18: I went out on my layover in DC to Macy*s and bought some clothes for the Travel Blog Exchange. Something I didn’t want to do but the deals were too great! I spent $50 and walked out of the store with $200 worth of clothes. My receipt said I had $150 in savings. Crazy! From there we went out to Red Robin for burgers. Aimee ordered an “Endless Root Beer Float” but  the way the server acted, she ordered a pot of gold. The server had no idea what she was trying to order even though it was clearly displayed in the menu. Finally, they bring her a float in a beer mug, half full. In one sip it was empty. She asked for a refill and got another float in a smaller glass. Again, in one sip – it was gone. Now Aimee had asked the server to bring the ice cream and the root beer in different glasses so she could make it herself since they were clearly lost on how to make the beverage. This time, they brought her a vanilla shake. It was crazy how many times they tried to make this drink, which is on their menu, but couldn’t.

June 19: As if I hadn’t spent enough money already of course we were going to go out in Las Vegas. We decided to go see Carrot Top and it was a great choice! He’s hilarious and if you’re in Vegas you need to check him out. Spent another $45 on the tickets, plus dinner and drinks and of course, a bit of gambling.

June 20: Finally back in DC.. went to sleep.

June 21: Had an early morning flying back to base in Los Angeles.. done around 10am. After I arrived, I went to my friend Sue’s house for the night because though this trip was over.. I started a two day trip the next morning.

Trip details: LA-San Fran-San Diego-San Fran 16 hour layover | Deadhead from San Fran to Toronto then work back to Los Angeles.

June 22: I arrived at work at 7am for an 8am flight, did the turns to San Diego and retired to my hotel room in San Francisco. I was so worn out, run down and broke. There was no energy for anything.

June 23: Deadheading was nice. I got to relax, write a little bit and take a short nap. Working back to LA was a piece of cake. Small scare though, we arrived in Los Angeles late and I thought I missed my last flight to Phoenix. I was in luck! Southwest was delayed too.. sat in the LAX airport for 3 hours waiting for my flight after working a 12hr day. Flew home to Phoenix

June 24: Got to sleep in my own bed for the first time in six days. Amazing. Unpacked my luggage, did laundry and repacked my luggage. Off to NYC tomorrow morning for TBEX.

June 25: A 4am wake up call comes extremely early. Luckily I wasn’t flying standby thanks to Mike and had confirmed seats to Dallas, then onward to Newark to meet up with Sara. Board my flight at 5:30am, sit next to crazy lady who won’t stop talking about her ex-husband and how they used to travel. Pretending to fall asleep to make her stop — doesn’t work. You can hear/read more about her, here. Finally land in New York to the smiling face of Sara Keagle. For the first time we meet in person! We then head into the city to meet up with Mike and whisk off to record a live taping The Crew Lounge, later we attend the first night of TBEX.

June 26: I slept on a pull out couch the night before, needless to say didn’t sleep that well. But, chipper for TBEX we head to the event. Got to meet Gailen David, Paul Thompson, Grace, Sarah,  and Heather on day one. After the conference broke, we headed to the TripAdvisor Happy Hour (thanks for the notebooks!) There, I got to meet Jeff, and Jennifer. Jennifer and I talked for a while about Punta Gorda, Florida (who knew!?), my book and blog. She told me about what she does in travel PR, freelancing PR and about her blog. Great conversation. Head back to the hotel for a wardrobe change before the party that night, depressed because I didn’t win an iPad. After a one hour quick change, we head back downtown to the EuroCheapo.com / BootsNAll.com After Party. There I got to meet a TON of people thanks to Mike and his bright idea to enter me into the best dressed contest. People I never met before and won’t see again.. have pictures of me on their cell phones. It’s OK to delete them! Got the word out about The Crew Lounge and hung out with Beth, Tom, Sarah, Grace and Colleen most of the night. Met Amy Kemp discussed blogging ideas that I never thought of before. Also met Christine and joined the gay mafia. After late night Japanese food and a long walk back to the hotel (and Sara placing The Crew Lounge business cards on every car along the way while asking people to listen to us)… bed.

June 27: Super tired, we decide to skip TBEX day two. Won’t happen next year. Sara & I also had to fly back home today, so we’d have to leave the conference early anyway.  Mike comes over with breakfast, we do a photo shoot for promo pictures and discuss what we’re going to work on next. Then we head out to Penn Station. Sara gets on a train to Newark, and I head to JFK. That was an ordeal.. read about that here. Finally get home to Phoenix. Unpack, repack. Back to work tomorrow.

June 28: In shock that I have to go to work tonight, I put in a drop request for my trip. Denied. Tired to the point that I can’t keep my eyes open.. I try again. Denied. 4pm I head to the airport. One flight, one leg — I can do it. I fly from Los Angeles to Toronto on the redeye with a great crew. Land early in the morning on the 29th.

June 29th: Head right to bed. Sleep, finally, 8 hours. I wake up at 4:30pm and call the crew to get dinner. We eat, then drink. We drink a lot to pre-game for company party we were invited to. After an ordeal over whose really driving us there.. I pay for a cab. I walked a redcarpet and had my photo taken.. first time for everything. We party. Dance. Mingle. And get tired. 11:30pm we head back to the hotel. This time, Sue paid.

June 30th: Wake up at 5am. I can’t believe I’m up at 5am after only sleeping four and a half hours. Head to airport to work back to San Francisco then onto Los Angeles before heading home. Have a minor medical emergency and issues with nonrevs, meet David and Dan. Nice guys. Head home. Friend reminds me I agreed to help him move. Damn! Head to his house to help him move…can’t back out.. he helps me a lot. Move done. Head to bed at 10pm. 18 hours after I woke up.

After all of that, on July 1st, I wake up to a fever, chills and a sore throat and I’m still nursing back to heath. It all caught up with me after 13 days of travel. However, I had an awesome time meeting everyone at TBEX and those that I met while working and getting to New York. A big thanks goes out to Mike at UPGRD, who also produces The Crew Lounge for Sara and I, if it wasn’t for him getting us the hotel and my tickets to/from New York I wouldn’t have been able to attend. Thank you Mike.

I bought my ticket for TBEX’11.. did you? Oh yeah — and I’m bidding vacation for it next year — this schedule isn’t happening again. In 13 days I flew 25,547 miles.

I just worked a long haul flight which carried a lot of nonrevs on board, so much so, that we moved paying passengers to first class just to ensure we could get all of the nonrevs on the plane. Who would have guessed that the nonrev would be the passengers giving us (the crew) a hard time?

During boarding one of them, whom I speculate was drunk, went to the aft galley and proceeded to open a bin to grab himself a water. Usually, I wouldn’t have a problem with this, nor would the Flight Attendant who was working in the back, except this nonrev was wearing street “civilian” clothes and is new to our company, so we had no idea who he was. The aft FA quickly asked him if he needed assistance, and he said he just “needed to use the restroom.” Well, if you needed to use the restroom, why are you going into the bins? Anyway, he went into the bathroom.

When he came out, he then tried to take his carryon bags and place them in the compartments in which the working crew places their bags. Again, the aft FA asked him what he was doing and if he needed help, he said he was fine and to just leave him alone. As he tried to shove his luggage inside the storage area the aft FA explained that the compartment was full and nothing else would fit in there and to just put his bag in the overhead bin with the rest of the passengers bags. Finally, he took his seat and tried to purchase a pair of headphones for the InFlight movie with cash. Again, explaining to our company employee whom we didn’t know was an employee yet another company procedure, “we don’t accept cash,” the aft FA explained.

Once he finally sat down, he fell asleep for the whole 5 hour flight. Thankfully. Inflight we found out he did in fact work with us and when he woke up, we coached him and the do’s and don’t's of nonrev travel and how to ensure he keeps his job in the future in the event he doesn’t get a “good crew.”

About two hours into the flight the call button at row 7 goes off. Another nonrev, sitting in the window seat, rang the button. As I look over I notice her pointing to the aisle seat and flagging me over. As I approached the row I noticed that the passenger in aisle seat was sleeping, at least she appeared to be. The nonrev said that she had been non-responsive for some time. I shook the passenger by the shoulder saying “ma’am” quite loudly. No response. I flagged another FA over while I continued to shake this woman as she came to. I told the other FA to grab me orange juice and possibly the oxygen bottle.

The woman’s eyes were red and rolled back into her head on more than one occasion. The lady in the middle seat, this womans daughter and a nonrev, never relayed any information as to her mom’s medical conditions, how long she was unresponsive for, if she had eaten that day. Nothing. I tried to having a conversation with the passenger when I learned that she had only eaten a muffin that morning. She probably had low blood sugar. Then I found out she didn’t take her blood pressure medication that morning, why? Who knows. Finally, she appeared stable and the flight continues.

Later, the call button at row 7 goes off again. This time, she was responsive but a bit delusional. I noticed that she hadn’t drank any of the orange juice and asked her daughter to ensure she does. Then the daughter tells us that her mom has many food allergies and thinks she may have eaten something bad. Well, the only thing she remembers eating was a muffin, so that must be it. The woman decides to go to the restroom and from that point forward, was fine.

She walked off the airplane like everyone else, and we never even got a “thank you” from the nonrev.

I guess it’s just part of our job.