More Confessions of a Hostie

The Second Sector

(Vol.2 in the Confessions of a Hostie series)

Danielle Hugh

Disclaimer

The episodes featured in this book describe my experiences working as an international flight crew. To protect confidentiality, not everything I write can be taken as gospel truth. Some parts have been fictionalised, and names, airlines and locations have been changed. I have avoided revealing any information that would put my colleagues in the air at risk and, most importantly, I have disguised myself to such a degree that I should not need to worry for my job, because I don’t want to lose it and become an ‘earthling’.

Contents

a shin is the perfect device for finding a glass coffee table in the dark

they should make all shirts the colour of what you are most likely to stain them with – red wine

nowhere to run and fewer places to hide

the adjective of ‘break’ is ‘broken’

if i were any more affected by jetlag i might need watering twice a week

is ice-cream a food or a frozen drink?

it’s a balancing act

sometimes the job stinks

time spent laughing is time spent with the gods – the japanese say so

rudeness is the weak person’s imitation of strength

never reward bad behaviour

someone’s manners are often a window to their soul

grab my attention, but don’t grab me

a traveller without observation is like a bird without wings

the word ‘paradise’ is often overused, but rarely overrated

how can heaven and hell be so far apart, yet so close?

sometimes you can feel too sorry for someone

some people go one way, some go another

talk may be cheap, but some people are cheaper

you never know if you never ask

not all emergency-related scenarios end badly

collecting bruises is not my favourite hobby

sometimes crew get very badly battered and bruised

beware the fury of a patient woman

next time i am on a beach and see a starfish …

thank goodness not all people are the same same

there is no such thing as a silly question, just silly people

delays are preferable to other consequences

not all surprises are good, but some are very good

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

COPYRIGHT

When I was eleven I fantasised about being an international hostie. I thought I had some idea of what the flying life would be like. I had no idea at all. After about twenty years of flying around the world, I finally have an inkling. Every story I am about to tell you is true and every character you are about to meet is based on someone I know or have met.

Welcome to more snapshots of my world.

www.facebook.com/Confessionsofahostie

a shin is the perfect device for finding a glass coffee table in the dark

I sit up with a jolt. The room is pitch-black except for the glow from the bedside clock: 2.15 a.m. Where the hell am I?

I try searching for the light switch, but then give up. I roll out of bed and make my way toward the window. It is then that my shin discovers the glass coffee table with ferocious force. I clutch my throbbing leg, screaming out things that would make a seasoned sailor blush.

If I wasn’t so jetlagged, deliriously tired and hopping about like a one-legged rabbit, I would be far more excited that I am in Hong Kong.

Who am I kidding – I am still excited!

I know I ought to be putting some ice on the already darkening bruise, rather than making perceptive but useless observations about how the bruise is ironically taking the shape of Hong Kong Island. However, thoughts of shopping in a hostie’s wonderland far outweigh the ones about the bruise on my shin. All I can think about is buying shoes.

Hong Kong is a single girl’s shopping Mecca. Here, East meets West, and girl meets shoes. It would be nice if I could manage getting a few more hours sleep though. The flight over was a nightmare. We were nearly two hours late departing, thanks to a storm that hit the airport whilst the passengers were boarding. The sky turned black, and the winds were very strong. Even a massive aircraft like the jumbo 747, although sitting on the tarmac, rocked quite a bit. When the last passenger had boarded, all I had been able to see out the window were flashes of lightning and pouring rain.

The captain had immediately made a PA to inform passengers that due to the severe weather outside, particularly the lightning, the loading of their baggage into the cargo hold was momentarily suspended, until the lightning was gone.

I’ve had some dumb things said to me in my twenty years of flying, but one passenger wins the blue ribbon in that category.

‘How long will the lightning delay the aircraft?’ a woman asked me.

I replied, ‘I don’t know, ma’am. That is up to a higher authority to decide.’

She doesn’t understand my tongue-in-cheek response. They say lightning never strikes twice in the same place, but people who ask silly questions do strike repeatedly.

With a very serious expression, she asked, ‘So, who does know then?’

No, no, no! Don’t make me say it, I think to myself.

‘So your question is basically this: How long will the lightning last? I have already told you that I don’t know. We already know the captain doesn’t know. The ground-staff don’t know, the airport doesn’t know, the airline company doesn’t know and I’m guessing that if Albert Einstein were still alive he wouldn’t know. Only one person knows – that’s God. G.O.D., the Almighty!’ is what I would have loved to scream out, but how can you be sarcastic to someone who would lack the basic commonsense to understand sarcasm? Albert Einstein himself once said, ‘Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the universe.’

Instead I tell the woman that weather conditions are out of the airline’s control and that the captain will be told by the ground staff when it is safe to continue loading bags.

In addition to the irritable passengers and the extra hours we had to work, it proved to be an eventful flight. A woman collapsed in her seat, and we spent much of the flight treating and monitoring her condition. Fortunately there was a doctor onboard (as there usually is). It was diagnosed that the woman had a severe twenty-four-hour virus. With oxygen and some onboard medication the woman’s condition improved slowly, but we still needed to monitor her, which added to our already heavy workload.

Elsewhere in the cabin, an elderly woman had lost her necklace. This woman had been brought onto the aircraft in a wheelchair and she had been so feeble. If she were my mother or grandmother I would never have allowed her to travel on her own. I had helped prepare her tray during the meal service and had then helped her eat as well; I had done everything except spoon-feed her. Not long after we had cleared the tray she discovered that her necklace was missing. I prayed she hadn’t left it on her tray as the chances of finding it amongst hundreds of dirty trays were almost none.

It had probably fallen between seats or under her cushion, I guessed. I helped her up from the seat, so that I could search in and around the seat. As I lowered my head to her seat the smell hit me at the exact moment as the wetness of the seat cushion oozed through my fingers.

She had urinated in the seat. Gross, gross and triple gross.

I donned gloves, removed the cushion and replaced it with the only spare seat cushion available on the plane.

I eventually found the necklace where I had suspected it would be found. I also found that it was a piece of very cheap costume jewellery and had a broken clasp, which effectively rendered it useless anyway.

Was all my discomfort and effort worth the effort? Nope.

The smell of urine lingered in my nostrils for the remainder of the flight and through the bus trip to our crew hotel. On reaching the hotel, the first thing I did was run into the bathroom and give myself a long, hot shower. Then, I had the choice of either crawling straight into bed or to go out for crew-drinks and treat myself to a couple of glasses of wine, and unwind with the crew.

I went with the more sociable option. I might be still paying the price for those few wines, with a hangover (and now a bruised shin) but thoughts of shopping have put back the spring in my step – or ‘in my hop’.

Whoever said money can’t buy happiness didn’t know where to go shopping. Sadly, shops aren’t open in the early hours of the morning, so after watching infomercials on TV for several hours I decide to have another long shower and then hit the gym. I’d like to say that I love going to the gym, but I don’t. Guilt is my motivator and boredom my vindication.

Airline crew hotels are a sea of treadmills in the early hours of the morning, with hostie after hostie pounding the conveyer belts. The girls all have the same steadfast expressions on their faces, as if to say, ‘There’s only a few more hours before the shops open’. At least, that’s what I am thinking when I run.

I am sure that most of the girls on the treadmills will end up going to any number of ‘markets’ available at Hong Kong. My favourite place is Stanley Market. It is not just the shopping there that makes it great, but it is also the market’s location. I remember the first time I ever came to Hong Kong and some of the crew took me to Stanley. The bus ride there was spectacular, and after shopping we ended dining in a superb restaurant on the waterfront. This restaurant has had a few name changes over the years, but it is still there. I have lunch there every time I go out shopping in Stanley Market, which is pretty much every time I come to Hong Kong. I am sure today will be no exception.

I never tire of doing fantastic things. My philosophy for life is quite simple really: I sleep when I can, work hard when I have to, and I have fun because I want to.

they should make all shirts the colour of what you are most likely to stain them with – red wine

There are two Danielles. There is the university educated and well-bred Danielle, who I would like to think of as an articulate and thoughtful woman; then, there is the jetlagged and moronic Danielle with the IQ of an invertebrate. The last time I saw my boyfriend, Dean, I was the latter. I will never come back from a trip tired and jetlagged and drink red wine again.

‘Next time I’ll drink white wine. It doesn’t stain as much,’ I had grumbled while trying to wipe off the spreading red stains from his shirt.

At the top of my shopping-wish-list for today is the following item: Buy Dean a new shirt (or two).

The truth be told, I like shopping for him as much as I do for myself. With that said, I have ruined several of his shirts and one pair of pants.

I cannot remember the last time I spilled a drink on a passenger, even in severe turbulence. I am not a clumsy person, yet deprive me of sleep and work me through five different time zones, and I turn into one of the Three Stooges.

I have unintentionally destroyed some of Dean’s wardrobe, but in saying that, he is not the most adventurous of fashion trendsetters – a few Ralph Lauren polo shirts and a pair of Guess jeans are all he’s got in there to show for good fashion sense – and I bought those for him. I have a feeling his wardrobe will be a tad healthier after my excursion today.

Stanley Market has a number of factory-seconds shops. Many of the big brands are manufactured in Asia so the overstocked or the outdated often end up in such markets. Sure, there is a lot of rubbish too, but the prices are ridiculously cheap. I love that. What girl wouldn’t?

I am right about the other hosties flocking to the market. I literally bump into two girls whom I know from another crew. I have flown with both several times, and they are lovely. You can tell a lot about a person from their shopping bags. One of the things crew members end up doing in situations like this is comparing shopping bargains.

‘Look at this Todd’s handbag. Isn’t it divine. I got it for just…’

‘I bought this for my niece. It’s Osh Gosh,’

‘Check out this necklace. Don’t you love it? It was a bargain at…’

Both girls are a year or two older than me, and they are both single. I can tell that they are single just by looking at their shopping bags; they are full of ‘me’ items – a dead giveaway. A lot of flight attendants are single girls, particularly those who have been flying for many years. It is a lifestyle that attracts strong independent women. Often that independence comes at the expense of a relationship. Some of the girls have chosen that path. Some have not. I am quietly confident that both these single girls are not necessarily bitter and twisted, but you can’t be sure. The last thing I want to be is one of those girls who start every sentence with ‘My boyfriend this’ or ‘My boyfriend that’.

Instead, I decide to talk to them about our one common love. ‘How good is the shopping?’; ‘I saw this gorgeous dress, and I might just have to go back and try it on’ and so on. We also discuss brands: Prada, Gucci and YSL, in particular. The girls decide to join me for lunch. Shopping again dominates the conversation as we sip (white) wine and soak up the magical view over Stanley Bay. I need to keep an eye on the time. My plan is to have a quick power-shop after lunch and then head back to the hotel for a nap.

I have to work through the night. This layover was only meant to be for only twenty-four hours, but with the delayed flight coming in, it is now even shorter. I am having only one glass of wine as there are strict rules regarding alcohol and crew. We are not allowed to have a drink eight hours before we board a flight. Some joke that it is not eight hours, but eight feet from the aircraft.

It is a rule I adhere to strictly.

I probably shouldn’t even have even this one drink, I think to myself. And that’s not because of the eight-hour rule, but because I am going to take a sleeping pill later. Sleeping pills and alcohol don’t mix. Recently a crew member mixed the two and ended up in all sorts of trouble when he slept through his hotel wake-up call. The procedure for the hotels is that when a crew member doesn’t answer their wake-up call, hotel security unlock the door and enter. In this case the flight attendant was so startled and disorientated at being woken by a stranger that he punched the security staffer; he faced charges and almost lost his job over the incident.

My friend Mary Gomez has gotten into trouble, as well, on more than one occasion because she mixed sleeping tablets with alcohol. She ended up walking around a hotel totally naked. It sounds funny, but poor Mary did this twice (as far as I know) within the space of a few weeks and at the same hotel. That hotel didn’t take kindly to a delirious woman wandering around its hallways stark-naked and knocking on guests’ doors, whilst singing a Nineties rock ballad.

Rumour has it that it was a Bon Jovi song, but that’s something even Mary cannot confirm or deny.

I’ve faced similar problems onboard aircrafts. It usually involves a woman, alcohol and sleeping pills.

It habitually ends in disaster.

I’ve personally witnessed as well as been involved in two incidents where women have been so out-of-control they have had to be restrained and arrested. One of these women woke up and told the passenger seated next to her that she had a great sleep. It was only a few moments later that she discovered she was hand-cuffed. The woman had no recollection at all of what she had done – well, what she had done was terrorise everyone around her!

So, here’s something to remember: never ever mix alcohol and medication of any sort, particularly sleeping tablets. If you do, then don’t place yourself in an oxygen-reduced aluminum tube with hundreds of other people around you, with nowhere to run or hide. Flight attendants have access to handcuffs, and are trained to use them.

I am confident, however, that having just one glass of wine hours before taking a sleeping pill is not going to have me running around the hotel in my birthday suit singing ‘Living On a Prayer’, but a second glass just might. So, I resist the temptation to have any more.

nowhere to run and fewer places to hide

Our flight out of Hong Kong is full, full and then full some more. Not only is every seat sold, we have over forty staff members waiting on a standby arrangement to get onboard should even one seat become available. If we could strap passengers to the wing, we would.

Apparently our flights out of HKG (the code for Hong Kong) have been full all week, and some of these staff members have been stuck in Hong Kong for as long. Most stay at a hotel near the airport and wait around the terminal all day, hoping to get on a flight that would take them home. I feel bad for them. Being delayed a couple of hours in a terminal is bad enough, but I could only imagine what it would be like to spend many days in one.

This is one of the real drawbacks about using staff benefits to fly. Yes, the ticket is much cheaper, but there are no guarantees of getting a seat, something that the poor souls living at the airport all week have discovered only too late.

The aircraft we are working on tonight has four crew-rest seats. This is the place we come to in order to take a quick break from the throng of passengers during our fourteen-hour flight.

I often ask my best friend Helen, a school teacher, ‘Could you imagine standing in front of your students for hours and hours? And the only break you get is to sit in the same room as the kids?’ Helen shivers at the thought of doing something like that.

We do have a thin piece of curtain hung at the entrance of the crew-rest area, to give us some privacy. The seats, however, are zoo-class passenger seats, not first-class thrones. Dean’s brother, Danny, who also flies, is quite tall. When he sits in the crew-rest seats, he rests his chin on his knees and tries to get some sleep. Does he manage to fall sleep though? Absolutely not.

I am usually unable to get any sleep in the crew-rest area as well. One time, on a flight from India, I defied the odds and was fast asleep. Just after I had nodded off, the curtain was rudely yanked back by a man, who demanded that I bring him a scotch and coke. He scared the living daylights out of me.

Did he get his scotch? I think you know the answer to that one.

I am not the only crew member on this flight who is desperate to get some sleep. Even so, the crew collectively agrees to allow our crew-rest seats to be used by staff trying to get on the flight. At least we can help four of those poor stranded people to get home. The drawback for those staff members who get these seats is that they need to vacate the seats and move somewhere else when the working crew need those same seats for their break. Unfortunately, there is no somewhere else on an aircraft. Every nook and cranny on a plane has something in it. There is no such thing as wasted space.

On almost every flight, more particularly night flights, there is usually one person who refuses to stay in their seat throughout the flight. As soon as the seatbelt sign is turned off, they jump out of their seats and loiter wherever they can loiter. The only problem is that, as I have pointed out, there is nowhere to go on an aircraft. They just wander around the aircraft aimlessly and get in everyone’s way, or they stumble into the galleys and want to chat. These people, who are ignorant to everyone else around them, are usually the last kind of people the crew wants to chat with anyway. It is a conundrum for the crew when such wanderers end up in the galley. Just like the passengers, we have nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

‘There are 420 people on this plane, and 419 of them are seated in the seat they paid for. Yet, here you are, walking around and getting in everyone’s way, particularly the crew’s? You don’t see the problem with that?’ I want to scream at such wanderers.

On this flight we have the usual nomads, but to add salt to our wounds, we also have four additional staff members on board, who have no choice but to stand. The galley becomes a claustrophobic’s nightmare. On one flight some years ago I had a man bail me up in the galley. This man had been drinking, but not enough to warrant cutting off his supply. This man was flirting, but still hadn’t crossed any major harassment lines. He was creepy, but there’s no law against that. It didn’t matter how many times I hinted for him to return to his seat, I was ignored. Eventually I actually suggested he should return to his seat as we were about to prepare the galley for the next meal service. My words still fell on deaf ears.

In the end I had to do something really sneaky: I snuck out of the galley momentarily and rang the captain from one of the crew phones. I told the captain that a passenger from the cabin, who had consumed one too many drinks, had come into the galley and was disturbing us, and although he was not drunk he had ignored our requests to return to his seat. Passengers are not allowed to wander around the aircraft drinking alcohol, something the captain is only too aware of. The man was not drinking in the cabin per se, but my careful use of words made it seem so.

By turning on the seatbelt sign the man would be legally required to take his seat. If he still refused to so, we would be in a position to take sterner action. The captain obliged and the seatbelt was turned on, for only thirty seconds or so. It was enough time for my cunning plan to work. The man was forced to leave the galley and return to his seat. When the seatbelt sign was turned off, I returned to the galley. While I was smiling to myself and basking in the glory of hatching such a brilliant plan, the man walked back into the galley.

‘Gee, the seatbelt sign didn’t stay on long. And there wasn’t even a bump,’ he said.

He didn’t leave the galley until it was time for us to land.

the adjective of ‘break’ is ‘broken’

When it is time for my break, I take my seat in the crew-rest area and pull across the flimsy piece of curtain to give myself some privacy. I need to get some sleep before I step out into the brightly lit cabin again and then work for four more hours. I spend most of my time sitting in the uncomfortably small seat, thinking about how uncomfortably small the seat is. Then I do something that I rarely do – I fall asleep. I sleep for a solid five or even six minutes before a passenger’s wayward limb, pushes past the curtain, to smack into my shoulder with the force of a gridiron linebacker. My bones rattle. I am supposed to be on a break, not having people break my bones.

The curtain may stop me from seeing who the unbalanced offender is, but does nothing to stop me from getting angry. Sitting in the aisle crew-rest seat as I am, it is a constant stream of bumping and thumping. If there is turbulence (and there is) it is much worse. When an unsteady passenger needs to balance themselves in the cabin, they generally use the seat or the shoulder of a seat to do so. Place a curtain in front of the seat, and they grab onto anything that lies beyond the curtain. That anything in the past has included my head, my shoulder, and also parts of my body that are private and shouldn’t be touched without my consent.

Yet, it’s not an easy decision to make. Remove the curtain, and we remove with it our privacy. It’s a dilemma, honestly. The fact that these crew-rest seats are located right in front of a toilet only makes them all the more uncomfortable for us. The sound of a toilet flushing is all we can hear, and that’s why we wear ear-plugs while sitting in the crew-rest seats. The less-than-desirable odours that assail our noses, on the other hand, we can do nothing about. We can do even less about being groped through the curtains.

I manage to grab several more five- or six-minute mini sleeps before I am woken by another crew member and beckoned to come back to work. Although I have not slept for very long, I am in a near comatose-state. I feel like I’ve been hit by more than a brick. I’ve been hit by the whole brick wall.

I know it only gets worse from here. Can you imagine rolling out of bed, still exhausted, and step straight out of a dark room and into a room as bright and alive as a discotheque? And while you do this, more than two hundred people are staring right at you. That’s exactly what a hostie has to do after taking a nap in the crew-rest area and then go back into the cabin again. We have to walk past hordes of peering eyes and demanding mouths, and into the galley, then take the meal-service cart and start handing out food to the very people who have just watched you wake up.

I slink out of the crew-rest seat and dart towards the galley. The toilets are all busy, so I make another plan quickly: I will dive into the galley, splash water on my face and try to wake up, and then attempt to reapply my make-up.

My plan fails, of course. Three paces from the galley, a passenger stops me.

‘My seat is broken,’ he laments.

‘Damn it,’ I think to myself. ‘I was nearly there.’

He is right, the seat is broken. The recline-button is jammed, and the seat won’t return to its upright position. This is definitely a problem. The seat must be upright for landing. It is a legal requirement. If we cannot get the seat upright, it will not only affect the seat in question, but also the seat in the row behind it. If we weren’t fuller than full, we could move him to another seat, but that is not an option.

I try to fix it myself; after all, my twenty years of flying experience has taught me how to be an amateur aircraft engineer (away from the engines at least). Even so, I cannot fix the seat. I summon the boss.

‘If anyone can fix the seat, he can,’ I reassure myself and the passenger with the broken seat.

I was wrong – the boss can’t fix it.

We come up with a rather ingenious short-term solution. We manage to push the seat to the upright position and then use a combination of extension seatbelts to keep the seat roughly in this position. As pleased as we are with the outcome, it has taken over ten minutes to do this. The rest of the crew have already begun with the breakfast meal service. I quickly rush to a cart and begin handing out meals. I have not had time to glamour myself up. I just hope my lipstick has stayed somewhere in the vicinity of my lips and my eye shadow has remained above my eyes. It is a horrible feeling to know you don’t look your best and yet are unable to do anything about it. As soon as time permits, I will duck into the toilets and freshen up, I tell myself. However, I know very well that when you have just started a meal service on a full aircraft, ‘when time permits’ is a long time away.

One of the male passengers who I have just served grabs me by the arm and begins complaining about the size of the meal, or its lack of size to be more accurate. One little tip for the travelling public: never grab a flight attendant by the arm, especially toward the end of an extremely long flight. Nothing good will ever come of it, trust me.

There are surely some things hosties can do in situations like this, when a passenger is extremely hungry and needs more food. For instance, we could offer the passenger another meal, provided one is left after we have served everyone else. However, grabbing a hostie’s arm and demanding things is a definite deal breaker.

If someone has a genuine complaint or asks for my help nicely, and if there is something I can do to help them, I will go out of my way to do it. Most flight attendants would do the same. Ask for something unreasonable though, or in a manner that is totally offensive (like grabbing us) then the passenger will get very little indeed.

Airline meals are not large. They cannot be so. Aircraft manufacturers and airlines prioritise space allocation within a plane. Obviously engines and all the mechanical bits and pieces take first priority, then there is the emergency equipment, then the seats (and as many as they can fit), then toilets and somewhere down the pecking order are the galleys and the food and beverage stowages. It is impossible for any airline to load fourteen meal choices and five different services for each passenger on the flight.

Once, on an eight-hour flight, a woman complained bitterly to me that we were only offering her a dinner, a light snack, then a breakfast before landing.

Well, what the hell was she expecting? No commercial airline in the history of aviation can offer an eight-hour long buffet to its passengers. Most restaurants and cafés have a kitchen and storage area that’s about a third of their dining area, and they only serve their diners one meal service. This woman is on an aircraft. The galleys are the size of a dog kennel, and yet over 350 passengers are going to receive dinner, a snack and breakfast – all from that one galley. Some people have way too high expectations.

I would have loved to take this woman by the hand and give her the three-second grand tour of the galley. ‘If you can find any space, and I mean space to put one extra muesli bar, let alone 350 muesli bars, please let us know,’ I would have then asked of her.

Sometimes, passengers have legitimate grievances, but other times, their mouths react far more quickly than their brains should let them.

I have had to listen to the most absurd requests sometimes. Even on the flight to Hong Kong I received one such odd request. When I was about to do my safety demonstration, a young Chinese woman (we later referred to her as ‘Princess’) asked me for a hair band. Although I had almost started with my safety demonstration and was in full safety-duties mode, I was still polite. ‘We do not carry hair bands on the aircraft. There may be a rubber-band or something somewhere, but I will only be able to look for one after we take off. I’ll come back and see you when we are in the air,’ I told her as courteously as one could.

‘Oh, I guess that will have to do. I suppose I can put up with having my hair down during take-off,’ she replied as ungratefully as one could.

The poor dear. It must have been hell for her, tolerating her barely shoulder-length hair being untied for ten more minutes. After take-off, I ended up giving her a crew bag-tag, which has a stretchy band attached to the tag. I told her that she could remove the tag section, or she was most welcome to wear that in her hair if she so desired. She did not see the humour in my words. Nor did she thank me for helping her.

Recently I had a passenger who was very annoyed that we did not supply or sell batteries on the aircraft. I have no problem with someone asking if we have something, although the odds are we don’t (sometimes, you never know). But this guy was really peeved when I shook my head.

‘Why don’t you sell batteries?’ he yelled.

‘Because you are travelling on a 747, not a 7-Eleven. Would you walk into the local bank and ask them if they sell sausages?’ I wanted to yell back, but sometimes it works best to just shrug your shoulders and not speak a word. You can’t get into trouble for something you didn’t say, after all.

I am never rude to passengers with my words or mannerisms. I may think it, but I rarely say it or show emotion. Apparently communication is not so much about what you say, but about how you say it. I say it nicely even if I don’t mean it. As polite as I appear to be, I know deep down that I am not rewarding bad behaviour.

The art of diplomacy is telling someone to go to hell in such a way that they think they will enjoy the journey – this is something that Danny, Dean’s brother has taught me. And he has taught me well, indeed.

I see and hear so many rude comments that I have become somewhat immune to them. If I took to heart every rude and condescending thing that has been directed at me, I would have quit my flying career years ago.

I try to think of all the great passengers we have. They certainly outnumber the rude and the foolish, but sadly it is usually the rude and the foolish who take up so much of our time.

Just before we land, in the fleeting moments between being handed trash, more trash and yet more trash, I sneak a peek at the glorious sunrise outside, through a passenger window. What a beautiful sight it is watching the sun come up over the clouds.

In direct contrast to the serene sunrise is the state of the cabin I’m standing in. The cabin looks like it has been hit by a tornado. I have personally taken away armfuls of rubbish, and so have the other crew. The bins and compactors in the galley are overflowing, yet somehow the aisles and rows in the cabin look like the inside of a dumpster. They usually do look like that toward the end of a flight.

The staff who sat in our crew-rest seats are all very appreciative. All four make the effort to walk around the aircraft and personally thank the crew, a gesture we appreciate. I am pleased we were able to help them get home.

It is nice that I can get home myself now, I think.

Stepping off the aircraft is by no means the end of the day for cabin crew. Apart from assisting passengers with special needs, we then need to collect suitcases, clear customs, get out of the airport terminal, find our cars (which is sometimes the most time-consuming task for some) and finally drive home in a jetlagged and fatigued state.

When you work through the night and cross god-knows how many time zones as we do, you miss out on so much sleep – and since we do this over and over again, the effects are only accumulative.

And I wonder why I feel so worn out?

Logic and mathematics dictate that I must now sleep for twelve hours straight for my body to recuperate. Logic and mathematics don’t count when you are an international flight attendant. My brain is hypoxic (lacking oxygen) and my body has its own separate agenda. I am exhausted. I take a sleeping tablet, and it knocks me out for four hours.

I fall asleep mid-morning and wake up around lunchtime. I had optimistically set my bedside alarm clock for a later time, hoping I could get a few more hours of sleep. That exercise proves to be a waste of time. It always does. Four hours is all I get, not a second more, not a second less.

I know that I will walk around in an incoherent state for the next five or six hours and then pass out. Will I then sleep through the night and wake up tomorrow morning feeling refreshed and suffering no jetlag or fatigue?

Not a chance in hell.

if i were any more affected by jetlag i might need watering twice a week

I only have three days at home before I fly again. It is not nearly enough time to recharge my batteries and function semi-normally, let alone normally. I know from my non-flying friends just how difficult it is to work on having a successful relationship; when you have a job like mine, it is damn near impossible.

It takes a very special partner or boyfriend to understand and accept the demands that a flight attendant’s job can bring to the table. Fortunately I have such a boyfriend. But to say we have the perfect relationship would be wrong.

Distance makes the heart grow fonder? Not really. Distance makes the heart grow fungus, I joke.

I have been away for almost a week. Dean and I have talked via the internet several times and sent the odd email and text message, but it is not the same as physically being with someone. This is one part of my lifestyle that I find hardest to deal with – the separation. Most of the girls who fly and are in a relationship would agree with me. It is not just that you are away for so long that’s the problem, but the condition you are in when you get home. Separation-anxiety dictates that you want to see your partner straight away, and your partner wants to see you just as much. When you are an international flight attendant, however, having such thoughts or expectations is a big mistake.

Family and friends want to talk to you, but I often get so deliriously tired that I don’t want to even talk to myself. Experience has shown me to avoid all and sundry while I am jetlagged and drained. I would like to think that I am wise enough not to see Dean for at least a day after returning home.

However, Dean is busy throughout my few days of stay at home. He is free tonight though. My expectation of having the whole world revolve around my ability to function rationally is just not going to happen. My body feels like it has been run over by a steamroller (at least twice) and my brain is not capable of making decisions more complex than choosing what clothing to wear. I usually avoid everyone on the day I get home from a trip for a reason. But tonight’s the only chance I have to meet Dean, and I’m not going to lose it.

Hell, what do I wear? The first decision one should make when exhausted is to decide not to make decisions. Simple chores like deciding what to wear become choices of life and death. What should take me five minutes takes me an hour. What should be simple becomes difficult. What should be pleasurable becomes annoying.

Sometimes I get so tired I don’t know whether to laugh or cry; I usually end up doing both until I am rational enough to make a proper decision. I have often thought there should be a special place for international flight attendants to rest after a big trip away: a place where the rooms are dark, sound-proofed and can’t be opened until you are rested enough to make rational decisions. It is then, and only then, that we can be unleashed into the world.

Dean has done all the right things. He has chosen a lovely little café we frequent often, and even wears one of the new Ralph Lauren shirts I bought him. He is polite, and he says he understands how I must be feeling. I can’t help but chuckle to myself. The poor dear has no idea.

People who have travelled several times overseas think they know what jetlag and fatigue are like. They may have a notion, but their chances of comprehending just how lousy I feel are infinitely smaller than their chances of winning the lottery. In this last week I have been in four different cities in four different countries, each with their own time zones. Yes, that is the job and lifestyle I have chosen for myself, but no one can fully understand how I feel. Nor should they pretend to.

There is an old saying that goes like this: ‘wisdom whispers, foolishness shouts’. How I wish I had whispered that night. The night with Dean is an unmitigated disaster – and it is entirely my fault. I haven’t seen Dean for over a week, so he is obviously keen to tell me about what has been going on in his world. I, however, have the attention span of a drunken goldfish. And drunken, I do become, for I have one glass of (white) wine and turn into a blithering idiot. I am embarrassed for myself.

I even try to do the right thing by swapping my wine for a double-shot latte in a desperate attempt to not only stay awake, but to stop slurring my words. In an ironic twist, the coffee I specifically ordered to stop me from making a fool of myself is the very same coffee I spill and send splashing all over the café’s table, as well as onto Dean’s new Ralph Lauren shirt.

‘Oh god, take me home,’ I groan, embarrassed.

Fortunately, Dean understands. Or at least says he understands, even if he is a little embarrassed and more than a little annoyed. He does take me home, and as much as romance should be on the agenda, it is not going to happen.

I can’t remember if I passed out before he said goodnight or after.

Any guesses what time I wake up? 2:15am, of course. I am so tired that I take a sleeping tablet and sleep for another four hours. Even after getting eight hours of sleep, I know from experience that I will still feel like an alien from another planet in the morning.

Maybe this time it will be different? It isn’t. I know it never will be.

I call Dean with the intention of apologising for my antics during our date. He is obviously busy so I leave a voicemail message. Even though it is the next day and I am feeling a little more human, my message-leaving abilities are still impaired: I nervously blurt out semi-coherent ramblings about how sorry I am.

Sometimes when you are digging a hole, the more you dig, the more the sides fall in. This is not the first time I have made a fool of myself, and it will by no means be the last. I know that; Dean knows that; my best friend Helen knows that; my mother knows that.

Hell, even the postman knows that.

The sad reality is that I am exhausted and jetlagged, and this will cause me to say and do things I will later regret. I wish I could wave a magic wand and sleep for twelve hours after each trip, to then wake up and sing ‘Oh, what a beautiful morning; oh, what a beautiful day…’, but that is never going to happen. While I am being so candidly honest, I must add another factor into this sleep-deprivation-and-jetlag-and-fatigue scenario – there is, of course, P.M.S., something most women have to contend with. When all the bad stars align (like they have today) and women’s issues collide with coming home exhausted from a trip, then anyone in close proximity should run for their lives. Run, Forest, run, indeed.

There are a few things that can make me feel better now. Alcohol is one, but it is not really acceptable to start drinking in the morning. One needs to draw the line somewhere. My friend Mary Gomez would argue otherwise, but then Mary has no rules when it comes to alcohol.

I decide to visit my good comrade Mr. Starbucks first.

Then, with a double latte running through my veins, I catch up with my best friend Helen for lunch. It doesn’t matter how self-absorbed I become or how much drool comes out of my mouth, Helen will listen to anything I say with a smile on her face. She is more loyal than ever now because I have Helen on my staff travel benefits, and next week she is coming to Honolulu with me. She has never been to Hawaii before, and it has always been a dream of hers to go. To say that she is excited is an understatement. To say that she is jumping out of her skin would be about right.

I prattle on about what a fool I made of myself in front of Dean, and Helen says, ‘So, is the hotel far from Waikiki beach?’

I talk about how difficult it is to maintain a relationship due to my job and Helen asks, ‘What’s the shopping like in Honolulu?’

I complain about how worn out I feel, and Helen comments, ‘Does the hotel supply beach towels or should I pack one?’

Yes, I’m being a tad melodramatic in my portrayal of Helen at present. She does actually listen to my problems. She always does, but at the moment she is so excited, and I am just as excited for her. At times I take for granted the lifestyle and opportunities that are available to me, and it takes someone like Helen to show me what I have.

There are dozens of negative things about my job. Jetlag, fatigue, being away from home for long, missing birthdays and Christmas and parties, as well as being unable to turn up for a niece or nephew’s school play. But for every negative, there are a thousand positives.

I forget about my problems for the moment and tell Helen about all the fantastic things she can do and see in Honolulu. We will be spending two days there, and although that is not a long time, it is still enough time to see and do a lot. As I have been there many, many times, I know where to go and what to do, so we can get the most out of our stay. I am starting to get excited as well.

is ice-cream a food or a frozen drink?

Before my Honolulu trip with Helen, I have a trip to Japan. I have been so focused on the Honolulu trip that I have barely given any thought to the land of the rising sun.

The last time I was in Japan, Dean’s brother Danny was on the trip. What a fantastic time we had. I haven’t been back there since that trip, which was just prior to the 2011 deadly earthquake and tsunami. I was home when it happened (albeit jetlagged) but one of my good flight attendant friends was in Narita at the time. I was glued to the TV and watched with tears streaming down my face as the magnitude of the catastrophe unfolded.

When you stay in a city or country as many times as I have, you develop a connection with that place. When a disaster the size of what hit Japan occurs, you take it personally. Tokyo and the surrounding areas, including Narita’s shook violently during the earthquake, but Narita being inland and Tokyo being in a protected bay were not directly affected by the tsunamis. Even so, it must have been terrifying for the people who live there.

My friend was the boss of the crew that had landed in Narita only a few hours before the earthquake. When my friend operated the flight home he had forgotten to do some important onboard paperwork as well as paperwork relevant to his holidays, which would mean he would miss out on his holiday time of choice. He told our company he was so traumatised by the earthquake that he had been unable to function normally at the time. His manager was very sympathetic. Not only was the excuse accepted but there were no ramifications to the overlooked onboard paperwork; he was also given the holiday time of his choice.

He later told me that when the earthquake hit, he was asleep, thanks to sleeping pills, and slept through the whole thing. He had no idea of the drama unfolding in the country he was staying in until, later in the day, he had turned on the television. It is difficult to find comedy within such a tragedy, but I found this incident hilarious.

There is always a thought at the back of my mind that an earthquake or tremor could occur at any time in a country like Japan. Yet, I am aware that this could happen in other parts of the world I frequent as well. You can’t live your life in fear. Even so, I think about the possibilities and am always aware of my surroundings. In the hotels, I take note of the emergency exits, and if something were to occur I am fairly confident that I would be able to react to the situation quickly. It may make a difference. It may not. Many things in life are a bit like some of the scenarios that could occur on an aircraft, and therefore much of what we crew learn as part of our emergency training comes in handy in general life situations.

I know what to do and how to react in case of a fire, especially if one breaks out within our hotels. My first-aid training has been used on a few occasions outside of work (and many times onboard the aircraft). I am more competent than most in survival situations, and I am far more vigilant in my assessments of situations. In case of a natural disaster such as an earthquake, I know I have the skills to make quick and crucial judgments. I am also acutely aware that some things in life are out of my control.

I am not one to take big risks, but I am also not the type of person who is going to sit in an underground bunker, fearing the possibility that something bad might happen. Life is too short.

Just like my stay at home this time, which is over in the blink of an eye. Somehow my three days here feel like a nanosecond, and it’s already time for me to pack my bags for my next trip. A quick check on the internet tells me the weather in Japan is going to be good, so I pack the appropriate clothes. Fortunately my wardrobe has the capacity to hold clothes meant for any type of weather.

A hostie once gave me some terrific advice: ‘Pack half the clothes you think you will need, and take double the money you think you will spend.’

She then explained, ‘If you need more clothes, you can always buy more – and sweetheart, what girl doesn’t like to buy more clothes?’ Sound advice indeed.

Shopping in Japan is not as enjoyable as it is in some other cities I’ve been to. They have the big shopping centres like most of the Western world, but, for me, it falls short of being known as a shopping paradise. It kills me to say this, but not all shopping is necessarily good shopping. Let me explain myself, because those who know me will expect an explanation. I can relate shopping to ice-cream, my second favourite food group (after chocolate). I like most flavours of ice-cream, but not necessarily all of them. The same goes for shopping.

Funnily enough, I don’t particularly like the ice-cream in Japan either. I adore Japanese food overall, but some of their ice-cream flavours make me cringe. I’ve tried green tea ice-cream. It was just OK, surely tolerable. However, a particular Japanese ice-cream flavour made my stomach turn: shrimp ice-cream. Yes, shrimp, and it actually had pieces of real shrimp in it. The Japanese love their seafood and they love ice-cream, and they probably thought they can mix their two loves. In Japan, apart from shrimp ice-cream, they also eat crab-, eel-, octopus- and even oyster ice-cream.

I tried shrimp ice-cream once, just on the off-chance that I might be wrong, and it might actually taste nice. I was not wrong, and the ice-cream didn’t taste nice.

I love raspberries, and I also love caviar, but I would never dream of putting the two together. I am respectful of other culture’s culinary tastes, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Another weird ice-cream flavour I have seen was spaghetti ice-cream in Venezuela. It thought it would be ice-cream with some kind of candy that looked like spaghetti, but it had actual pasta mixed into it. Did I try it? No way.

It is not just the exotic lands that come up with strange ice-creams. I was in a Denny’s Restaurants in the U.S. once, and they were having a month-long celebration of bacon products, called ‘Baconalia’. Though I found it odd, I was also amused to find many bacon-worshippers from all over the country dropping into the joint. One of the promotional dishes served was bacon ice-cream sundae: ice-cream sprinkled with bacon chips. I refused to give it a try.

Some food should never have chunks of meat or seafood in it. They should pass a law to make ice-cream vegetarian-only.

See, not all ice-cream is good. And not all shopping is good. And there ends my ice-cream analogy: there is not much of a connection there, but I have enjoyed sharing some of the weird and not-so-wonderful flavours from around the world.

When I am in other countries, I don’t really have a choice regarding the hotels I stay in – our company decides that for us – but luckily I do have a choice regarding the food I eat. I love to eat, and I love to travel. These two passions are intertwined, and I try as far as possible to experience the local cuisine. When I am in Japan, I eat Japanese food (except seafood ice-cream, of course); when I am in Bangkok, I eat Thai; in Germany, I eat schnitzels; in Italy, I eat pasta and so on. I am constantly baffled at the number of tourists who spend massive amounts of time and money to travel to exotic destinations but then seek out the same type of food they eat at home. Worse still, they prejudge a country’s food by the often miserable imitations they have eaten before.

I have never seen sweet and sour pork in mainland China, nor pizza with pineapple in Italy. Authenticity is important when it comes to cuisine, and you can’t get more authentic than eating dishes in the country of origin.

Many major cities around the world are home to sizeable immigrant populations that bring with them delicious authentic food. The food is not so good, however, if the restaurant or café is run by someone belonging to a different nationality than that of the food being served. Outside of Japan, plenty of Japanese restaurants are run by Chinese and, conversely, the occasional Chinese restaurant is run by non-Chinese. The food is rarely good.

I recently saw a restaurant in the U.S. that boasted of serving authentic African cuisine. Africa is a big place. The distance from Tangier, in Morocco, to Cape Town, in South Africa, is over five times more than the distance from London to Rome. Yet, we don’t compare tortellini with Yorkshire pudding. This so-called ‘authentic African cuisine’ featured dishes from what looked like two or three north African countries. When I looked through the kitchen window, out of curiosity, I saw Asian staff and what appeared to be a Mexican chef. Multiculturalism is a good thing, but not in a restaurant that boasts of serving authentic regional food. Eating exotic food in such places is much like reading a travel book and claiming you’ve been around the world.

Similarly, I was in a food court in Los Angeles not long ago and noticed something odd: almost half of L.A.’s population is now Hispanic, particularly Mexican. Subsequently there are Mexican restaurants everywhere, and they are usually pretty good. In this particular food court the only Mexican food outlet had Asian staff. I can only imagine how Mexican the food must have tasted.

When I eat dishes from another culture I want the food to be cooked with passion and patriotism, not commercialism. Nothing beats eating regional cuisine in the actual region from where it has originated. When I get to Japan, I’ll be having gyozas, ramen, sushi and a healthy serving of satisfaction.

I am truly excited about going to Japan. If it weren’t for the fact that I still feel tired and am beginning to dread the hellishly long flight to get there, I would be more excited. Who am I kidding – I’m still excited.

it’s a balancing act

My excitement levels for my upcoming Japan trip are brought down a few more notches when it dawns on me that I have emergency training and exams coming up soon. As crew, we are regularly tested and have to spend time in mock emergency situations. As much as passengers would like to think that we are available on aircrafts purely for the service, the reality is very different. Providing safety is an important part of our job – the most important – and therefore we are tested stringently, thoroughly and regularly. The exam and training processes can be very stressful and need to be taken seriously. Even though I have been flying for around twenty years, I cannot take these exams lightly. Emergency procedures change constantly. There are information about new aircrafts, different configurations, updated ways of doing things, and reams of paperwork to read and revise.

My exams are after my Honolulu trip with Helen. I need to study on this trip, as I won’t be able to study on the trip with Helen. I also know my body and brain will be frazzled after this upcoming trip, so studying in Japan seems to be my only option.

When I was at university I had no problems studying. Trying to study while living the flight attendant lifestyle is, however, a whole different ballgame. When I was an eighteen-year-old student I lacked maturity and discipline, but I did have a routine. The only routine I have these days is not having a routine.

I often joke that I travel all the time because I hate having my life disrupted by a routine. There is a lot of truth in that joke, but when you can’t have something, it is sometimes the one thing you crave. Trying to find time to do important tasks like studying is not the problem here; the problem is finding the time to do important tasks when my brain is capable of functioning well. At the moment, the only book I would be capable of reading is a gossip magazine. Even then, my brain is so tired that it would probably only take in the pictures, rather than read any of the articles.

I am not always this dysfunctional. I can spend weeks doing back-to-back trips where I just don’t get the chance to recover adequately, and then I may have a week or so off. That week or so becomes like a mini-holiday, and after three or four days I start feeling normal again. It’s almost funny that I spend inordinate amounts of energy to try and have a normal lifestyle when the rest of society is trying so hard to make their lifestyles different.

I remember going to my high school reunion and meeting a girl who had been a complete bitch through the school years. Some people never change. She came up to me and said, ‘I heard you are an air hostess? I thought you would have become a professional or something. What do you do – pour tea and coffee all day?’

When someone is being condescending and judgmental about your life decisions, human nature works in such a way that you argue and defend yourself and your choices. Most times people turn defence into attack and point the blowtorch toward the person being condescending – in this case the school bitch.

I said this to her: ‘I’ve scaled the Great Wall of China, been to the top of the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State building, explored the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids, the Grand Canyon, Victoria Falls, Niagara Falls, Iguassu Falls, Angel Falls, sailed around Sydney Harbour and the Greek islands, been skiing on four different continents, been whitewater rafting in nine different countries, been on safari in Africa more times than I can count, been diving on the Great Barrier Reef and around islands in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans, cage diving with sharks in South Africa, swimming with dolphins in Mexico, watched whales in Hervey Bay (Australia) and Hawaii, been skydiving, bungee-jumping, hang-gliding, gliding, and aerobatic flying. I have been to American Football games, major ball baseball, basketball, and ice-hockey all through the States, soccer games at Wembley, in London, and Stadio Olimpico, in Rome, tennis at Wimbledon, again in London, and Flushing Meadows, in New York, cricket at Lords, Sumo Wrestling in Japan, polo in Argentina, the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens, The British golf Open, The Melbourne Cup horse race, several motor sport Grand Prix events and Super-bike races, an Australian Rules grand-final at the MCG, with over 100,000 fans, and I have been to three different Olympic Games.’

I then drew a big breath and carried on, ‘I have drunk Moët & Chandon in Champagne; Bordeaux in Bordeaux; Cabinet Sauvignon in the Napa Valley, California; Shiraz in the Barossa Valley, South Australia; Chardonnay in Côte d’Or, France; Sauvignon Blanc in Marlborough, New Zealand; Chianti in Tuscany, Italy; Port in Douro, Portugal; Pinotage in Stellenbosch, South Africa; Malbec in the Maipo Valley, Chile; and Reisling on the Rhine in Rüdesheim, Germany.’

Taking another quick breathe, I continued, ‘I’ve eaten in a restaurant in Africa with lions standing only a few feet away, have been on the edge of a cliff in San Francisco that overlooked the Pacific, in a tree house in India, in a seaside restaurant near Cape Town, where the waves crashed against the windows, on a junk in Hong Kong Harbour, a tram in Melbourne, have eaten at a restaurant located seventy-five floors up in Singapore, and have eaten even higher in the mountains of Himalayas, have dined underwater, in the water and on the water, and under the stars in the middle of nowhere. I have met presidents, prime ministers, movie stars, famous musicians, humanitarians and some of the most fascinating people on the planet. I have been involved in charity programmes around the world and have had the opportunity to influence thousands of lives in dozens of countries. I have performed CPR to save a life, twice, and have once done an updated version the Heimlich manouevre on a woman who choked and had stopped breathing; and then performed CPR on her, and yes, she survived.’

I then paused, looked her in the eyes and asked, ‘So, what have you done with your life?’

The school bitch looked awestruck, unable to speak or breathe. I simply smiled at her, said nothing more and then walked away. I moved on to talk to people more worthy of my time and effort.

I am proud of my job, and I don’t mind showing that to people.

To keep that job that I am so proud of, I am very much aware that I need to hit the books in Japan. I pack all my emergency training paperwork, but just in case I throw a few going-out clothes into my suitcase as well. You never know. I might get time to study on the plane.

I know that studying will be the last thing I want to do when I am tired, jetlagged and in a great country like Japan. The flight may not be full, I hope with all my heart, and I will actually get that chance to do some studying onboard.

sometimes the job stinks

The flight is full, and we are run off our feet. Studying will be the last thing I can do on this trip.

There are no spare seats, but there are no staff queuing up to get onboard either, which means our crew-rest area should at least be free. Well, I couldn’t be more wrong.

I notice that a young girl sitting in the window seat two rows away from the back galley is in tears. She is sitting next to a huge, hairy man dressed in robes and headwear. I lean across the man to ask the girl if she is OK. Before I have finished my question, I already know the reason for her tears. The reason hits me like a sledgehammer – hits my nose, to be more precise. This guy stinks! He doesn’t just smell a tad dreadful, but he absolutely reeks.

I get the poor girl out of there as quick as I possibly can.

Considering that we can’t find any free seats on the aircraft, we have no choice but to put her in our crew-rest area. The look of sheer terror on the faces of the two people sitting directly behind the stinky man has me sympathetically moving these people away as well.

How can anyone not know how putrid they smell? Worst still, he has no idea that he is offending everyone within a football field radius. Even if his own nasal passages are blocked or if he has become immune to his own stench, he can surely notice the look of distress on the faces of people around him?

We can smell him even from the back galley – and guess who is in charge of that galley? Me, of course. I decide to take control of the situation.

I give instructions, from a distance, for the man to go into the toilets and freshen up. He does not understand me. Frustrated at his noncompliance, I instruct him to move to the now vacant seat beside him. This he understands. I then unload every air-freshening spray and odour-killing chemical I can find on the aircraft into the area where he is sitting. I am surprised the man does not gag from toxic overload; he is still oblivious to what’s happening, however.

I am reminded of an episode of ‘Seinfeld’, in which Jerry’s car is filled with the stink of B.O., thanks to a valet parking his car. Seinfeld refers to the odour as an ‘entity’: ‘Don’t you see what’s happening here? It’s attached itself to me! It’s alive! And it’s destroying the lives of everyone in its path. This is not just an odour – you need a priest to get rid of this thing. It’s a presence! It’s The Beast!’ Seinfeld cries in that episode The man’s B.O. is exactly that, an entity, and it has attached itself to the galley. I am sure that only an exorcism can save us from it now. I brew coffee and leave it uncovered on the bench in the hope the aroma will waft through the area and at least mask the man’s foul smell. It does not help. I even spray the area with my good Chanel Coco Mademoiselle perfume, but that does nothing to relieve us of the stink. It’s almost as if I’m trying to fight a bushfire with a glass of water.

When flights are full it is often difficult to serve everyone efficiently, even when nothing goes wrong. In addition to moving about passengers as well as sanitising and deodorising, we have other things to deal with: a minor medical issue, wherein an elderly Japanese woman starts feeling faint; increasing turbulence; a woman, with a fear of flying, freaks out because of that turbulence; and one of the toilets breaks down.

We go about fixing all this. The Japanese woman is placed on oxygen, and she feels better. However, we still need to monitor her at regular intervals. A couple of us pacify the woman with a fear of flying, and soon she is OK, but she will also need our constant reassurance and attention. It all adds to the workload. We lock-off the unserviceable toilet, but although the others are functional, losing one toilet on the flight proves to be a serious nuisance.

However, the turbulence problem is not so easily fixed. In fact, it only breeds more problems for us. The persistent turbulence combined with the rancid body odour floating through the back of the cabin makes everyone feel uncomfortable, and extremely nauseous. One passenger throws up, followed by another, and yet another. It is a concertina effect. Now we have both body odor and vomit to contend with.

With that one toilet out-of-action, the queue of nauseated people grows exponentially outside the few remaining working toilets. The turbulence continues, the man’s stench keeps floating in, and passengers keep getting sick. Some of the queuing passengers have sick bags in their hands already. Some of those bags are yet to be used. Some have already been used.

In a cruel twist of fate, it is a mid-cabin toilet that is inoperable, leaving the majority of sick passengers queuing at the two toilets at the back of the aircraft – and that is exactly where the B.O. ‘entity’ has attached itself.

One of the things that twenty years of being a hostie has taught me is to preempt situations. I grab a handful of sick bags and hand them out to those in the toilet queue. I also hand out extra bags to the few people who have remained seated and are yet to fall sick. In an act of brazen satire I even hand the B.O. man a sick bag – well, actually I just throw it on the spare seat beside him whilst moving away at the speed of an Olympic sprinter. I also keep a sick bag for myself.

It is not just the rear of the aircraft where we are having passengers fall sick. The mid-section of the plane is mostly a travel group of Japanese school children, and the kids are only too eager to try and taste everything Western. They eat Western food, drink bucket loads of Coca-Cola and eat Western candy. Their bodies are not used to processing so much non-Japanese cuisine and are unable to cope with the Western overload. The turbulence only makes thing worse, and these kids soon enter their own world of pain.

The toilet queues grow. The turbulence increases. The perfect storm that’s still raging outside is turning more destructive by the second. There are over a dozen sick adults and as many children now desperate to use a toilet. The aircraft is shaking quite violently, and as much as these people need a toilet, they can’t use one. The seatbelt sign comes on.

‘Everybody, please take your seats while the seatbelt sign is illuminated,’ I try to yell in the most non-threatening voice I can manage. I feel so sorry for these people. I can see the morose look on the faces of those sitting near the B.O. source as they return to their seats. They would rather risk possible physical injury from the turbulence than return to their stench-effected seats – I can’t blame them for feeling that way. I’m sitting near the stink bomb as well, and I feel the exact same way. The passengers have no choice, but to sit down. I have no choice, but to sit down.

My smelling sensors have become so badly violated that I am becoming somewhat immune to the disgusting smells. Even so, I sit in numbed silence. ‘God, I hope this ends soon,’ I whisper under my breath repeatedly.

The seatbelt light stays on for what feels like an eternity. That gives me plenty of time to contemplate the gravity of the situation and the cause of most of it. Everyone in the back few rows has been sick except for the man with the worst body odor in the history of bad body odors. Is there no justice? Where is karma when you need it?

The amount of time it takes for someone to vomit is inversely proportionate to the time it takes to clean it up. When the turbulence subsides and the seatbelt sign is finally turned off, the crew work overtime to clean up the mess, and that mess is everywhere. I wish we could send someone into the toilets wearing a full protective body-suit, like they do when people enter toxic waste areas. All we have are wafer-thin disposable gloves. The air-freshening sprays onboard have all been used already. The B.O. man is wearing them as cologne.

Cleaning the violated toilets is too graphic a process to describe here. Regardless, they still have to be cleaned. It is probably the worst part of our job. There is no point complaining – it just has to be done. The first toilet I clean is in the mid-cabin. Fortunately the mid-cabin toilets are not as badly violated as the ones in the back are.

As I walk to those rear toilets, I feel like a lamb being led to the slaughter. I used to feel the same way when, as a child, I was being taken to the dentist. I dreaded the experience, but I knew there was no way to get out of doing it.

When I do return to the back toilets, the one located behind the B.O. man is occupied. I explain to the queuing passengers that I need to go inside to clean it for them. Of course, they understand.

One passenger even says, ‘You poor dear.’

As the toilet door opens, I see that the B.O. man is getting off his seat and stepping into the aisle. He rudely pushes past several passengers and comes to the front of the queue. When the toilet door unfolds fully open, an ashen-faced passenger emerges, shaking her head to indicate just how bad the state of the toilet is. As she leaves I can see the inside of the toilet. Again, words cannot adequately describe the revulsion I feel. Just as I am about to suck it up and enter, the B.O. man almost pushes me out of the way to get into the toilet. Although I have one foot inside the toilet, I take a step backwards, hold the door open, and with a wry smile I allow the man to pass.

‘There you go sir – it’s all yours.’

Maybe there is such a thing as karma after all.

As I wait outside the toilet, my smile is suddenly wiped off my face when I realise that I have to go in next. What was I thinking? Karma clearly has somewhere more important to be.

When he finally exits the toilet I turn to make eye contact with several of the passengers. They can see the look of sheer terror on my face, and I can tell that no one wants to be in my shoes – not now, not ever.

I take a big breath, and under that breath I mutter, ‘Oh my god, I’m going in. If I don’t make it out alive, please donate my body to medical research.’

Earlier I had noticed an elderly couple sitting in the seats directly in front of the B.O. man. The lady had been sick, of course, and had managed to contain the contents in her sick bag. I had taken away that sick bag and given her another one, for which she was very appreciative. She still has a ghostly pale complexion, but she is too polite to say anything. Her husband is comforting her, but he has not complained nor drawn attention to the situation.

I know there is nowhere else to seat them, but the small and busy gallery. I ask that the couple to leave their seats and come along to the galley.

As they enter, I tell them, ‘I thought you might want some fresh air, well, you know…’

They know exactly what I mean and are happy I did this for them.

The elderly couple is delightful. I talk to them intermittently between call-bells, serving drinks, cleaning toilets yet again and checking on those passengers who have been sick. The turbulence has subsided, and I take every opportunity I can get to return to the galley and chat with them. The husband and wife don’t have much travel experience. They are going to Japan to visit their granddaughter, who is in Tokyo on an exchange student program. But that’s not the only reason they are flying abroad: they have their fiftieth wedding anniversary coming up in a few days, and this trip is their present to each other. Although they got a more tempestuous overseas excursion than they had bargained for, they have not complained once. They know that these circumstances are out of their control. They also know that the crew members have been working above and beyond the call-of-duty to make things better for the passengers.

As crew we sometimes begin to look at passengers as a whole, as a crowd rather than individuals. It is instances like this that remind us that everyone has a story to tell. Even the B.O. man probably has a very good reason to fly. I try to find empathy for the man, but fail to do so. It was his lack of hygiene and subsequent lack of thought for others that has triggered all this pain – the brunt of which, the crew and passengers have had to suffer. Well, no matter how good his reason is, he shouldn’t be flying.

All airlines have what is called a ‘condition of carriage’ or ‘condition of ticket’ or ‘contract’. Simply put, there are rules of flying that every passenger has to adhere to. It is usually given in fine print on the ticket or receipt of ticket, and covers things like what can and cannot be taken on the aircraft, the permitted baggage size and weight restrictions, the legal indemnities and wavers, the behavioural guidelines and acceptable dress regulations. There is nothing given there about not boarding an aircraft if one has offensive body odour. Now, more than ever, do I think that ‘passengers must have acceptable body odour’ should be printed in bold on the front of every ticket.

Before the lovely elderly couple need to return to their seats for landing, I make sure they receive a little wedding anniversary ‘gift’ on our behalf to take with them. Our onboard manager knows exactly how difficult it has been for the passengers, particularly those in the back few rows, and allows me to also give each person in the back three rows, with the exception of you-know-who, a ‘gift’.

It is not the circumstances, but how you react to them that defines whether you are happy or not. For all the trauma, drama and discomfort they have endured, the passengers are still happy, at least with the cabin crew’s performance. They are aware that the flight could have been plain sailing, but it wasn’t. However, they are also aware the crew did everything we could to make the flight as comfortable as possible for them, and for that the passengers are thankful and tell us so. It is refreshing to have such appreciative passengers on the flight.

‘The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated,’ William James has observed.

I may smell like a sewer and am worn-out, but knowing that I have made a difference and that difference has been appreciated makes me immensely happy as well. William James knew what he was talking about.

It is a pity that this feeling won’t last though. As soon as I land, I will have to spend my time in Japan with my face buried in piles of emergency-orientated paperwork. I would have really liked to let my hair down and a have a big night out. But a girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do. And this girl’s got to work now.

The older I get, the more sensible I am becoming. It’s a shame, really.

time spent laughing is time spent with the gods – the japanese say so

We land in Narita early in the morning, Japan time. It is the land of the rising sun and I have witnessed yet another sunrise. I have worked a long and arduous day, and without any breaks. I fall asleep on the bus ride from the terminal to the hotel.

In most major cities around the world, the airports are generally located some distance from the city centre. This means that we have to endure long bus rides to our hotel. Narita is, however, only ten minutes away from our hotel. Tokyo’s airport was built just outside the village of Narita, and consequently hotels and infrastructure for transiting passengers and tourists were built nearby. For someone who struggles to fall asleep at the best of times, I am perplexed at how I manage to fall asleep on a ten-minute bus ride, but I do.

My body is still screaming for sleep when I get off the bus, but as soon as I walk into my hotel room, I head to the bathroom. I turn on the shower to the strongest water pressure I can get – in Japan, this is just a dribble. What the shower lacks in pressure I make up for in heat. I make it as hot as I can tolerate, then take up residence. I have had long showers before, but this would rank as one of my longest. On the plane I was engulfed by every toxic smell known to man and although liquid soap and my (expensive) perfume have helped a little, I still feel like the bad odors have penetrated into my soul.

Two bars of soap and a container of body-wash later I make my way out of the shower to dry off. I douse myself in the most fragrant moisturiser and deodorant I can find in my toiletry bag, and then splash on the last few drops of my perfume. I slide under the sheets, totally exhausted, but smelling like Coco Chanel’s rose garden. I should fall asleep straight away. I don’t.

I take a sleeping tablet and have my obligatory four hours of sleep. I need more, but four hours it is.

When I wake up, it is early-afternoon. I draw back the curtains and observe the view outside, if you can call it that. My room overlooks a car park. And there’s not much else out there. I can see enough of the sky to see that it appears clear and sunny, without clouds.

I can’t wait to get out. Every hotel I have stayed in in Japan has been tiny. The rooms are generally sparse, dull and frankly, at least in the case of this hotel, quite depressing.

First stop: coffee. Hosties are, without a doubt, the largest consumers of coffee in this world. I am sure that airline crew around the world can be thanked for keeping companies like Starbucks profitable.

With caffeine-infused veins, I stroll to a little café that I have eaten at many times over the years. I order some of the delicious Japanese dishes I have been craving ever since I boarded the flight over. As I eat my last gyoza, I contemplate going back to the hotel and starting the arduous task of studying.

But it is such a beautiful day. It would be blasphemous to spend all of it studying.

I walk down to the local temple, with its magnificent gardens and surrounds. This time the cherry blossom trees are in full bloom. They look amazing. I strike up conversations with several tourists, including a Western couple, who are also impressed by the stunning show nature has provided for us. They tell me that the cherry blossoms bloom only once a year and are out for around a week only. I didn’t know that; I realise how lucky I am to be here when the blossoms are out.

I really should get back to the hotel and study, but I am just so overwhelmed by the sight of the blossoms. I might not get the opportunity to see them again, at least not for a while.

‘I’ll study tonight,’ I promise myself. I spend several hours just wandering the grounds, in awe of the beautiful spectacle around me. Sometimes one needs to stop and smell the roses – or blossoms, like in this case.

As I walk back to the hotel, I see a number of other crew members there. They inform me that they are all meeting for drinks at six o’clock, and then going out to a fantastic traditional restaurant that one of our Japanese-speaking crew has recommended. It is a restaurant I have not heard of before, but one that is very popular with the locals.

I’ll study tomorrow, I promise myself.

I discover that the restaurant is a nice, quaint and traditional place. We remove our shoes as we enter (as one should before entering any Japanese restaurant) and then sit on mats around a large cooking plate. I’ve tried teppanyaki many times before – teppanyaki is a style of Japanese cuisine that involves sitting before a chef, while he stands behind a grill and cooks your meal right in front of you. This experience still feels different though. For one thing, we are sitting on the floor.

The Japanese crew member, who had suggested this restaurant, places orders on our behalf, and endless streams of food are bought to the cooking plate. Most of it is already cooked, but the grill keeps the scrumptious food hot. We eat and eat and then eat some more. When I’m done, I’m so full I’m hardly able to pull myself off the floor and to my feet.

Most of the crew members are going to kick back at a karaoke bar (as we so often do in Japan) but I have already pushed the boundaries of sensibility all day, and have pushed it as far as it would go. This time I do the right thing – I head back to the hotel, open my books and sit down to study.

I do a solid fifteen minutes of studying before I fall asleep. It is about fifteen hours of study too little.

When I wake up the next morning, I lie in bed and read as much as I can. I am not really awake yet, so I’m not absorbing what I am reading as much as I would have liked to. I decide to leave the hotel and have a much-needed coffee and a bite to eat. I grab another coffee to go and head back to my hotel room. I then attack the books with gusto.

I lock myself away from the world. No iPhone for me, I switch it off. No TV, iPod and iPad for me either; I stay away from everything that could become a potential distraction.

Someone who doesn’t fly would have little idea of how much we need to know about emergency situations.

‘Which life-raft does the captain get into if an aircraft ditches in the water?’

Surely the captain knows where he has to go? If he can’t remember as much, then he doesn’t deserve to get in a raft.

‘In a decompression, you will have fifteen seconds of useful consciousness at 40,000 feet.’

If we do have an explosive decompression, which would be terrifying, am I going to look at the position of the aircraft getting displayed on a passenger’s inflight TV monitor to see if we are at 40,000 feet and find out if I will be dead in seven seconds time? Hold on – if there is a rapid decompression, surely the pilots will be attempting to get the aircraft to a lower altitude? So, I will need to recalculate the time at 35,000 feet – I will a have thirty seconds – and then again at 30,000 feet – I will have a minute – and so on.

‘Sure, this information is very useful,’ I sarcastically tell myself.

I also need to learn what the external lights on the aircraft do in an emergency and for how long they stay on. These are lights that come on automatically, and turn off when the battery power runs out. Nobody has any control over their turning on and off. More importantly, is it really so important for me to know how they operate?

I didn’t need to know how a car’s hazard lights work and how long they stay on for in order for me to get my driver’s license, did I?

This is information overload. With that said, much of what I study is important and I need to know it to pass my exam, and I need to know it word for word. No TV, no iPhone, no iPod, no iPad, no distractions.

After a few hours of cramming, I do get myself some rest. And then, it is time for me to take the long flight home.

rudeness is the weak person’s imitation of strength

The flight home is uneventful by normal standards. It is ‘drama-free’, at least. Helen laughs when I use the term. It is not an airline-exclusive term, but I guess we experience so many dramas compared to a normal job that a flight without drama is worthy of note. The passengers are polite, there have been no majorly offensive odours wafting through the cabin and not one person has vomited. It’s a drama-free flight, indeed. There is simply no other way to put it.

Since it is a night flight, the passengers go to sleep after the meal service. I even get a chance to study some more. I also get the opportunity to walk around the aircraft and look at areas I haven’t worked in for a while – this is very useful preparation for my exams. Aircraft manufacturers put emergency equipment wherever there is space. Sometimes there is a system, but other times it seems as if an engineer found a gap and decided to fill it. If they can fit a cart somewhere, they go ahead and fit a cart there. If a cart won’t fit, but a fire-extinguisher can, then a fire-extinguisher it is. The only trouble for the crew is we need to know exactly where everything has been put, and are quizzed about it too.

Aircrafts are amazing machines. They are already heavy and are then packed with people, luggage, general freight, safety equipment, water and fuel; yet, they are so majestic and graceful. I often look out the window during take-offs and see the wing flexing with the enormous weight of the fuel it’s carrying (much of it stored in the wings) and marvel at how effortlessly the plane rises up, reaching for the sky.

For all the emergency training I do and all the different scenarios I’ve had to face so far, I can still not fully comprehend just how horrific it would be to be in a major air crash. I’ve seen enough episodes of ‘Air Crash Investigations’ to know sometimes things happen, but I also take comfort in the fact that major aircraft incidences are few and far between. I was reading some statistics on the safety figures of commercial flying and they are quite astonishing. Apparently if you did fly every day of your life, probability indicates that it would take you 19,000 years to succumb to a fatal accident. 19,000 years! You literally and factually have more chance of being stung to death by a bee.

Even so, one does not deliberately stick their hand into a bee hive. Aircrafts should be respected, and flight attendants therefore take safety precautions very seriously. Any passenger that doesn’t show the same respect is usually quickly and efficiently dealt with.

On a recent flight, I had a difficult situation when a passenger refused to open their window-shade prior to landing because the sun was shining in. I understand that it is inconvenient, but it is a black and white safety issue. I explained this to him and then suggested the passenger use a magazine or a pillow to shield his eyes from the sun.

‘What’s the difference between keeping the shade closed and placing a pillow over the window?’ he grumbled.

It is a valid question, but aviation rules require all shades to be kept open for landing, so we and the passengers can see through the window for fire and other sorts of dangers. Rules are rules for a reason. Sure, the probability of anything happening is one-in-a-million, but being careful and making sure others are too is our job. That is why we train, and that is why we study, and that is why we take safety issues so seriously. And that is why airline travel is so safe.

Should a passenger disregard our safety instructions, the consequences of their carelessness can be dire for that passenger.

Once on a flight, a passenger who seemingly belonged to a biker-gang was sitting in one of the exit rows. He refused point blank to listen to the flight attendant’s safety-related instructions and even threw a few words of profanity at the hostie. Cutting a long story short, the captain was notified; when the plane landed, the police were there to meet and greet the biker.

The biker did not physically assault or threaten anyone, nor did he cause damage to the aircraft. He simply did not adhere to safety-related instructions – and that is an offense. The biker was charged, fined and consequently banned from flying on our airline in the future. I am also sure that his details would have also been circulated within the customs department and if any other international carrier were to allow him to fly, he would be ‘red flagged’, thus requiring customs officials to go over his possessions with a fine-tooth comb.

All of this happened because the man didn’t like to be told what to do. You don’t like to abide by the rules and regulations of airline travel? I suggest you walk, drive, hire a boat or stay at home instead.

On this flight home, fortunately, there are neither problems nor problem-passengers. I am also happy with the amount of studying I have done. I’ve even managed to get an hour and a half of sleep onboard. Jetlag and fatigue are still my mortal enemies, but I actually feel like I can give them a good fight now.

‘Dare I risk catching up with Dean tonight?’ I can’t help but wonder.

This flight has landed in the morning, like most of my flights tend to do. I text both Dean and Helen to tell them I have landed and will talk later in the day. I have kept my options open. I guess different flight attendants have different routines when they land. Dean’s brother, Danny, has a wife and kids, so he has no choice but to take part in the family situations and obligations that present themselves. When he is back home in the morning from a trip, he usually gets some sleep first and then picks up his children from school, even go for parent-teacher meetings if he has to. Such plans sound good in theory, but don’t work out all the time.

Once, the flight Danny was working on was diverted because of an onboard emergency – a passenger had a heart attack and they had to land immediately. The aircraft was then stuck on the ground for several hours due to bad weather. Danny’s flight eventually landed mid-afternoon and he raced straight to the school to pick up his child and meet with the teacher. By this time, Danny had worked for twenty-two straight hours, without any sleep or breaks.

Danny was beyond deliriously tired when he walked into his daughter’s school. He was a blithering idiot, as he put it himself. While the teacher was trying to have a serious conversation with him, and all he could do was look at one of the student’s paintings on the wall. The artwork of a tall building suddenly caught his attention, but it looked to him like a gigantic penis, and he couldn’t stop looking at it. The teacher noticed how distracted he was, and Danny tried to apologise for the way he was acting; however, he didn’t get that right either. Instead of saying ‘nice painting’ to the teacher, he said ‘nice penis’ and then walked away feeling stupid.

Danny is one of the most thoughtful and intelligent people I know. If he turns into a mumbling fool with jetlag and tiredness, there is surely no hope for me. No, I don’t think I will catch up with Dean tonight. That’s not such a good idea, after all.

After my mandatory four hours of sleeping-tablet induced sleep, I meet up with my best friend for coffee. Helen is extremely excited that she will be boarding a flight to Hawaii in several days. I have taken Helen on a few shorter trips, so she knows the procedures and the protocol. Those other trips were to what I call ‘shopping destinations’. In those places, we shopped and shopped till we dropped. Usually, Helen doesn’t really care about where she is going to as long as she gets some time away from her family for a few days. This time, however, Helen is more excited by the destination. Honolulu is a stunning place. Helen can’t wait to get there.

Before I booked her ticket, I checked the passenger loads to see if we were OK. We were. And unless things change dramatically in the next few days, it looks as though the flight will have plenty of spare seats. I also looked up the crew list for the flight and found that Damien is coming along. Damien was on my last trip to Honolulu: ‘the flight to paradise that went via hell’. On that trip Damien was head-butted by a sumo-sized Polynesian man and suffered a broken nose. The giant had been cuffed and restrained – not an easy task for several policemen let alone a handful of hosties. But we did it. On that same flight, we had a young girl who mixed her alcohol and sleeping tablets, and then decided she was Lady Godiva, only without the horse.

As Helen and I sip our lattes, I tell her all about the flamboyant nature of Damien and some of the antics I have heard of him doing over the years.

I had met Damien for coffee in our crew hotel in Singapore, not long after that fateful Honolulu trip. His broken nose had been mended by then. ‘My beautiful face is thankfully still beautiful!’ he had cheered. Damien is actually not that good looking. He is a rather large man with chubby cheeks and a mischievous grin. For his size, he moves more gracefully and with more femininity than most of my female friends. Over coffee he narrated to me the ‘the flight to paradise that went via hell’ story in detail, as if he had forgotten I was on the flight. In his recollection of that day’s events, the Polynesian man was even bigger, the bruising to Damien’s face extended from ‘ear to ear’, the girl had not walked but ‘had run wildly’ through the cabin naked and the crew should have been given ‘bravery awards of the highest merit’.

The last statement I agree with. We should all get bravery awards, indeed. All the company had sent us were a generic letter that read ‘Thank you for your efforts’. That was about it.

I don’t do the job for awards or even the acknowledgement of my efforts, but sometimes it helps. I have won a number of awards and commendations over the years for both service and safety related events, and I truly appreciate the recognition I have received from my company – even those few accolades were for minor happenings.

Damien was very angry with the company that we were not formally commended for the incredible job we did on that sector to Honolulu. However, he didn’t quite verbalise his feelings in such a diplomatic way. Damien is far more cutting than that.

I do find Damien’s brutal honesty refreshing and his sense of humor devilishly funny. As long as it doesn’t upset too many passengers, it will be fantastic having him come along on this trip. My ‘flying friend’ Mary Gomez recently did a trip with Damien and relayed some typically funny stories about him. Damien had an altercation with yet another passenger. Fortunately this was merely a verbal altercation, not a physical one.

According to Marry, a woman passenger had been asking a million questions, and she had asked Damien one question too many.

‘What is the captain’s name?’ the woman then asked. By this point, the whole crew, and particularly Damien, had all had enough.

Damien didn’t bat an eyelid when he replied, ‘Captain Speaking. His name is Captain Speaking.’

The woman had surprisingly believed him. When she had heard the next P.A. from the flight deck, however, and heard the captain say ‘This is your captain speaking…’ she had realised that Damien had been sarcastic. The rest of the crew had thought it was hilarious, but the woman had become very upset and been unwilling to laugh at the joke.

Damien often tells me such funny and often shocking anecdotes about himself. Once, on a flight out of India, a passenger had informed him that a young child had used the aisle as a toilet – and not for number one either. It sounds like a far-fetched scenario, but this has happened to me once too, on flight from China. How I handled the situation was a lot different though compared to how Damien did.

The passenger had told Damien that the child had returned to his mother, who was seated in 28D. Damien marched up to woman and confirmed that she did indeed have a young child seated next to her. Damien read this woman the riot act. She didn’t understand English or what the screaming was about, so he led her to the offending offering left behind in the aisle some rows away. Although the Indian woman was unable to speak English, she vehemently denied that her child had anything to do with the mess.

Undeterred, Damien gave the woman a pair of gloves and a plastic bag. ‘You clean it up!’ he yelled at her.

The Indian woman still argued that neither she nor her child had anything to do with the mess, but eventually Damien’s insistence paid off, and the woman reluctantly got down on her knees and cleaned up the child’s excrement. When the woman had finished and disposed of the bag, she returned to her seat, 28D, while Damien walked away feeling victorious. However, the passenger who had informed Damien about the mess approached Damien. ‘You must have misheard me. I said the woman with the child was in 38D, not 28D,’ he said to Damien.

Damien went to 38D, and sure enough there was another Indian woman there, with several children seated beside her. Damien had made the wrong woman clean up the mess.

Damien thinks this story is hilarious. I feel sorry for the poor woman.

I am sure that at times Damien has held onto his job by the skin of his teeth. However, even after twenty years of flying, Damien has not changed one bit, and that is what makes him so likeable. If he is on your good side, he is a pussycat; if he is on your bad side, he can be one ferocious cat.

When I’m done telling Helen all the crazy Damien stories, Helen seems very impressed with how much fun he seems to be. She can’t wait to meet him.

Well, Damien or no Damien, Helen can’t wait to get to Honolulu. I just hope the trip lives up to her expectations.

never reward bad behaviour

The crew members are given a briefing before boarding the aircraft that will take us to Honolulu. It is nice to see Damien again, and he seems to be in terrific form. All the other crew seem really nice as well. Our manager is an attractive woman named Kate. I think I have flown with her before, but I am unable to recall when or where. My first impression of her is that she is delightful. She says that she has not been to Honolulu for over eight years: she is as excited as Helen to be going there.

I purchased an upgradable ticket for Helen. That means that she is entitled to sit at the pointy end of the plane should seats be available. It sounds good in theory, but it doesn’t always work out the way it should. On this occasion everything goes to plan, and the spare seats that my computer research had showed me earlier are indeed still available.

Helen gets to sit in 1A. Helen’s excitement knows no bounds; it actually goes up a few notches, if that is at all possible.

I am greeting passengers with Kate at the front door, and when Helen comes onboard I introduce her to Kate as well as to the crew working at the front of the plane. They all make a big fuss over Helen, and as she takes her seat in 1A, the smile on her face could light up even the darkest of voids in the universe. Not only does Helen have the best seat in the house, the ground staff told me that the seat next to her is vacant. This is perfect, I think to myself.

Damien is working down the back of the aircraft, but comes up specifically to meet Helen. He asks me what Helen’s last name is, and I tell him it is Windsor. Damien approaches Helen and greets her with a formal bow. ‘Welcome onboard, Ms. Windsor – or should I say “Your Majesty”.’

Helen doesn’t quite get what Damien is on about, but smiles politely anyway. Damien uses his most refined voice to explain himself, ‘The Queen of England’s last name is also Windsor. You are a Windsor, and you are sitting in 1A – the royal seat of this aircraft. You must be of royalty, so as your humble servant I shall refer to you as “Your Majesty”. Is there anything I can get for you, Your Majesty?’

Helen giggles, already taken with Damien, and replies, ‘No thank you, but thanks for asking.’

As Damien walks past me he whispers ‘She’s a doll’, referring affectionately to Helen.

I am pleased that Damien made the effort to meet Helen, and thank him for his gesture.

While we are talking, a tall and handsome man walks through the front door. He has his hand outstretched, his boarding pass held ready for us. I recognise the face. He is a well-known actor starring in one of the most popular soapies on television. Until I read the name on the boarding pass I was unaware of his real name; however, I do already know his character’s name on the show.

Well, I was going to make up a pseudonym for this actor, so as to respect his privacy, but he is such a nice man and I only have the nicest things to say about him, so I am sure he won’t mind me writing about him or using his real name here. So, here goes. His name is Ronn Moss, and he plays Ridge Forrester in ‘The Bold And The Beautiful’. In person he is very sexy, much like he is onscreen, and seems a little bohemian as well. He has an earring or two, is sporting three-day-old stubble and is carrying a guitar. He looks more like a musician than an actor. While chatting with him later, I find out that he indeed is a musician as well.

I direct him to his seat which is 1K. He is in the seat opposite Helen.

As Mr. Moss puts his guitar in the overhead stowage, I peek around the corner. Yes, Helen is doing cartwheels. I had expected as much.

She catches my eye and then points toward Mr. Moss. ‘Oh my god – it’s Ridge! It’s Ridge!’ she mouths, smiling. Helen lives for my onboard celebrity encounters, and now she is going to have one of her own. I couldn’t be happier for her. Although I would have loved to sit with her and chat about how excited she is feeling now, duty calls again, and I have to answer.

During the boarding process, we can tell which passengers are going to be problematic for us by simply observing how they behave when they walk onto the aircraft. In the fleeting moments of greeting them at the front door – ‘Good morning, welcome onboard, if you could cross over to the other aisle, your seat is half way down the aircraft’ – we can tell who is going to create drama for us later.

It is a safety and security requirement that every passenger show his or her boarding pass to us as they board the plane. It is an obligation, not an optional choice, and applies to every airline. Most passengers understand this and comply without a fuss, but every now and then a passenger takes exception to the fact that they have put the boarding pass in a pocket or a bag and have to find it again. There is one such problem-passenger on this flight too – a skinny, little gay guy wearing shorter than short shorts and a skimpy T-shirt two sizes too small. My gaydar (gay radar) is good, but I don’t need it to know he is gay. Anyone on the planet would know he’s gay by looking at the way he is dressed and the way he sashays down the aerobridge toward the aircraft.

The little man makes a huge scene at the boarding entry.

‘I am in 48C,’ he blasts on entering the aircraft.

‘Yes sir, but we need to see your boarding pass,’ I calmly request.

‘I showed it to the girl at check in,’ he rudely argues.

‘Yes sir, but it is a security requirement that you show it again before you enter the aircraft,’ I explain, still calm.

‘Why?’ he yells.

The way he carries on, it almost seems like I have asked this guy to give up one of his kidneys.

’Have a look at everyone else, you self-centred, rude little man. Everyone else is showing their boarding passes, and they are not bitching and complaining. It is a legal requirement that you show the damn thing, so shut up and show it to me,’ is what I wish I could say.

‘Please show me the boarding pass, sir. And do step aside while you are looking for it, so the other passengers may board. Thank you,’ I tell him instead, politely, yet with authority.

When he finally does hand me the boarding pass, I smile courteously. And after I have thoroughly checked the details printed on it, I thank him for complying with our request and show him to his seat.

He snatches the boarding pass out of my hand and walks off in a huff.

Kate notes the deplorable behaviour of the man. When we get an opportunity to chat, between boarding passengers, she says, ‘Tell Damien to keep an eye on that one. 48C, wasn’t it?’ I nod, and I know exactly what she means.

Never reward bad behaviour, that’s one of the tenets that we airline crew believe in. If someone is excessively and inexcusably rude to the crew, there is no way that the crew members will go out of their way to help that person. They will do the bare minimum, and that is all. Sometimes passengers have legitimate complaints, but when someone overreacts to a simple situation that is just so petty, then it is duly noted and the crew reacts (or under-reacts) applicably.

Experience has shown me that someone who makes a big deal about the little things once will do so repeatedly.

I would bet any amount of money that this is not the last we will hear from Mr. 48C.

When the boarding is complete, I head down to the back of the aircraft to help prepare the cabin prior to take-off. When the aircraft is not full, like today, many people want to swap seats. Everybody thinks that everyone else has a better seat than they do, and they try their best to switch.

The procedure with most airlines is you need to be in your allocated seat for take-off. Sometimes a P.A. is made to reiterate this practice. Both Damien and I have passengers requesting to move seats before take-off, and we inform them they must remain in their allocated seats for take-off, but as soon as we are in the air and the seatbelt sign has been turned off, they are free to move around the cabin and take any seat on this side of the curtain, as long as it isn’t a crew seat.

A little old woman overhears our speech and decides to put her two cents worth in to Damien. ‘Do you have to have to sit in the seat allocated to you on your boarding pass, so that in case there is a crash, the authorities can match the seat with the body?’

Damien, in typical Damien-style, replies, ‘Sweetheart, if we do crash, I doubt very much if your body would be in the original seat you were sitting in anyway.’

I laugh so hard I nearly gag. The poor little old woman nearly has a heart attack. Damien does explain to her that he was only joking – eventually. He also explains the real reason for seating passengers in their allocated seats. It is all to do with the trim or balance of the aircraft. The pilots often have cargo in the hold weighted to help the balance of the plane, particularly for take-off. On flights that are not full, the passengers have been seated in areas so as to assist this balance. This is the official explanation, Damien tells her.

Besides, this also gives us the authority to keep some sort of control over the passengers – this, he doesn’t tell the woman.

The boarding process is often the most stressful time on an aircraft and certainly a difficult time for the crew. Considering the time constraints and the pressure of doing an on-time departure, getting everyone to stow their luggage and be seated can be a painstaking experience. Add swapping seats and moving luggage into the equation, and we add further complications and further delays.

As I walk around, making sure we are OK for take-off, I notice that Mr. 48C is already making trouble for us. He has his seat fully reclined, although there is a person seated behind him, and his tray table is down, his large bag sitting on the vacant seat beside him. And, to make it all worse, he is making a phone call. A P.A. has just been made by Kate for all electronic equipment to be turned off, for seats to be kept upright, for tray tables to be put away, for window shades to be opened and for all bags to be stowed. This man has broken all the rules. The only instruction he has adhered to is having the shades up. Well, there’s probably a good reason for that, I think to myself. He has one hand on the phone and the other pretentiously stroking his own face. There are no hands free to lean across and close the window shades.

I know that he can hear very well. I also know that he speaks English. So the only conclusion I can make for his blatant disregard for the instructions is arrogance. I have already witnessed a full display of it at the front door when we were boarding, so I know very well that it is arrogance – and arrogance to the highest order.

I do actually have a few moments before we arm the doors and begin our safety demonstration. ‘Arming’ the doors pretty much means that we move a lever to engage a mechanism that will allow the slide/raft to be activated if the door was to open in an emergency. In other words, while the door is ‘armed’ and if opened as such, an inflatable slide would pop out and we have a fast escape route from the aircraft. When we are at an aerobridge or have access to stairs, we ‘disarm’ that mechanism, so the door can open normally, thus allowing access to those stairs or aerobridge and to let catering and cleaners come onboard. See, my emergency training and study have come in handy after all.

Rather than approach Mr. 48C and instantly use my authority to have him comply with the safety regulations (as I would love to do) I take a more diplomatic approach. I walk past him and begin my safety and security checks from the front of the zone. Mr. 48C is not the only one who has to be told to bring their seat upright or to secure their tray table. He is, however, the only one who is busy speaking into a phone and has a big bag unsecured and placed beside him.

Only two rows from Mr. 48C a man has his seat slightly reclined. I deliberately talk louder so that my intended audience can hear. ‘Excuse me sir, it is a safety requirement for take-off that you bring your seat all the way upright. Thank you very much.’ This man complies with my request, of course.

I then move on to Mr. 48C. He is still on the phone, and it seems like he has not heard a word I have said.

‘Excuse me, sir?’

The rude little man does not acknowledge me at all, but I can hear him tell whoever is on the other end of the line that he has to hang up soon. I could just as easily wait until he has finished his conversation, but I could just as easily start yelling at this ill-mannered little man. I choose to tread the middle ground.

‘Excuse me again, sir, but it is a safety requirement that you turn off the phone immediately and—’

He interrupts me, ‘Yeah, yeah, I am turning it off now. Don’t get your knickers in a twist.’

Now I want to yell. The middle ground is moving very quickly to the high ground. However, I control myself.

‘Sir, you will turn the phone off now, then you will bring your seat upright, stow your tray table and then take that bag on the seat next to you and place it on the floor under a seat in front of you. All this needs to be done now.’ I walk away and continue my safety checks.

I have met rude and obstinate passengers many times before. Usually it is men who are chauvinistic, and I presume they just don’t like taking directions from a woman. We had one such case on a flight years ago. Another female hostie had an issue similar to what had just occurred to me, but in her case the passenger had constantly argued and eventually even abused the flight attendant. She ran off (in tears) told the (female) onboard manager about this, who was also subsequently abused by the passenger, so the captain had to get involved. The captain told the man he needed to firstly adhere to every safety request the cabin crew instructed him to do and also apologise to the crew he had abused.

The man refused to apologise, and the captain had the man escorted from the aircraft by ground security. We later heard that the man joked with ground staff that he would simply catch a later flight.

Well, that’s not how things turned out for him.

When a passenger fails to comply with a captain’s directive, they firstly forfeit their ticket, without refund of course. They are then banned from flying, not only on the airline that they had committed the misdemeanor with, but on all airlines.

Mr. 48C has fortunately, for his sake, turned off his phone, returned his seat to the upright position, secured his tray table and stowed his bag. His facial expression remains sour though.

When I do my safety demonstration, he does everything but look at me. This guy doesn’t just have a chip on his shoulder; he has a chip on both his shoulders.

It’s probably not a coincidence that the rudest of passengers generally travelling on their own, I think to myself. No one can stand to be around them.

someone’s manners are often a window to their soul

To avoid looking at Mr. 48C’s unpleasant expression, after take-off, I go to the front of the plane to see Helen’s beaming face (or as most of the crew now refer to her, ‘Your Majesty’). She has a glass of French champagne ready for her banquet of lobster and caviar (I jest about the lobster, but the food is certainly going to be better than the food down the back, where I am working).

As I return, I can see that our friend in 48C has pressed his call-bell and is aggressively beckoning for someone to come to him. Fortunately for me, that closest someone is Damien. Damien is gay as well, and his body language is almost as effeminate as the little man in 48C. However, just because two men are gay doesn’t necessarily mean that they will get along. Most times they do, but sometimes they don’t.

I can hear the man complaining to Damien that the aircraft is too cold. Actually, he is more than complaining – he is shrieking. Damien begins to explain that the aircraft temperature is normal, but before Damien has time to say anything more, the man rudely cuts Damien off. ‘I fly all the time, and I am telling you that this is not normal. It is f#@*ing cold!’

I hold my breath, waiting to see how Damien is going to handle this situation. From past experience Damien usually flies off the handle and says something cutting, rude and condescending, but on this occasion he bites his tongue.

Damien takes a moment to compose his thoughts and then replies, ‘You fly all the time, you say? OK, I’ll be back in minute.’ With that Damien walks toward the front of the aircraft.

What’s he up to? I walk up and down the aisle, curious as a cat, wondering what Damien would do.

Damien returns a few minutes later, carrying a blanket, and my ears are burning. I position myself a few rows behind Mr. 48C so I can see and hear everything.

Damien approaches 48C, stops, then slowly and deliberately faces the little man and calmly responds, ‘When I said the cabin temperature was normal, I was talking based on the twenty years flying experience I possess. I have spent over 25,000 hours in air-conditioned aircrafts, but of course I wouldn’t know what temperature is normal on an aircraft, so I went to see our onboard manager who also has around twenty years of flying experience. She also has all the temperature controls and gauges at her disposal, at her work station. She is also of the opinion that this temperature is normal. But since you fly all the time and have questioned my competency, I thought I should be doubly sure about the temperature on this flight before I came to you, so I rang the captain. He has over thirty years of flying experience, and also has the temperature controls, gauges as well as the master control for the whole aircraft in front of him. And guess what? He says this is normal temperature as well. So there you have it: three of us with almost eighty years of flying experience between us, and probably 100,000 hours of working on air-conditioned aircrafts. And the verdict? Normal.’

Damien hands the man the blanket. ‘Keep yourself warm with this blanket, and next time you get on a plane, which you supposedly do all the time, may I suggest you dress for airline travel and not for the beach.’

I would never be so bold. I would love to speak my mind at times, but it is just not in my nature – that’s probably the reason why I never get into trouble.

Damien would later enthusiastically retell the story (over a few Mai Tais) about how rude the man was and how thin a t-shirt he wore – and how ugly too. When Damien said the word ‘ugly’, I think he was referring to the t-shirt, but you can never be quite sure with Damien.

In all fairness to Mr. 48C, aircrafts are cold. Normal temperature on a plane is a lot colder than most other places. Let me tell you why. If the cabin temperature is too warm the chances of passengers suffering from dizziness or possible fainting spells increases. The cooler temperature also helps passengers fall sleep. It must be like how some animals, namely reptiles, react to the cold; the cooler it is, the less active they become. Particularly on night sectors, we want the passengers to get as much rest as possible.

In saying that, some areas on an aircraft are colder than other areas – that’s where the air-conditioning vents and outlets are. One of the Airbus aircrafts I fly on regularly is absolutely freezing in the back galley. It gets so cold that I have seen crew turn on the galley ovens and open them to get a little warmth.

When passengers complain, I am generally more diplomatic in my responses than Damien. Most passenger complaints occur not long after boarding or take-off, as was the case with Mr. 48C. The cabin is usually colder then because the air-conditioning has just been turned on. Given time, the body heat from all the passengers onboard heats the cabin.

When a passenger brings my attention to the fact that it is cold, and it is just after the air-conditioning has been turned on, then I either tell them that the cabin will warm up (I think Damien was about to tell this to our Mr. 48C, but was rudely cut off before he could) or that I’ll let the manager know so they can adjust the temperature. Nine times out of ten, the cabin warms up anyway, and the passenger thinks I have listened to their request and had the temperature turned up. It’s a win-win situation, really.

I walk up and down the aisle now, making sure the other passengers are doing OK and not feeling cold. Everyone seems fine.

I notice, however, that just outside the galley, an older man is seated, and he seems to be a little odd. He appears to be travelling on his own. The man’s not odd as in he has some sort of mental disorder or condition, but his behaviour seems a tad askew.

I had been chatting with an elderly couple seated in front of this odd man. The couple reminds me of the lovely couple I had met on my last flight, the husband and wife celebrating their fiftieth anniversary in Japan. This couple is just as nice and tells a story about the last flight they were on: a passenger had had a mild heart attack on that flight, and the crew had performed magnificently to save the passenger’s life. On their flight, the heart attack happened just before landing so there was no aircraft diversion, but the stress and additional workload as the crew prepared for landing must have been incredible.

The odd man has been leaning forward in his seat and eavesdropping on every word that we have said. As I leave the nice couple to walk back to the galley, he grabs me by the wrist and sleazily asks, ‘Will you give me mouth to mouth if I have a heart attack?’

Annoyed as well as offended, I pull my hand free and point in the direction of Damien, who is serving another passenger some six or seven rows ahead of me. Damien sees me pointing and gives me a cute yet very effeminate wave.

‘You see that other flight attendant over there? He is a qualified nurse. If you have a heart attack he will be the one giving you mouth to mouth. I’ll be the one pounding violently on your chest,’ I snap at the odd man.

You really do need a sense of humour in this job – and an even thicker skin. The skin is the largest and heaviest organ in the body, and mine is as thick as it can be. Over the years I have learnt to not take too many things personally. This was not always the case. When I had first started flying, I had hated being touched, ogled at, harassed and having to listen to sexual innuendos on a daily basis. The verbal attacks I eventually got used to, but not being touched by random sleazy men.

I am still not used to that.

I don’t mind being accidently touched. That is unavoidable. Mine is the type of job where you are persistently bumping and brushing against other people. That can’t be helped in the confined environment of an aircraft, which is essentially a moving, turning, turbulence-affected narrow metal tube. What I do mind is being intentionally touched.

On one flight, I had one man grab me on the butt and say ‘Hey toots, can you get me—’

He did not finish his sentence.

I’ve heard men call women ‘toots’ in the movies, and it sounds condescending there. In real life, it sounds worse, if that’s even possible. I’ve been called ‘sweetie’, ‘missy’, ‘darling’, ‘love’, ‘gorg’ (short for ‘gorgeous’ of course), ‘honey’, ‘babe’, ‘sweetcheeks’, ‘doll’ and ‘snookums’. I don’t even know what ‘snookums’ means, and I don’t want to find out either. I am not overly fond of being called any of these names, but I don’t take it personally. Touch me, however, and that is a whole different ballgame.

Having a thick skin is one thing, but having that skin touched without my permission is another. About the only part of my body that hasn’t been grabbed at some point to get my attention is my hair – and that is because I am reasonably tall, and from a seated position the passengers probably can’t reach my head. I have had plenty of taps on the shoulder, but that is usually from passengers standing up. I’ve often been on a cart with my back turned and had someone stick out their finger like E.T. and then jam it into my shoulder blades.

Depending on how hard the tap is and how bad my mood is at the time, I react. Once, toward the end of a thirteen-hour flight, in the middle of the worst menstrual cramps I’ve experienced, I had a finger jab into my back and with such force that I thought it was going to pop my collar bone.

Did I turn around and politely say, ‘Hello there, what would you like me to get you?’

No.

I kept my motto of ‘you can’t get in trouble for something you didn’t say’, but if looks could kill, this passenger was electrocuted, poisoned, thrown off a cliff and then stabbed through the heart. There is only one thing worse than being tapped for attention, and that is being grabbed for attention.

grab my attention, but don’t grab me

Almost every time I pass the odd, old and lecherous man, he grabs me by the hand, wrist or the arm. The fact that I instantly wrench myself free of his grip and give him a venomous look is totally lost on him. After this happens three more times, I leave to read the onboard passenger list, which sometimes has additional information about each passenger. If this guy has a major medical condition or some other issue we might need to know about, it would be mentioned on that list. There is nothing specific stated about him, but I find out his name.

The next time I walk past him, he grabs me, by the arm this time. I wrench myself free even though he is hanging on for dear life. I can feel his bony fingers reaching for me again. I step away from him momentarily and then I kneel down in order to face the man at eye level.

In a soft, yet firm voice, I tell him, ‘Mr. Blumfeld, my name is Danielle. I am a flight attendant, not a piece of rope you can grab as if you were trying to descend from a mountain. Have you flown on an aircraft before?’

He is initially confused, but eventually says a hesitant ‘Yes’.

‘Would you like to fly on an aircraft again?’ I ask.

He nods.

‘Then, let me give you some helpful advice about how to treat people, not only on the plane, but in the entire service industry. You are not allowed to touch people. It is against the law. Do you understand that? I trust you won’t do it again. Now, what can I help you with?’

Mr. Blumfeld does comprehend although he doesn’t seem overly embarrassed. I know that if someone just pointed out to me that I was in fact breaking the law and behaving inappropriately, I would be mortified. I don’t think he is particularly dangerous or even knows that his behaviour is unacceptable. I just think he is odd. Some people’s unusual behaviour is often not deliberate, but done more out of habit, thoughtlessness or the fact that they don’t know any better. I decide to give Mr. Blumfeld the benefit of the doubt.

There is a male flight attendant I have flown with a number of times who I refer to as a ‘close talker’. He stands extremely close and looks disturbingly deep into your eyes when he speaks. When I first flew with him he made me feel very uncomfortable. What he was talking about was in no way offensive, but his presence made my skin crawl. Even when I would back away from him, he would step forward and move in closer.

He obviously does not know how uncomfortable he makes people feel. It is not just me, but almost everyone who comes in contact with him has the same reaction. He is actually a softly spoken and empathetic man, but the fact that he fails to realise that he makes people comfortable and doesn’t bother about modifying his behaviour accordingly does make me suspicious of his character. I’d like to think that if there were flaws in my personality (and I know there are) that made others feel uncomfortable around me, I would be smart enough to address the problem. The smartest people I know are not perfect. It is the realisation that they are not perfect and the subsequent changes they make to fix themselves that makes them smart.

While I am in a claustrophobic’s nightmare, Helen is in a claustrophobic’s dream. There is no one beside her, and no-one in front of her, and the nearest passenger is a good-looking TV star. She has not stopped grinning since she came onboard. She has had champagne, a dining experience befitting her new ‘Your Majesty’ nickname, and has had Ronn Moss say hello to her. I think if the aircraft turned around now, and she didn’t even get the chance to go to Hawaii, she would still be over the moon.

I sneak up the front of the plane every now and then to check on her. Most times I just stick my head around the curtain, but even from a distance I can see her contentment radiating like a beacon. It’s best that I let her savour the experience in peace.

At the back of the aircraft, we are not full, but we are still kept busy. The meal service goes smoothly although Mr. 48C is being quite the drama queen. So much so that he has refused to eat. Ever since Damien put him in his place, he has been seething.

Damien and I are on a cart together, and Damien actually politely offered a meal to the man, but the little man turned his nose up and looked away. I never understand why some disgruntled passengers refuse to eat and drink in protest over the most inane of issues. Is the airline or the crew somehow going to suffer dramatically over these people’s hunger strike? Of course not.

Drama queen issues aside, Damien is actually a lot of fun to work with on the cart. His sarcasm may not be everyone’s idea of funny, but I certainly am entertained.

A young couple in the very back row of the cabin have obviously not travelled much before. The young man is trying hard to impress his girlfriend, and when Damien asks them if they would like a drink, the young man asks, ‘Do you have a cocktail list?’

Damien, without missing a beat, replies, ‘Certainly – I will just go and see Isaac. He is our chief bartender on the promenade deck.’

The young man thinks Damien is being serious. He is also way too young to get Damien’s reference to Isaac the bartender from the TV series ‘The Love Boat’. Well, I’m (almost) too young to get the reference myself.

To Damien’s credit he doesn’t ridicule the young man in front of his girlfriend, so he explains, ‘I was only joking about the promenade deck, but I have committed the complete cocktail list to memory. Would you like me to make you one of my specialties? I call it champagne cocktail surprise.’

I later thank Damien for being so nice to the couple and for going back to the galley to actually make them a cocktail.

When I ask him what was in the ‘champagne cocktail surprise’, he whispers, ‘Sparkling wine, orange juice and my surprise ingredient.’

He keeps me in suspense for a little longer before telling me that the surprise ingredient is just more sparkling wine.

Meanwhile, the man in 48C still looks like he is sucking on a piece of lemon. We know it is not the last we will hear from the little man. We also know that since Damien won the last round, it will be another crew member who will have to take the brunt of the little man’s fury. That crew member will be me, of course.

Mr. 48C makes sure Damien is not around before he stops me and unleashes his anger on me. He rants about the alleged rude treatment that he has been given by Damien. I let the little man narrate it all to me, while I stand there, pretending to listen to him patiently.

‘Sir, thank you for bringing this to my attention,’ I say when he’s done. ‘I was only a few rows away and actually saw and heard everything that happened between you both. As I understand the situation, you complained about how cold the cabin was and while the flight attendant was trying to explain the normal operation of the onboard air-conditioning system, you interrupted him and actually used a profane word that I cannot repeat now. The flight attendant then went to check the said air-conditioning with both the onboard manager and the captain. The system was functioning normally and the flight attendant had the foresight to bring you an extra blanket.’

The little man is just about to interrupt me but I cut him off before he can, ‘Now please let me finish, sir. Both the flight attendant who gave you the blanket and myself heard you swear, and swear quite loudly. You do know that it is an offence to use abusive language or profanities on an aircraft? We have instructed the onboard manager of your unacceptable language, and at this point a report will not be made and there looks like being no repercussions.’

I have been deliberate and final, yet the little man still tries to interrupt me. He is unsuccessful again.

‘As I said, at this point there will be no action against you. However, if you insist on prolonging this, I would be more than happy to bring the manager down and have her take the appropriate action. Would you like me to do that?’

He stutters and stammers, but still tries to obstinately voice his grievances.

I can see Damien walking down the aisle toward us. I make eye-contact with Damien and gesture to him that I have everything under control. Damien stops and watches from a distance.

I turn to the little man one last time. ‘Would you like me to get the manager?’

He mumbles something under his breath. I cannot make out what he is saying, neither do I care, but I want to get in the last word.

‘Sorry, but I can’t hear you,’ I say in a grave voice.

‘No,’ he says.

‘So, I will presume that this is the end of the matter,’ I say with authority before walking back to the galley.

I am in the galley for only a nanosecond when Damien enters. He is bursting with curiosity about what went on between me and Mr. 48C. When I tell him the whole story, Damien is delirious. He cannot stop laughing for some time. He stops laughing only to throw random insults at the little man, and then begins laughing again. Damien couldn’t be more contented at the way I handled the situation.

’It takes a lot of effort to reward someone for bad behaviour, but only a little more effort to make their life totally miserable,’ he says, almost wisely, before walking away from the galley, still beaming.

The rest of the flight goes superlatively well. Mr. 48C finally has something to eat and even thanks me for serving him the meal.

Mr. Blumfeld has also had a change of heart apparently. He keeps his wandering hands to himself. The rest of the passengers, including Helen of course, continue to have a great time. For many of the passengers, it is their first time to Honolulu. Some have asked me advice on what to see and what to do when they arrive. As I have been to Honolulu almost as many times as I have had hot breakfasts, I am more than qualified to act as an onboard travel advisor and more than happy to help them out.

It’s surprising, and also a bit disappointing, that crew don’t get asked more often than they do for advice about the destinations people fly to. Most of the layover ports we stay in are places where we have stayed in numerous times, particularly the experienced crew members. No one would know more or better than us about where to eat (and which place is good and cheap) what to do, where to shop (my specialty) and the best way to get around a city.

Much of the advice I hand out on this flight are for things Helen and I will be doing later in the day and tomorrow. As it is Helen’s first (and probably not the last) trip to Honolulu we will use our two days wisely and not travel too far. Waikiki beach is stunning. We are going to Honolulu to soak up the sun, relax and enjoy the surroundings.

Over the years, I have done a lot of things around Honolulu and all over the island of Oahu. I have done the customary surfboard riding, or at least tried to, at Waikiki, have been snorkelling at Hanauma Bay, sailing in twilight races out of Hawaii Yacht Club, been on numerous sunset cruises and sails, seen monstrous surf on the North Shore, visited the Pearl Harbour memorials and have ridden a push bike half way around the island. Probably the most exhilarating experience I’ve had was flying in a glider out of Dillingham Airfield on the North Shore.

Oahu’s North Shore is spectacular and to be gliding silently through it was not only spectacular, but a little scary. I have spent so much of my life on big and fully manned commercial aircrafts, but that is no comparison to the feeling of floating on the air currents in an engineless flying craft.

a traveller without observation is like a bird without wings

There are many aspects of this job that I find very difficult to deal with, but visiting different places and observing different cultures is not one of them. My love for travel is the main reason I became an international flight attendant in the first place.

At dinner parties, I am frequently asked about how well-travelled I am. Yes, I am, I tell them, compared to most people at least, but the reality is that there are more countries I have not been to than countries I have. Most of the layovers we have are in huge cities. Time and fatigue-related issues make it difficult to travel outside of the city.

Not impossible, but difficult surely. I have taken full advantage of the opportunities presented to me, but even so, it is a big world out there – and I have seen but a glimpse of it. However, I will surely claim that I more educated than most in world affairs and cultures. But that’s probably how every international flight attendant is, a geographically wealth of knowledge – isn’t that so? Not necessarily so.

Some people travel the world and see nothing. Not just flight attendants, but many of the travelling public. It depends on the individual, and not every person is as excited about travel as I am. My friend Mary Gomez has been to a place like Singapore a dozen times, if not over a hundred times. However, she hasn’t the time, energy or interest to explore Singapore; she is either jetlagged or drunk (usually both) when she is there. Once she even asked me if Singapore was in the northern or southern hemisphere. I would take a bet that a fair percentage of crew would not know the answer to her question. The answer: it is not far from the equator, but it is in the northern hemisphere.

For now I have to concentrate on giving Helen the trip of a lifetime. Hopefully I can impart some of my travel knowledge to Helen, but if I don’t it is not the end of the world.

We only have an hour until the top-of-descent, which means we are not too far from wrapping everything up in the cabin. I go and visit Helen. She has been asleep for at least three hours. On one of my visits to the front of the plane, Ronn Moss was grabbing a snack from the galley. We had a great chat. He really is a laid-back person. I am not a big soap opera fan, but I know Helen is, and her favourite soapie is ‘The Bold And The Beautiful’. She will be so disappointed that she missed the opportunity to chat with him. I told Ronn about our possible plans that evening (for Helen’s benefit, I promise) but he has a busy schedule. I think that had he not been busy he would have joined us, but I won’t torment Helen with what could have been.

I used to watch the occasional soapie, but I am in so many different countries and each one airs varying episodes, so it all becomes too confusing too soon. I remember, years ago I saw a soapie in Rome (and dubbed in Italian) and it was at least four years behind what was going on in The States at the time. These days I stick to the History or Discovery Channels, the news and sitcoms. Most of my non-flying friends watch reality shows. However, I’m rarely home long enough to watch them. Even if I do watch a few episodes while I am away, they are usually out-of-sequence. I loved watching ‘The Bachelor’ and ‘The Bachelorette’; I taped some episodes for me to watch when I came back from my trips, but even then I missed more episodes than I watched.

I actually enjoy reading newspapers in most of the countries I stay. I love to find out what types of stories make news in different countries, both domestically as well as overseas. It is fascinating at times to see how the rest of the world views things. Often a major story, or at least a story that you would think is major at the international level, is barely even mentioned in the national newspapers of some countries. Newspapers are not printed for tourists. I like that. What most tourists fail to see is that a foreign country is not designed to make them feel comfortable; it is designed to make its own people comfortable.

On my last trip to Indonesia the lead story in the local paper was of a man in a rural village who had gone to the nearby river to defecate. While he was immersed in the act, a crocodile pulled him into the water. Apart from the obvious humour in the story, placing one’s butt in the water and being snatched by a big croc is a story you are not likely to read on the front page of The Times in London.

I try not to look at different cultures from the point of view of a tourist. I am by no means a local, but I visit most of these places often enough to at least try and have an understanding of local issues and perspectives.

Having said that, Honolulu is not your typical destination. Tourism and commercialism rule almost every aspect of Hawaiian life. In a city like Honolulu what the locals read is very similar to what the tourists would read – if the tourists had time to read, that is.

I can’t see Helen and me having time to read. About the only thing we will read are cocktail menus, and even then the choice is easy – Mai Tais it will be.

We arrive at the hotel early in the morning. For Helen, even the bus ride from the airport to downtown is a breathtaking event. We pass alongside Pearl Harbour and some of the coastline before arriving in Honolulu proper.

‘Your Majesty’ is definitely well-rested and filled with energy. She got some sleep on the aircraft; even if she hadn’t, she would still be just as bouncy, jumping out of her skin with eagerness to look around Honolulu. I need some sleep though. Luckily for Helen, the standard four hours is all I will get. I have briefed Helen about what she can do for those four hours: Waikiki is very safe throughout the day, and I have given her a map and some tips on where she can go.

‘Sleep well,’ she says and scampers out of the room.

Four hours later Helen walks into the room. My sleeping pill-induced nap is coming to its predictable conclusion. I’m still groggy while Helen tells me all about the fantastic time she has spent walking up and down Waikiki beach. She walked all the way to Diamond Head, and on the way back had a coffee at the Royal Hawaiian, right on the beach; one of my favourite coffee-drinking destinations in the world. One of the little chores I had her do was to book a sunset Mai Tai cruise for us – she did do this. Kate and Damien from the crew have also expressed a desire to come, so I leave a message for them (straight to voicemail in case they are still asleep) to inform them of our plans for the night.

There are so many things we could be doing as tourists, but we have decided to do something Helen gets very little time to do for herself back home – shop. Helen’s new nickname might be ‘Your Majesty’, but I am the queen of all things retail.

I know a shortcut from the hotel to the shops, but we don’t take it. It is a beautiful day, so we walk along the beach and foreshore pathways until we need to cross the road to Ala Moana Shopping Centre. Friends that can travel together and can shop together are the best of friends.

I may be the queen of shopping, but Helen is a strong contender for the title too. When she first came away with me, she was something of a novice, but I have transformed my protégé into a well-drilled, finely-tuned shopping machine. I am sure Helen’s husband would be mortified by this.

As desperate as we are to hit the shops, there is one stop I am obliged to make before anything else. Coffee beckons me, and I must have it.

The perfect shopping day beings with a double shot latte. When time is an issue (as it is today) the coffee can be to go, but it can’t be skipped.

Then it is shop, shop, shop, shop. At the end of the day I have another coffee, but this time one needs to sit down with the cup of brew and a handful of shopping bags, and savour the moment. Also the fact that you have too many bags to carry (as we usually do) dictates that we have to sit down as we cannot carry another thing, not even a cup of coffee.

We catch a tram – or trolley as the locals call them – back to the hotel. ‘So much shopping, so little time,’ my protégé observes as we enter our hotel room.

the word ‘paradise’ is often overused, but rarely overrated

We quickly change into some of our newly purchased summer clothes and race downstairs to meet Damien and Kate. Damien has been on many Waikiki sunset cruises, but this is Kate’s first. She is almost as excited as Helen. We walk from the hotel toward the beach, then along the beach to Dukes bar and restaurant located right on the beach. The last time that both Damien and I were in Honolulu, we had a few a drinks at Dukes, I fondly remember, or at least I think I can remember.

Our sunset cruise starts and finishes on the beach directly in front of Dukes. We won’t be doing the cruise on a boat or ship, but on a fairly large catamaran with sails; so apart from motoring to and from the shore, most of the offshore excursion will be sailing.

Waikiki is famous for its surf – not the size of the surf, but the small, easy-to-ride waves. That is why at any given time Waikiki Bay is a sea of Malibu surfboards. The weather is incredible and the wind is a very light offshore breeze as usual. However the surf is a little larger than I have seen before. It is by no means huge, but I am excited and a tad scared about how the catamaran is going to get out past the breakers.

It is a surreal experience as the boat motors away from the shoreline and heads toward the break zone. Helen, Damien, Kate and I hold a Mai Tai in one hand, and we hold onto anything we can with the other as waves crash across the bow and people surf around us.

‘Whoa baby – this is living!’ Helen screams out. She must surely be getting sore cheeks by now from smiling so much.

This is certainly the best cruise I’ve ever been on. We see humpback whales, dolphins, and turtles moving around us, a few only inches away from our catamaran. The sunset is breathtakingly beautiful – some people may think that all sunsets are alike, but they are wrong, and the ocean is like a sparkling pool, its waves breaking into crystal perfection. Surfing down the waters on our catamaran is a stirring experience.

I think Helen has one too many Mai Tais, and she is already beginning to slur her words. She should be ready to crash, but she is not. For a selfless, working mother of two and someone who rarely does anything out of the ordinary, this is her time to live it up. I remember seeing the party-girl side of Helen when we were teenagers, but I thought that part of her was well and truly dead and buried. I thought wrong.

I think the cruise goes on for an hour and a half, but we have begun to refer to it in terms of the number of drinks we’ve devoured on average – therefore, this was a five-Mai Tai cruise. We step straight off the catamaran and into Dukes.

Dukes is always busy, and normally you have to wait a while for a table. But tonight we are lucky. As we walk/stagger into Dukes, the people sitting at the table with the best view are preparing to leave. We slide in and settle into one of the best beachfront locations you are likely to find.

‘Another cocktail?’ Damien asks.

‘Yes please,’ Helen grins.

Helen is prepared to party all night, but for once I become the voice of reason. I remind her that we have a big day planned tomorrow and perhaps it is time to head back to the hotel. She agrees.

Three or four hours later (or it might be five or six hours) we do just that.

One of the best feelings in the world is removing your shoes and walking along the water’s edge in the moonlight at Waikiki Beach. My normally quiet and reserved best friend tucks her new dress into her underwear and walks knee-deep along the shoreline. She is having the time of her life. It is moments like these where the jetlag and the sheer physical exhaustion I so often feel become a distant memory. My best friend will cherish this experience for the rest of her life. So will I.

The next morning, what was meant to be breakfast becomes brunch. We don’t care that we slept in. I had given Helen the option of doing some touristy things, but she is more than happy just to relax and chill out. We end up lying in the sun, and much to my surprise Helen is keen to try surfing. We hire surfboards and paddle/wobble out to the break. We catch a few waves, but neither of us can stand up on the board for more than a few seconds. It doesn’t matter as the water is the perfect temperature. We spend yet another perfect day in paradise.

I make sure I paddle in before Helen so I can take some photos of her surfing. Her kids are not going to believe that their mummy was surfing. Here is some proof, I will tell them, and show them these pictures.

As we lie on the beach, giggling like we used to as school girls, Helen sincerely thanks me for the trip. I know this is the best trip she has ever done. She doesn’t need to tell me so; I just know. I am just so thrilled I have the opportunity to share these special places and moments with her. We lie back on our towels and soak up the Hawaiian sun. I just love the fact that Helen doesn’t feel obligated to see every tourist attraction. She is so relaxed and has absorbed every molecule of the beautiful scenery around her.

G.K. Chesterton (an English writer) once said, ‘The traveller sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.’ One of the things I usually see tourists doing is ripping and rushing to see as much as they can in as little time as they can. Particularly in places like Europe, most tourists seem to be more intent about saying they have been to many places than they are about taking the time to enjoy the experience.

After spending three or four hours in the sun Helen is keen to hit the shops again. Who am I to argue with her. We grab a cab and head to the factory outlet centres. I am now positive that Helen’s husband will be quite traumatised by Helen’s new obsession. He might just be pulling out his hair. I don’t want to be responsible for her husband going completely bald so I curtail some of Helen’s spending. However, in all fairness, most of the items she buys are for the kids anyway. She buys birthday presents, Christmas presents, gifts for next year’s birthdays, gifts for next Christmas and so on. Only every now and then does she forget about the kids and say, ‘Hell, this one is for me.’

We had such a great time with Kate and Damien last night that we have organised to meet them again tonight. This time we are having cocktails at the Hilton Hotel. It is still on the beach and usually has a singer or guitarist playing. I really like spending time with our boss, Kate. Quite often, women who become managers let the power get to their heads. But not Kate. She is smart, likeable and seems normal in every sense of the word. She has been married to a non-flyer for a number of years, and although there are no children, the relationship appears solid.

It always doesn’t work out so well when a flight attendant is involved in a relationship with ‘an earthling’. A flight attendant’s lifestyle is very unique. We are away from home so often, and when we do come home we are usually jetlagged, exhausted and unable to be ourselves. For some relationships the time apart is helpful, but for others it can be destructive. Such relationships work only when both partners are independent and trusting – and by trusting, I don’t just mean fidelity, but also trusting in each other’s ability to deal with being apart.

I occasionally fly with girls who cannot handle being away from their husbands or boyfriends. Some have legitimate qualms, but others are way too clingy. They are constantly on the phone and are miserable the whole trip away. These girls either leave their flying careers or leave the relationship. Most don’t end the relationship by choice. It is usually the guy who leaves. I know of some girls who actually loved their job, but loved their spouses more, so chose to pick the latter. Sadly some of those relationships did not work out, and the women live with the regret of quitting their jobs. Some try and get back into flying, but most are not successful. If they are successful, it is usually with another airline; even there, they have start all over again, at the bottom of the seniority heap.

Kate and I are quite similar, both in personality and circumstances. We are both independent and love our job and lifestyle. Kate’s husband is a professional, much like how Dean is. I don’t know much about Kate’s husband, but I’d be guessing he is supportive of Kate’s occupation. Kate has mentioned that her husband comes away on trips with her quite regularly. I think it is time to see if Dean would like to come away with me. It is an idea I will revisit when I get back home.

Helen and I wear new outfits we bought at the factory outlet centres as we sit in the grounds of the Hilton Hotel. It is set up like a Polynesian village overlooking the ocean. Damien and Kate already had their cocktails in hand when we arrive, so we took a leaf out of their book and ordered the same drinks. We had enough Mai Tais between us last night to last a lifetime, so we are having something different tonight.

A bad cocktail is a bit like a bad massage – bad but still pretty good. These cocktails are not bad however – they are sensational. The wedge of pineapple and the umbrella stick are right out of the 1970s and seem a bit clichéd, but the cocktails make up for the tackiness – they are divine. After we have had three pineapple wedges and umbrella sticks each, we decide to have dinner.

We walk along the beachfront to the Shorebird Restaurant, where Damien and the rest of us ate during our previous Honolulu trip. We have yet another cocktail there, and follow it up with some mahi mahi. Mahi mahi, or dolphin fish (but ‘mahi mahi’ sounds so much more appealing), is the most common fish served in Honolulu. At the Shorebird you cook the fish (or steak) yourself and then help yourself to the salad bar. Helen and I were so busy shopping that we forgot to eat throughout the day. Apart from a few coffees and a muffin we haven’t eaten since brunch, but we make up for it now.

After a heavy dinner, everyone is feeling a little tired. If Helen were not with me, I would have finished my meal and headed straight back to the hotel for some sleep. Even Helen is tired, but I know she would like to explore Honolulu some more. The chances for her to let her hair down are few and far between, so she is keen to make every moment count.

However, both Kate and Damien are cocktailed out. It is just Helen and I who decide to stick around a little longer, but for all our partying intentions we know that we won’t last long either. When I was in my twenties I could party all night and go straight to work the next day and manage to function. But those days are long gone now. Helen and I visit several bars, some with live music. We realise that we are also cocktailed out, so we just stick with water. We dance, have our egos stroked by some flirtatious young college boys, dance some more, then decide to walk along the beach in the moonlight again. You can’t have too much of a good thing.

The next morning we wake up early, go to the beach, have a swim and then sit at the Royal Hawaiian. We have a quick coffee and light breakfast. It is the perfect way to end Helen’s little adventure in paradise. We race back to the hotel and I get ready for work. If our luck doesn’t strike out now, Helen might just get to sit in Seat 1A again. I keep my fingers crossed for her.

how can heaven and hell be so far apart, yet so close?

When we reach the airport, I uncross my fingers. Helen will not be sitting in Seat 1A this time around. The flight was not originally fully booked, but, unfortunately for Helen, it is now.

Apparently another airline has cancelled one of its flights, and their passengers have now been transferred to our flight. Kate has checked with the ground staff, and it does look like one or two spare seats are still available. This means that Helen gets on the flight, but she will have to sit at the back of the plane. It is still better than sitting in our crew-rest seats, I reason. Besides, Helen doesn’t mind. She and I are just relieved that she will be coming home with us. Well, truth be told, she would have been happy if she had been left behind for a few more days.

I am still on a high from having such a great time in Honolulu. I greet the passengers at the front door with my usual smile. I even engage in some friendly banter with them as they walk in:’How was your holiday?’; ‘Did you have a nice time?’; ’I can see you enjoyed the sun!’.

However, my smile fades a little as I observe a particular couple walk down the aerobridge; I can instantly tell that something is not right with them. Kate notices as well. He is several paces in front of her, and the only indication that they are even a couple is they both have the same unhappy look on their face. He maintains his pained expression at the door, but she changes facial expression all together as she stands alongside him. In an instant she goes from glum to all smiles.

She is either an actress or a flight attendant, I think. The man’s expression still does not change one bit, however. They are seated together so they are definitely a couple. Or at least they were a couple – their body language does suggest they are not together any more.

Both Kate and I sense something is dramatically wrong. We don’t know exactly what though, and it is not our place to ask, but we just know things aren’t going right for these two. Kate suggests that if I do get the chance to have a chat with the woman, I should make sure that there are no issues we need to know about. That is one of the great things about working with experienced crew: we understand and analyse human behaviour much better than most of the younger crew. Kate knows that I not only have the ability for spotting potential problems, but also have the skills to possibly fix that problem, should it arise on the aircraft.

I play amateur psychiatrist all the time. Most of the time I get my diagnoses right, but occasionally I can be very wrong.

Helen comes onboard. We told her to board last just in case there was a no-show passenger from the front of the plane. Unfortunately they are all onboard, so Helen potters off to the very back row of the aircraft. She doesn’t care. She jokes that she will get to see me working at the back of the plane.

‘Let’s see if some of those plane stories you tell me have any truth in them?’ she jibes.

‘You’ll have a view of almost the entire aircraft from where you are sitting, so just wait and see,’ I joke back.

It turns out that Helen was given the last seat on the plane. There are no other empty seats on this flight; we are completely packed. Fortunately she is in the aisle seat, which means I will be able to talk to her easily. The lady seated next to Helen is very nice; she works as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital. The two passengers in the back row seats opposite Helen appear to be a couple. I cannot recall them coming onto the aircraft together, but I figure that they must have boarded separately for some reason.

I chat with several passengers while I walk through the cabin. I then stop and purposefully talk to the attractive now-smiling woman seated next to her still-glum partner. I don’t talk about anything specific, and she is incredibly sociable. Even so, I can’t help but become more certain that there is something definitely wrong. She says that she is looking forward to having a nice glass of wine with lunch, and I report back to Kate that she appeared all smiles and friendly. Her partner, on the other hand, did not make eye contact and seemed totally disinterested in everything around him, including her.

The couple sitting in the back row opposite Helen are, on the other hand, are a lot more interested in each other – and embarrassingly so. They are becoming very touchy-feely. Most couples in long relationships are not so brazen with their feelings in public. I can only presume this is a new relationship, very new: the more they drink, the more amorous they are getting, and the more they are letting their hands wander. Most of the passengers, including Helen, are busy watching movies, but the couple’s antics do distract them nonetheless; in fact, a curious Helen can’t help but take a few peeks at the couple.

Helen comes to the galley periodically to update me on the couple’s frolics. She thinks it is hilarious. She agrees with me that they may have just met. Helen has been listening to some of their conversation, and it does seem they are in the process of getting to know each other. I relay to Helen that I did not recall them coming onto the aircraft together. Who needs reality TV when we have our own mini-series unfolding onboard?

In the meantime the attractive woman sitting with her morose partner is getting very drunk. She has had a number of glasses of wine in quick succession and is demanding more. Her once friendly demeanour is now slipping back into a darker mood. When Damien had picked her as being emotionally unstable earlier, I had argued that she was more a victim of circumstances at the hands of her partner than a mental-illness patient with any major psychological issues. I am starting to reevaluate.

As I walk past her, she is begging me for just one more drink. Now I am sure she has a problem. A more inexperienced flight attendant might cave in and give her what she wants, but I have enough sense and experience to know I shouldn’t. Both Damien and I make the decision not to serve her more alcohol. We are positive Kate will agree with our judgment call and support our decision. Passengers generally get very angry when you cut off their alcohol supply, particularly people who have a drinking or substance addiction problem. I am beginning to think this woman has some sort of problem, and her partner may not be the villain I thought he was.

When we have finished the meal service, most of the passengers get busy watching movies and we go through the cabin and encourage passengers at the window seats to lower the shades. The vast majority oblige so the cabin becomes relatively dark. Helen returns to her seat to either watch a show on her entertainment screen or the show being put on by the couple seated opposite her. She does both.

The couple has now taken their ‘show’ under their blankets. It is obvious what they are up to, and their grunts and groans are not in the least bit subtle. That said, nobody, including Helen, has yet to formally complain about them.

Damien and I are in the galley when a ruckus of sorts erupts in the forward section of the cabin. Passengers are yelling, and there is clearly trouble. We race toward the commotion. The attractive albeit inebriated woman has hit her partner. She has also swung punches at another male passenger who attempted to intervene in the couple’s fight. She is still raging as we approach her.

Damien and I wrestle her to the ground. When she stops struggling, we slowly get her to her feet and with the help of the passenger who had been hit we shuffle her quickly to the back galley.

What follows is a scene from The Exorcist. She does everything but spin her head around and vomit green gunk. Her partner also follows us to the galley. He is not injured, nor is the other passenger who was hit, but the woman is having a complete meltdown. She is not throwing punches at others anymore, but she is in real danger of hurting herself. She punches her fists into the galley benches before slumping into a heap on the floor. This is only momentary as she pulls herself back to her feet and begins belting at the galley ovens, while using language that most rap-artists might shy away from speaking. Her rant is incoherent, even illogical, yet the swear words she uses are clear, fully comprehensible and very loud.

Most of the passengers within the cabin can hear the woman’s turrets-style syndrome outbursts. Seated near the galley is a family with young children. Nobody should be subjected to the language coming from this woman’s mouth, especially children.

She has completely lost the plot and is unable to understand or follow any of our instructions. I make an emergency call to the other crew, which includes Kate. We need help, and we need it quickly. This woman could seriously hurt herself or someone else.

Both Damien and I have taken positions in front of the doors on either side of the galley entry. The doors cannot be opened in flight (due to the cabin pressurisation) however we do keep our emergency equipment and phones there, and we can’t afford to have the woman damage them. She continues to self-destruct in and around the galley, but we manage to keep her confined to those areas only.

As the yelling, the cursing and the commotion continues, increasing in volume, passengers previously unaware of the drama start removing their headsets and start listening. Helen is one of those passengers who can see all the drama unfolding. Even the couple attempting to join the mile-high-club put their passion on hold as they lift their heads from under their blanket to watch. Most people have not seen the woman punching the men or Damien and me wrestling her to the ground, but nearly all can now see or hear the ongoing saga and put two and two together.

Several of the crew members, including Kate, enter the galley. There is no way we can reason with the poltergeist woman. Her partner is in shock and completely useless in the situation. We ask him to go through her handbag so as we may see what medication she is on – she is definitely on something, we are all sure of this. Three or four glasses of wine could not have caused this. He goes through the contents of the woman’s handbag to confirm that it contains a cocktail of pills – she is on a variety of medications, including antidepressants. We can only guess she has washed down a handful of pills with the wine we served her.

The psychiatric nurse seated next to Helen has also been watching the drama. She comes to the galley and offers her assistance. Kate is appreciative of the nurse’s concerns, but asks that she stand clear for some time. Kate immediately calls the captain and explains the situation. Without hesitation the captain gives the authority to restrain the woman and to do so immediately.

Kate relays the message to us, and I go directly to the stowage where the restraint equipment is stored. I know the location well – not only because I’ve been studying all the equipment locations for my upcoming emergency training but also because I’ve had to use the same equipment on my previous Honolulu flight. I return with a set of handcuffs, called flexi-cuffs. The woman is still in meltdown-mode and although she still is wriggling and pacing around the galley, she is completely unaware that we are restraining her. It is quite easy to spin her around and pull her hands behind her back and slip the cuffs over her wrists.

Once her hands have been cuffed behind her back, we move her to our crew-rest seats. At this point she becomes aware she has been restrained and starts squealing like a wounded animal. The only decipherable words to come out of her mouth are profanities – loud, loud profanities.

She now resists our attempts to seat her, and we eventually have to force her down and strap her in. She is spitting, swearing and then spitting some more. Although cuffed and held back with a tightened seatbelt, she is still a danger to herself and bashes her head into the seat in front of her. She is now bleeding from the mouth, but that doesn’t stop her from screaming louder. She continues to spit, but this time she is spitting blood.

We decide to try and sedate her – and try is the keyword here. This is not going to be an easy task as the woman is still thrashing around, screaming, spitting blood. We wait for the bleeding of the mouth to subside, but just as it appears to stop, the woman bashes her head against the seat again and reopens the gash on her lips. We suspect that she may have also bitten her tongue. With AIDS and hepatitis now a common issue, no one is game enough to get near the woman.

While we wait for the bleeding and spitting to cease, Kate liaises with the nurse standing by. The medical kit onboard is opened, and a syringe and a sedative drug is taken out of it. Only a qualified medical person can use the syringe, so that task is handed over to the nurse.

The amount of energy this retrained woman has expended is incredible, yet she continues to thrash, bash, spit, bleed and yell out words that no woman on the planet should use. It probably takes a good ten minutes for the thrashing and bashing to subside before we can get close enough to her.

Kate comes up with a plan. She wears rubber gloves (three on each hand) and reaches over the top of the woman’s head to cover her mouth, so the woman cannot spit blood on us. Damien and I then pin the woman down, allowing the nurse to inject her.

We hold the restrained woman’s upper body down as best we can, and the nurse injects the syringe into the woman’s arm. The poltergeist thrashes around so much that we are unable to keep her completely still and the needle in the syringe snaps off. The broken needle sticks out of the arm.

‘This is getting ridiculously horrible,’ Damien mutters, horrified. I agree with him.

There is enough of the needle sticking out of the woman’s arm that the nurse, who shows incredible courage, is able to wrap her gloved fingers around it and pull it out. The nurse is certain that most of the sedative drug had been injected into the woman’s bloodstream before the needle broke. She then instructs us to let go of the woman. Damien and I let go and step away. Kate removes her hand from the woman’s mouth and quickly retreats. The restrained woman screams more obscenities and even louder, if that is at all possible. However, as the minutes trickle by, the woman begins to lose steam.

I have never seen someone sedated before. For some reason I thought it would be an instantaneous thing. I am surprised, and a little disappointed, that it is not. We all thought she would crash and fall asleep, but she doesn’t. It is only 1,350 profanities later that the medication starts working, and she slowly but surely starts to settle down.

When I first applied to be a flight attendant, never in my wildest dreams (or nightmares) did I think I would have to hold down a blood-spitting, cursing lunatic so a nurse can inject her in the arm to sedate her. But here am I, doing exactly that.

sometimes you can feel too sorry for someone

Our crew-rest area is now out of bounds. Blood has been spat everywhere and so much so that it looks like a crime scene in there. Besides who would want to sit anywhere near the Poltergeist anyway? We might not have any place to sit during breaks, but at least the cabin is quiet. We move the Poltergeist’s partner into the crew-rest seat next to her. He doesn’t want to be there. He is beyond embarrassed by her behaviour; he is mortified and close to speechless. If the relationship was not completely doomed before this flight, it is now.

Even so, he came onboard with her, and it is his responsibility to be by her side at least for the duration of the flight. Kate explains to him about the procedure he and his partner would have to follow on landing. His partner’s outburst has major ramifications. The handcuffs will not and cannot be taken off until she has been handed over to the authorities – the aircraft will be met by the police on landing, and she will be taken into custody. The partner nods his head in acceptance, but he is in so much shock and denial that he barely comprehends the gravity of the situation.

Kate tries to get some background information about the woman from her partner. He is not much of a conversationalist and answers almost every question with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’, rarely elaborating. Kate comes back to the galley to bring us up to date. They were a couple, both relationship-wise and in business. They worked in the entertainment industry and had been together for nine years. They had, however, just broken up before the flight. She does have a history of mental illness, but he did not elaborate. A few years ago, she had a similar breakdown on a flight, but in that instance she was not cuffed, but was escorted off the aircraft.

Well, in this instance, I am certain that things aren’t going to go as easily for her. I am also certain she won’t be flying with our airline again.

Kate and I talk with some of the passengers who had been seated near the woman and her partner (her ex-partner now) to gather information about how it all started. Kate also needs witness-forms, detailing the events, to be filled out by some of those passengers. The paperwork relating to such an incident is often more work than the incident itself.

A few passengers, especially those who witnessed us sedating the woman and noticed the needle sticking out of her arm, comment that we were a little rough with her, and even hurt her. The fact that this woman had punched two people, then terrorised the crew, smashed up the galley and swore repetitively in front of young children seems to be lost on these people. The crew members have been traumatised, but some passengers ignore that tiny detail and decide to sympathise with the woman who has caused all the grief in the first place. I can understand how some people can feel sorry for the woman – in fact, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for her myself – but the reality is that she posed a threat to not only herself, but to everyone else on this flight. The crew members were as caring and responsible as we could be, and I think we did a brilliant job in such difficult circumstances.

I eventually make it back to the galley. As soon as I walk in, Helen rushes in to see how I am doing. She is absolutely astonished at the dramatic turn of events she has witnessed, and she only saw half of it. I know she will tell stories about this trip, both good and bad, for decades to come.

I put on a brave face and pretend I am not affected by the events, although I am. I can’t stop thinking about the woman, now sedated, cuffed and basically under house arrest. It is hard to feel much pity for her. After all, her actions have affected so many people. However, she is mentally ill. When we land she will be handed over to the police and probably charged. Instead, she should be taken to a mental institute, where they can give her the help she needs. The nurse onboard, who works at a mental hospital, also agrees with me.

But it is not our decision to make.

The mood in the cabin has turned somewhat somber. Nearly all the passengers are still preoccupied with the events that have just occurred.

Well, nearly all, but not all.

One would think that witnessing a woman spitting blood and yelling obscenities in the voice of the antichrist would be enough to dampen anyone’s sexual appetite. But one would be thinking wrong.

The couple seated opposite Helen is at it again. This time, someone does complain about them. I let Damien handle this one. I stay back in the galley, but watch Damien walk up to them and then begin his speech.

‘Hey lovebirds, most of the passengers and the crew have just had to witness a woman do everything except soil herself. If we have to see any of your exposed body parts, I’ll personally drag you and those body parts to the crew-rest seats. You will then get to sit next to Ms. Poltergeist herself and let her spit some blood on you. You get my drift?’

Damien then, realising that he is probably being a little too harsh with the young couple, gives them a wink and tells them to take their love-fest into the toilet. ‘God knows if someone is desperate enough to have sex in an aircraft toilet, but if you are, then good luck to you.’ Damien then walks away.

I’m not sure I agree with Damien’s advice. A few moments later, I poke my head around the corner and notice that the two back-row seats are empty. I also notice that the toilet is engaged.

Helen waves at me to catch my attention and then flashes me a broad smile. She then points to the toilet, into which the couple have obviously gone. She is still finding the whole thing amusing. I have told Helen about my friend Mary Gomez and some mile-high stories. Now Helen will have a story of her own to tell.

There have been times when a couple has emerged from a toilet only to be greeted by the crew giving them a glass of champagne. This won’t be happening today because we are just too tired and too traumatised to care either way.

The now restrained and sedated woman may have several passengers sympathising with her situation, but surely not the crew. She may well have a medical condition, but if that is the case, then don’t drink. Not only did the crew have to deal with the immediate danger and trauma of the drama, but have to keep monitoring her and keep liaising with the captain to help pass on information to the ground-staff and security when we land. There are also reams of paperwork to be finished and witness forms to be filled.

When instances like this occur on an aircraft, one of the worst repercussions that can happen, from a passenger’s point of view, is that the rest of those passengers get neglected. We need to put so much of our resources and time into dealing with the incident that the other passengers get no service. One person’s actions have created so much disruption to everyone, and this is really not fair to the other passengers. They paid the same amount for their tickets as this woman. They deserve the same amount of attention as this woman.

There are dozens of call-lights turned on in the cabin, and have remained so for some time now. Most passengers understand that the crew members have been dealing with this rather dramatic incident; if they aren’t aware, we are apologetic and explain briefly the reason it has taken us so long to get to them. Fortunately most of the call-lights are for drinks. Had there been a medical emergency or something other serious crisis, then things might have gone completely awry.

I am feeling physically and emotionally run down, have not had the opportunity for a break and, although my best friend is onboard, all I can think about is getting off this flight.

some people go one way, some go another

The restrained woman has been relatively quiet throughout the remainder of the flight. Although she is still spaced-out, she is finally becoming aware of the gravity of the situation. The couple seated opposite Helen has finished their mile-high shenanigans and are now behaving like regular passengers. Helen thinks they might have just had the perfect flight: lunch, a few drinks, entertainment (both on their screen and in the cabin), more drinks, sex and then sleep.

On landing, as I will be kept behind on the aircraft, dealing with the ramifications of the poltergeist incident, I arrange to meet Helen outside the terminal. Helen will have time to buy some duty free. She does not need any encouragement to shop some more.

When I finally get to leave the aircraft, I catch up with Helen as arranged and see that she has indeed done some serious shopping. Her husband is going to have a photo of me stuck over the bull’s-eye on his dartboard.

Helen pulls me aside; she cannot wait to tell me something. She looks around to make sure no one is listening, and I’m already getting incredibly curious.

‘You know that couple sitting opposite me, the mile-high couple? Well, when they went through customs, they went their separate ways. He was met by his wife, and she was met by her husband.’

Helen is immediately taken over by hysterical fits of laughter. She cannot believe that two people who are married to other people could meet on an aircraft, have sex and then casually walk off to meet their respective partners and act is if nothing had happened.

Well, they do say that a clear conscious is often a sure sign of a bad memory.

I often have the case of a bad memory too. For instance, I have almost forgotten that I have emergency exams in only three days’ time. I am so pleased I studied on my last trip because I know my ability to concentrate henceforth will be minimal at best.

Helen is almost as exhausted as me, but she is still on cloud nine. She can’t wait to tell her husband all about her adventures. I just hope he doesn’t see all of her retail purchases and blame me.

My photo may end up covering his entire dartboard.

I typically sleep for the mandatory four hours when I am tired and jetlagged, but his time I sleep for ten hours. I usually catch up with Helen after each trip, but when I phone her I am transferred straight to voicemail. I later find out that she slept longer than I did. I also find out that my photo did not end up on her husband’s dartboard – at least for now.

Mary Gomez has left several messages for me. Slight change of plans: instead of catching up with Helen, I am having coffee with Mary.

Normally I cannot handle seeing Mary right after a trip. The drama that habitually engulfs Mary’s world is difficult to take in when you are feeling tired and jetlagged. Mary is desperate to see me, however, and I can’t recall Mary ever refusing to meet me when I needed to talk to her.

I know Mary has been on holidays, but I am not sure where or what she has been up to. What I didn’t know is she was forced to take these holidays by our company. She was also given the strongest possible advice to get some counselling or visit a rehab centre. She has been in rehab before, but unless our company drug tests her, and she fails, they cannot force her to go.

Over a round of lattes, Mary explains that she had an incident. I am not surprised: Mary always has incidents.

Mary had been in a layover port and had drunk far too much over lunch, gone back to the hotel, popped a sleeping tablet and slept through the numerous wake-up calls. She was awoken by hotel security and managed to make it downstairs, but was still a mess. If Mary says she was a mess, then she really must have been a mess.

The onboard manager had no choice but to take Mary off the trip. The ramifications of this are immense. The crew would have operated one crew member short. The company would have had to find her a hotel room and then organise for her to be a passenger while flying home the following day. Fortunately for Mary, she was not drug tested and she could blame the episode on a bad reaction to a new sleeping tablet she had taken – the truth is she has been on the same brand of sleeping tablet for over ten years. She managed to dodge another bullet, but she was urged to take leave immediately.

Mary had broken up with her on-now-off-now-on-now-off-again relationship with Mike Lawson. I saw Mike in the foyer of our hotel in Hong Kong on a trip I had taken a few weeks ago, and he had been with another woman – I could tell they were an item. I also knew his relationship with Mary was definitely over. This incident has probably intensified, or even caused, Mary’s erratic behaviour. I am sure Mary knows Mike is dating not just another woman, but another flight attendant. Good gossip often travels faster than airplanes.

One of the reasons for Mary wanting to see me is to tell me she is coming back to work in five days’ time. Also, she is on my next trip.

‘Oh my god, a whole trip with Mary. A whole long trip with Mary,’ I am panicking on the inside. On the outside, I pretend that I am really excited to be doing a trip with her. Perhaps this latest incident with Lawson will calm Mary down? Perhaps she will be more responsible?

Who am I kidding? Mary is a lot of fun, but trouble and Mary are synonymous.

The last trip I did with Mary was probably two or three years ago. It was drama, drama, drama. We went out dancing one night, and Mary was wasted of course. She left her handbag on the floor and went dancing with a stranger. When she returned, her handbag was gone. Like most hosties she probably has dozens of handbags and replacing a copy Prada bag was not the issue. Mary had her purse in that bag, which contained her credit cards, all her money, her driver’s license and her work ID. A hostie losing his or her airline ID when overseas is akin to losing one’s passport and driver’s license in one go – it is a hassle of the highest order.

Why Mary would carry her ID around with her defies logic. But then most things that Mary does defy logic.

I have two purses – one for overseas and one for home. I never take my airline ID or passport away from the hotel. They go in a safe. I do, however, carry around a photocopy of each in my overseas purse, along with back-up credit cards. If I am robbed or lose the purse, then it is not the end of the world. I know that in some countries, you are supposed to have some form of proper ID on you at all times. I have a number of other forms of ID, most compliments of Khao San Road, an area in Bangkok famous for making IDs. The photos and the signatures are real, however that’s all that is real about these IDs.

The crazy thing was that Mary had all these IDs with her as well – but she had kept it all in the one purse.

I had to then help Mary cancel the credit cards and jump through hoops to obtain a temporary airline ID – and when I say ‘help’ I really mean ‘did’. The trip turned into a disaster because of Mary’s carelessness and incompetence.

We have had some fantastic trips over the years. Yes, there have been some testing moments, but Mary can be a lot of fun if she can manage to stay out of trouble. For all of Mary’s faults, her smile and enthusiasm are infectious. And for every low with her, there is also a high. I just hope there are more highs than lows on our forthcoming trip.

Mary loves to talk. I am quite a good listener. From Mary’s point of view, this is an arrangement made in heaven.

As I will be spending a multitude of days with Mary, I am careful not to overdose on every problem in her life in one go right now, so I explain to Mary that I need to go home to study. She understands the importance of the emergency exams better than most, especially because Mary has failed those exams on a number of occasions.

Compared to Mary, I am Miss Responsibility. I love my job, and I won’t jeopardise it in any way by being foolish. I study, I pass.

To fail an exam is serious stuff. I am not sure how many times Mary has gone down that stressful path, but I am guessing it has been many times. She has managed to just scrape through each time though and has somehow managed to keep her job.

I have actually done enough studying. My plan is to spend the night before the exams brushing up, but I am not studying today. I told Mary a white lie, but I have so much to do and Mary’s problems can wait until after my exams.

Helen finally wakes up and phones me only moments after I say goodbye to Mary. Helen is tired to the point of being completely shattered.

‘Welcome to my world,’ I tell her.

We decide to catch up for coffee and a chat tomorrow.

I am seeing Dean tonight. After our last disaster of a date, I am keen to make amends. Although I am not feeling completely OK (and I rarely do) I have promised to make him dinner. I joked that I am probably banned from the café we usually frequent, so we may be safer in the confines of my apartment. I don’t get to cook very often, but when I do, I love it. I eat more restaurant and café meals than anyone I know, outside of other hosties that is. Even when I am at home, I tend to eat out a lot, either for social reasons or convenience. If international flight attendants know a fair amount about travel, then we know even more about food.

For someone who has spent such little time in the kitchen, I am actually a pretty good cook. Dean certainly thinks so, and we are both looking forward to a nice quiet dinner over a few glasses of wine. Sometimes, the simplest of times can be the best of times.

Shopping for groceries is not quite as fun as shopping for clothes and shoes at Ala Moana, but it is still technically shopping. And if it’s shopping, then I like it.

When I tell Helen that I enjoy shopping at the supermarket, she is surprised. Grocery shopping for her is a chore. I don’t do it all that often, so it is still fun for me. Much of my daily-use items, like toiletries, I buy overseas. I generally have more time on my hands when I am away than I do at home, so it is often easier and cheaper to buy soaps, shampoos and such when I am on trips. I do know some flight attendants who never buy basic toiletries. Their bathrooms are stocked with the shampoos, conditioners and moisturisers they have taken from hotels they’ve stayed in, the hotels’ names emblazed on the bottles. I am not one of those hosties.

talk may be cheap, but some people are cheaper

Some flight attendants are incredibly stingy. Not all, but some.

A few years ago, another flight attendant and I were walking through the security area before entering the terminal. At that time there were restrictions on carrying liquids and gels on the aircraft. You were allowed to take small amounts, but they needed to be placed in a clear sealable bag and subsequently x-rayed. We were supplied with those small plastic bags, and the flight attendant accompanying me proceeded to take not just a handful but an armful of these bags. When I asked why, he said he uses the bags to store food in his fridge and freezer.

I said, ‘You do know that you can buy a box of 100 of those bags at the supermarket for the price of a candy bar?’

It is fools like that who give everybody a bad name.

A captain on another airline was popularly known by the nickname of ‘Tony-To-Go’. He would ask the cabin crew for unopened cans of Coca-Cola. He would not drink them, but take them home with him. This was apparently a daily ritual. As he flew domestically, he would regularly stay in the same cities and hotels. One of those hotels contacted the airline to inform them that the captain was to no longer stay at their hotel and this was the reason: when Tony-To-Go stayed in this hotel (and probably others) he would remove the expensive long-life bulbs in the hotel room’s lamps and replace them with cheap generic light bulbs he had brought along. This happened often enough that the hotel was able to observe each instance of such behaviour and also document it.

It’s shocking that a captain – on a captain’s wages – did this.

I know that flight attendants don’t make anywhere as much as captains do (or as much as second officers make, for that matter). In spite of this, any stories I hear about crew pulling cheap stunts like the one Tony-To-Go had pulled make me sick to the stomach. Fortunately, this doesn’t happen very often.

There is a list of ten dead giveaways of being a hostie. The first on the list is, ‘All of your pens have the names of different hotels on them.’ Funny, but also true.

There are nine other items on the list:

2. You can pack your bags for a five-day trip in under three minutes. Better still – you never unpack from your previous trip.

3. You know every latest-release perfume. Thanks to duty-free you have most of them.

4. You have the uncanny ability to eat any meal of any description at any time standing up.

5. When you have a party and people leave, you say, ‘Bye, yes thanks, have a nice day, all the best, hope to see you again, bye now, you’re welcome, thank you, watch your step on the way out, goodbye, take care.’

6. Your bathroom is jam-packed with hotel soaps, moisturisers, shampoos and conditioners – not applicable for me of course.

7. Your arms and legs are constantly covered in bruises. You even have bruising from bumping into carts, seats and people in places that don’t seem physically possible.

8. You know of at least thirty different uses for an air-sickness bag, in addition to the one real use that it was designed for.

9. You can recognise a pilot not by his face but by the back of his head.

10. When you are totally exhausted, you smile because you think you have to.

I became a flight attendant because I wanted to travel. I’ve always been sociable, and what’s a better way to meet and talk with interesting people than to travel the world as a hostie. However, some people take socialising too far on this job.

Even after all these years I still get a buzz when arriving in a different city or even in some cities I have been to dozens of times before. I cannot wait to leave the confines of a hotel room and go exploring. This is truly the ultimate job for someone who likes to travel. Sure we have to suffer the consequences of being a hostie: jetlag, lack of sleep, tiredness and time restrictions to deal with. However, we reap the rewards just as much. How many people get paid to go to and spend a few days in a place like Hawaii?

I am sure most international cabin crew would share a similar passion for travel as me, but there are quite a few who don’t. I have been with crew members who don’t leave their hotel on most trips. For these cabin crew, the job is all about the money – and the funny thing is that there are so many other jobs out there that pay a lot more than what we get paid as hosties. They suffer the jetlag, the tiredness and being locked away in a hotel room for the money.

So they save a few dollars? I don’t get it. I often joke that I started out with nothing – and I still have most of it left.

Even so, I am far richer than any of these crew will ever be.

The crew member who took all the plastic bags to use them to seal food at home is one such flight attendant who locks himself in his hotel to count his money. I noticed that on the aircraft, he ate (or took) anything that wasn’t nailed down. He even bought his own food with him so he didn’t have to leave the hotel to buy food. He did not socialise with anyone. I would be surprised if he left the hotel room at any stage. If he was not friendly on the plane, he was a phantom off it. What a miserable way to live your life.

He is in the wrong job – I know it; the other crew know it; the passengers know it; I would bet that he knows it too.

It is sad that the wrong people are sometimes employed in a job that requires certain special and specific qualities. A flight attendant must be able to enjoy people and places. If you are not a people-person, you are in the wrong job. International hosties spend so much time on their own that being introverted and antisocial probably makes them more reclusive.

I have a lifestyle, not just a job. Fortunately, I enjoy most of the aspects of this lifestyle, but for those who don’t, it must be difficult indeed. I really don’t like working with overtly negative and unhappy people.

Misery loves company, indeed, but company does not love misery.

These people are fortunately the minority, but they are still there. Some flight attendants step onto the aircraft and then immediately say, ‘Are we there yet?’ – it’s not a joke; they actually mean it. I am sure these same people, when they get to our crew hotel, are the ones who stay locked in, waiting to get back home. On the flight back home, they step onboard and once again say, ‘Are we there yet?’

I guess it is not just kids in the backseats of cars who pester their parents with that line. I have never once said that to anyone, and I’m sure I never will. I may have thought it (once or twice) but I will never say it.

I love my job. Most crew do too, and that is why they are there and often for many, many years. A recent newspaper article spoke about the ageing aircrew of most airlines. They used one American carrier as an example and quoted that the average age of their flight attendants was over fifty years. I have been flying around twenty years myself, and often I am the most junior crew member.

However, this is not always the case. I recently did a trip with some new hosties: the guys didn’t look old enough to shave, and the girls were all blonde and gorgeous and were named either Amber or Holly. Of course I am generalising, but it is remarkable how many of this young breed of flight attendants were both stunningly beautiful and named Amber or Holly. I have looked at the crew names for my upcoming trip, and I noticed the name ‘Amber’ on it. I will have a chance to test my theory really soon.

Coming back to Mary, she is not one of those crew who sit in their hotel room and never leave. Mary is a people person, which only means she should be perfect for the job personality-profilewise, but what sounds good in theory sometimes doesn’t work in practice. The trouble with Mary is she gets into so much trouble on and off the plane. She creates mischief at home, so when she is unleashed onto the world, there is a bigger stage for her to fall off. It is like a clumsy kid in a playground with one swing. The kid will probably fall off that swing. Put the kid in a playground with a hundred swings, and the kid will probably fall off every one of those swings. A person like Mary should be kept away from playgrounds with swings. A person like Mary should be kept away from a lot of things.

I can’t wait to tell Dean all about Mary. He hasn’t met her, but he has heard a few stories. Before he comes around tonight, I have to run a few of my stories through some filters. I have nothing to hide from him, but so much has happened in the week since I have seen him that I don’t want to spend the whole night rehashing stories about what happened onboard. Also, he may not want to hear about every detail of my time in Honolulu. I am sure he is interested in knowing about my job, but I am just as interested in his medical practice, yet I don’t want to hear about it all night.

It is great to have someone to share things that have happened in the past, but it is even better discussing things that may happen in the future.

you never know if you never ask

Dean and I have a lovely dinner. He enjoyed my cooking and the wine, but the conversation aspect has and continues to be the best part of our time together. I hadn’t had a lot of time off of late to contemplate relationship issues. In the back of my mind, I sort of wanted the whole spend-every-minute of the day, can’t-live-without-you type of relationship, but I am too independent to do that. The same goes for Dean. I know exactly how autonomous I am, but it’s probably the effect of reading romance novels and watching romantic comedy movies over the years that causes me to feel compelled to go down the get-married and a buy a house with a white picket-fence path. At least, I know my mum would like me to be that girl.

The relationships I have seen degenerate the quickest are those that started off the hottest. Mary Gomez is a classic case in question. She falls in love at the drop of a hat – and her bedroom is full of worn-out hats.

I don’t profess to be a relationship expert, but most guys I know like some freedom, and a man cannot get much more freedom than going out with an international flight attendant. We are rarely around, and when we are, much of that time is spent in a vegetative state. We are home and functional only for a few days, and those moments often include having mind-blowing sex. Then, we take off again – only to do it all again a week later. An ‘earthling’ dating a hostie can have the best of both worlds. However, such a relationship only works if and only this is something that both people want.

In most of my past relationships, I have at times felt guilty because I am away so much. As such I have tried to make an effort to be there for the other person when I am at home, even when I physically as well as emotionally want to be someplace else – usually, just asleep or on my own.

It has not been very long since Dean has come out of a long-term relationship, and I am certain the last thing he wants is a clingy woman who wants to spend every second of the day with him. This was one of the main reasons his marriage did not work.

I decide to broach the subject with Dean anyway. We have what is probably only a two- or three-minute discussion, but it is two or three minutes very well spent. He does really enjoy my company (when I am not a jetlagged blithering idiot). This is a load off our minds because we do want to be with each other, but on our own terms. Regardless of what my mum might think and want, I am happy to keep my relationship with Dean on a casual basis. The surest way to kill a relationship is to push it in a direction one or both of the parties don’t want to take.

My job gives us the freedom to live independent lives. Sure there are trust issues and missing each other, but the benefits can outweigh the negatives if you are right for each other and do the right things. Dean’s brother Danny is the perfect example of this. Danny is married with two children and I am sure he is the penultimate father and husband when he is at home. While away, he is still faithful and respectful, but he doesn’t lock himself in the hotel room. He loves to travel and explore, so he combines his passion with his family life. His wife and family are supportive of Danny’s job and lifestyle, so he (and his family) gets the best of both worlds.

One of the real bonuses of the flight attendant lifestyle is the opportunity for family and friends to come away on trips occasionally, just like Helen did on my trip to Honolulu. I know Danny takes his wife Bernadette away every so often, and as his children get older, he plans to take them away more often as well. I did last New Year’s Eve on a trip with Danny, Bernadette and Dean. We had an absolute ball. I’d love to do that again, but the logistics of getting everyone together are challenging.

I do have an upcoming trip, after my trip with Mary, which would be perfect for Dean. I would have asked him earlier, but I just wasn’t sure where the relationship was heading. I am clearer now, and I feel like I can finally ask him.

One thing that Dean and I have in common is the desire to help those less fortunate. I am involved in some charity work overseas, which is carried out by a select team of cabin crew. The company allows certain flights to destinations: when we are in these layover ports, we are able to go to the places that need help and do charity work.

Dean goes to Tanzania in Africa for several weeks each year to help with medical services in some small remote villages. I went along last year. His medical expertise may not be needed within our team as we primarily help with building houses and spending time with the kids, but I know Dean would love to help in any way he can. I also know that he is very busy at the moment, and it might not be possible for him to get away for the four days the trip goes for. You never know if you never ask.

‘Dean, in two weeks, I have a charity trips coming up. This one is to Jakarta, Indonesia, and it is over a weekend – I leave on a Friday and am back on a Monday. Are you interested in coming along?’

Without hesitation, he answers, ‘I would love to come.’

I am so excited that Dean is coming away with me. All I have to do now is pass my emergency exams and survive the trip with Mary. Dean and I can then fly together to Jakarta.

I am now inspired to get some more studying done. If you fail your exam, you do get the chance to do it again, but you could lose the trips that have been allocated to you. I don’t want to risk losing my trip with Dean, so I diligently hit the books.

I study for a few hours, and then decide to take a small break. I catch up with Helen over our usual cup or two of coffee. She is still tired.

‘How do you do this week in and week out? Do you ever get used to the jetlag?’ she asks.

‘Never,’ I reply with a smile on my face.

Helen asks me a question Mary has never had the interest nor time to ask, ‘So, how’s Dean?’

I tell her that he is coming to Jakarta with me, and she is as excited as I am.

‘I hope you don’t have to arrest anyone on that flight,’ she grins.

Helen must have thanked me a million times for the trip to Hawaii while we were away, and she has thanked me daily since. I am just so happy that I had the opportunity to share not only a spectacular destination like Honolulu with her but also a little piece of my world. Most people who don’t fly would not be able to comprehend the unique lifestyle and some of the events that can occur in the air. Helen has had a sample of this and has gained a whole new respect for the demands of my job.

Helen’s favourite question to me has become ‘I don’t know how you do it?’

For all the dramas Helen witnessed onboard, it still does not dampen her enthusiasm for coming on another trip.

Her second most favourite question has become ‘So where can we go to next?’

I’m not sure Helen’s husband would be too thrilled about her going away again so soon, but then again, he hasn’t said anything about the shopping spree to end all shopping sprees she went on in Honolulu.

She now asks me her third most favourite question: ‘So where are you off to next?’

She knows she can’t go, but she asks just in case.

I explain to her that my next trip is to Santiago, Chile, and that it is not a renowned shopping destination on my world shopping calendar. I also tell Helen that Mary Gomez is on that trip. Helen has met Mary once, and although Mary’s actions left Helen less than impressed, Helen loves to hear stories about Mary-go-round. I accidently addressed Mary by this nickname in front of Dean over dinner last night. When I explained why she had been given this nickname – ‘so many guys had been for a ride’ – he thought it was hilarious. Poor Mary.

Most people would be mortified if they had a nickname like that, but I think Mary likes it. She probably thinks she was given this name because she is so much fun. Whatever makes her happy.

Helen makes me promise that if Mary does get up to mischief on my next trip, I am to tell Helen all about it.

‘We’ll see,’ I tease.

The reality is that Mary has done hundreds, if not thousands, of trips. The laws of physics dictate that she cannot be in trouble every trip. I love a good Mary-story as much as the next person, but I truly hope the next trip is drama-free, especially since I am on the same flight as her. If I can be a calming influence on her, I surely plan on being one. I immediately regret thinking this. Gee, I am starting to sound like an old aunty.

Maybe Mary might have a positive influence on me?

I sincerely doubt that.

not all emergency-related scenarios end badly

It is emergency exam day – and what a big day it is. I have done the right thing the night before and studied a little, then gone to bed early. I am confident I have studied enough, but being in the right frame of mind is as important as the hours of study I put in.

Like most things in life, you only get out of something what you are prepared to put into it. There are elements of the day that could be fun if one is not terrified of possible failure. We have mock-up emergency situations, which are hands-on, quite realistic and, to me, a lot of fun. I find it a great test of character to see how we hosties might react in an emergency situation. Most don’t share my interest. All they want to do is finish the written exam, pass it and get the day over with.

I have been called a trolley dolly, a glorified waitress, a cart tart, a bun-tosser, a coffee jockey and a flying cocktail waitress. These are all service-related nicknames. The safety side of the job is what separates us from any other customer-service related job I can think of. I am proud of the fact that I have the training and the skills to possibly make a difference should those skills ever be called upon to be used. The odds are they won’t ever be needed, but it is good to know I am still prepared and well-trained enough to do it.

It is the same with the pilots. They spend so many hours in simulators mimicking emergency situations, only hoping that they will never need that experience in the real world. Yet that is why they are given such training – just in case.

I think the pilots do an awesome job. Most people would think a pilot’s career would be exciting. I can only comment about the international tech-crew, whom one would think would have the most stimulating jobs: I have discovered that most pilots find the vast majority of their job boring. They have a similar lifestyle to the cabin crew, but the job itself is often hour after hour of tedious and mind-numbingly boring procedures.

I work with anywhere between seven and fifteen cabin crew on any given day, depending on the aircraft and the destination, and I get a chance to move around and work with many of those crew. Pilots, on the other hand, sit in their little cocoon of a cockpit with the other pilot, and they don’t get to move at all. Can you imagine doing a nine-day trip sitting next to someone you can’t stand?

Over drinks one of the pilots was saying he had an upcoming trip with the ‘Poison Dwarf’. The other pilots at drinks knew exactly who that was. As the name implies, this pilot is a little man with an inversely proportionate chip on his shoulder. Apparently, he was always a painful human-being, but since the company made him a captain his pain-in-the-butt rating has gone off the scales. I can’t recall flying with this captain, but then I don’t usually spend much time with pilots anyway and rarely do I remember their names. The pilots have different preflight briefings to us, often stay in different hotels and are given alternative transport. On most trips, I often meet the techies (our nickname for technical crew/pilots) only after the flight and at the baggage carousel, when we are waiting for our bags.

I make unsure conversation with them as the bag carousel turns. I say, ‘Hi guys I’m Danielle. I guess I’ll see you on the flight back?’ Sometimes they are not even on the same trip as us. They might do one or two sectors with us and then go home via another route.

To makes things and conversations a lot more difficult, the flight deck has become a fortress since 9-11. The procedures for entry have become complicated and restrictive, and only a few crew members are allowed to enter. I once heard a hostie joke that the pilots should be given a diet of pizza and pancakes – those are the only things that can be slid under the door.

The pilots need to study similar emergency procedures as ourselves, but of course their technical training, skills and practice are things I don’t need to worry about. I have enough things to worry about already – my exam day is here, I need to be alert for it.

All the study and panic seem a distant memory as I pass the main exam, and pass it easily too. I know it cannot compare with the final exams of a five-year university course, but I am going to celebrate anyway.

Dean and I decide to go to a little café, the same one where I made a fool of myself the last time we ate out. I expected the staff to see me walk through the door and mutter, ‘Oh no – here she comes again.’

They don’t.

Dean is excited about our upcoming trip to Jakarta, but I warn him that I first have to survive the next trip to South America with Mary-go-round. Although Dean’s brother is a flight attendant, I sometimes get the distinct impression that he did not know that much about this job until Dean started dating me. Dean and Danny are quite close, but I guess Danny has never talked much about the intricacies of being a trolley dolly. Dean has certainly never heard about a character like Mary, and he is quite fascinated. He wants to know more.

I tell Dean one of my favourite Mary stories, which actually involves Jakarta (well, sort of). When Mary and I had just started flying, we were both on a standby arrangement where we did not have scheduled trips, but were waiting anxiously by the phone to be sent somewhere. At any given time, there are a number of flight attendants who need to be on this standby arrangement, in order to cover crew who may go sick at the last minute or to crew aircraft that has been rescheduled or upgraded in size. Being new, Mary and I were keen to go anywhere, but when I received the phone call to tell me that I was off to CDG (the code for Paris) I screamed with excitement. All airports and destinations have three letter codes: for instance, New York is JFK (John F. Kennedy Airport), London is LHR (London Heathrow), Sydney is simply SYD, Frankfurt is FRA and Paris is CDG – named after former president Charles de Gaulle.

Mary tells me that she has been assigned a trip to Jakarta: the code for Jakarta is CGK, based on the Indonesian name for the airport, Cengkareng. In truth, she had actually been called out for the same flight I have been assigned on. And I guess the code for Jakarta does seem a little similar to CDG, if you are either dyslexic or if you are Mary.

Mary arrives at work with a wheelie-bag, thinking she was going on a week-long trip to the equator. When she realises that she’s really supposed to go to Paris, and in the middle of winter, she is shocked and almost driven to tears.

As expected, Paris is absolutely freezing. I have been to the city many times since that trip, but never have I felt it as cold as that first time. I lent Mary some of my clothes, and then we decided to go shopping for the rest; we spent the first day in Paris looking for a jacket. Mary, unfortunately, is not really much of a shopper. I thought all hosties were born to shop, but the airline gods made an exception when they put Mary on this earth. The hardest thing in Mary’s retail experiences is she cannot make decisions.

When we were done with shopping, we raced back to the hotel, freshened up and hit the town. The first bar we went to was The Buddha Bar. What a fabulous bar. Mary cannot make decisions about what clothes to buy, but she is very decisive about what she likes to drink – that decision is usually everything. The irony of Mary buying what turned out to be a beautiful and very expensive designer jacket is that by the end of the night she had spilled so many of those drinks on that same jacket and ended up looking like she was starring in the musical ‘Jason and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat’.

Mary may be a lot of things, but ‘fun’ is right up there in the positive ledger. The only trouble for Mary is she doesn’t know when to stop having fun. The more she drinks the more fun she has. At some point the fun stops though, and Mary either passes out in the arms of a stranger or passes out in the arms of a friend. Luckily she had me to carry her back to the hotel.

I am sure plenty of hosties have misread rosters, schedules or patterns over the years: Mary is surely not the only one to do such a thing. I was talking with another flight attendant from an airline based in the southern hemisphere, and she was telling me about a particular male colleague who was even sillier than Mary. This airline occasionally does day-flight charters to Antarctica where they fly over the arctic region and then return. It is obviously a sight-seeing day trip only. This flight attendant was on a standby arrangement, thus was called out to operate the flight. He turned up to the crew briefing with a large suitcase full of warm clothing. He assumed that they were going to land at the South Pole and he would be staying there for a few days.

Apparently the same flight attendant the very next week was called out again for a trip going to LHR, but misunderstood and thought he was flying to Peru instead. LHR is the code for London. When the crew scheduling staff phone a flight attendant to tell them the pattern or trip they will be working, they use the standard aviation alphabet, i.e. A=Alpha, B=Beta, C=Charlie and so on. They gave the code to the flight attendant for London (LHR) as ‘Lima Hotel Romeo’, and because the word ‘Lima’ was used, the flight attendant thought he was going to Peru.

Not all flight attendants are air-heads like this man though. In fact some are extremely intelligent. Like most other workplaces, when you have such a large workforce there are going to be extremes of personalities. There is no such thing as typical hostie. As they say, most generalisations are false – including this one. By and large, the only general assumptions one can make about flight attendants is that we are outgoing people, love to travel and we are usually very well organised. After all, these are things we all need to be if we want to keep this job.

For people like Mary and the crew guy who packed a suitcase to stay in Antarctica, it must be indeed be a frustrating life. In all my years of flying, I have only once made an error through being disorganised, and even then it was through a combination of events. On that occasion I was late for work. I had a very early start, and I set two alarms. One was an electric clock, while the other was battery operated. There must have been an electrical surge or a loss of power through the night, because when I awoke the electric clock had been reset. The other clock, coincidentally, must have just been running low on battery power and had slowed down. When I checked my watch, I came to the realisation that I was due at work in ten minutes. It was an impossibility to get there on time.

If you work in a bank or the like, the other staff can cover for you until you get there. This is not the case when there is an airplane fuelled and ready to go. I could have rung in and gone sick, which would still have had ramifications due to the late notice, but I chose to be honest. I liaised with scheduling staff, caught a cab (at my expense – and a big expense) directly to the terminal and made the flight with seconds to spare. I expected to be called into the office for a ‘please explain’, but fortunately it never happened.

Mary has had dozens of similar instances that resulted in ‘please explains’ and somehow she has managed to keep her job. My biggest fear is missing a flight while I am overseas. It has happened to Mary. She was not in her hotel room, and the crew was forced to go without her and operate one crew member short. Mary phoned the company a short while later, explaining that she had been out the night before at a bar and she must have been slipped a drug in her drink. She insinuated that her drink was spiked with Rohypnol or some other date-rape drug, and so she woke up in a random hotel room.

The company was very sympathetic and sent Mary to be drug tested and she did indeed have a cocktail of drugs in her system. Not Rohypnol, but some fairly heavy recreational drugs which may (or may not) have been slipped into her drink. The company was very good to Mary over that incident, even sending memos to other crew warning them of the dangers within some of the ports we stay and for crew to be vigilant.

Very few people know the truth to Mary’s story. I am one of them.

collecting bruises is not my favourite hobby

It is quite a junior crew going to Santiago. There are three Ambers and four Hollies. I jest about the names of course, but there actually is an Amber and, true to my theory, she is blonde and gorgeous. She has only been flying for a few months. That is long enough to know a little, but I can tell that she is young and extremely immature. I meet her for the first time as we are about to enter a room to have our crew briefing. Within a fifteen seconds she has asked me twenty-four questions.

Mary and I are quite senior on this trip, and when we chose our work positions on the aircraft we do so in seniority. I would much rather work with Mary with all her faults than the kindergarten kids down the back of the aircraft. The only problem – Mary is not here yet. Our crew briefing is about to start, and she is nowhere to be seen.

The briefing begins, and the manager first explains that one crew member has phoned in to say she has been stuck in traffic and is running a little late. She wishes to work upstairs. The manager could only be talking about Mary. On this aircraft, a jumbo 747, there is a section upstairs where two crew work. It is a great place to work, but with one drawback – the pilots are up there as well, and they can often be more demanding than passengers. I know Mary would want to work with me, so I volunteer to work upstairs with her.

Mary finally arrives. She apologises to the crew for being late and reiterates just how bad the traffic was. She later told me that she had a dream-run driving in to work and that she actually had slept in.

I am not surprised.

While I am doing my onboard security checks the flight crew arrive. We have four on this trip: a captain, a first officer and two second officers. The captain is a short, no-nonsense man with absolutely no sense of humour. The first officer, Peter, is a nice man. I notice he is wearing a wedding band. He doesn’t appear to be the sleazy type. One of the second officers by contrast has my alarm bells ringing. His name is Nick, and he is probably in his late twenties, is very good-looking and equally sure of himself. I don’t trust this guy, and I am normally a good judge of character. The other second officer is a woman named Fiona. She is lovely. I think she might be fairly junior as she is quite reserved and attentively watching the movements of the other tech crew, particularly the captain.

I get the impression that Fiona is intimidated by the captain. He certainly appears to be an angry little man and demanding. As I am doing my security checks he has barked a number of flight deck entry procedures and rules he wants obeyed and then demands a coffee as soon as he has completed his flight deck checks.

‘How the hell do I know when he has finished his flight deck checks?’

Mental telepathy is not one of my strong points.

Mary is in charge of the galley upstairs. When I enter the galley and start complaining about how rude the captain is, she smiles and says, ‘I see you’ve met the Poison Dwarf.’

‘So he is the infamous Poison Dwarf?’

Mary works upstairs on a jumbo quite regularly, and she has flown with the Poison Dwarf a few times. She imparts some invaluable advice on how to handle him. She remembers how egoistic and obsessive he is.

‘He wants everything. For a little man, he knows how to eat. Why don’t we make a tray of goodies and send it up after take-off so that will at least get him off our backs for a while.’

That seems like a wise thing to do. Mary may lack wisdom in her own affairs, but she certainly knows how to manipulate a situation to get the best result for her. What is, however, not so wise is her observation on how cute the second officer Nick looks. I remind Mary that he is younger than she is, and if she is into younger men, then the back of the aircraft is full of glamorous hosties straight out of college. Mary gives a wry smile and tells me that she has met Nick once before and although they did not get the chance to hook up, she is certain he is interested.

‘He’s a naughty boy that one. I can tell,’ she boasts.

When Mary first started flying she was as pretty as any of the new Hollies and Ambers I have seen. Mary still rarely pays for her own drinks at a bar, but she has also burnt the candles at both ends – and it shows. Her body is not quite as sexy as it was all those years ago. Even though her body has changed, her dress sense hasn’t. She still wears the same revealing little outfits she wore when she was twenty-one. Peter Pan may be the boy who never grew up, but Mary is the girl who didn’t. The only real difference these days is that when Mary was young she was getting chased by the guys; now it Mary who does the chasing.

Mary and I sit next to each other in crew seats for take-off and landing. Mary loves to chat. The only problem is that the passengers seated near us can hear everything we say. I whisper and drop hints that we should talk later in the galley, but Mary is oblivious. She keeps chatting – and loudly. She talks about her recent troubles and therapy sessions. I feel very uncomfortable for those passengers within earshot. I can’t do anything about being ogled, but I can choose what other people get to hear. Mary has those same options, but rarely exercises that discretion.

It can be daunting working in an aluminum tube for up to sixteen hours with hundreds of eyes looking at you and as many ears listening to you. Thank goodness aircrafts these days have inflight entertainment systems – the passengers now have other things to look at as well. When the screens actually work, that is.

I have been a passenger on numerous airlines over the years, and the check-in staff often seat me at an exit row, which means I regularly sit opposite or near operating crew. Most of those times I have not been in uniform, so the operating crew would have no idea that I too am a hostie. Consequently, I have heard conversations that are cringe-worthy. Mostly the crew bitch or complain about their working patterns/rosters and use airline jargon and terminology to thinly disguise what they are talking about. The regular passengers may not understand the specifics of what is being discussed, but they certainly would get the gist.

Once, on a domestic flight with another airline, I had been seated opposite a catty guy and a young Amber. Mr. Catty did all the talking, and he was toxic. The flight was waiting in a queue, readying for take-off and we probably had a fifteen minute wait on the ground: he spent fourteen minutes and fifty-five seconds talking to the other flight attendant, criticising anyone and everyone. He reserved his harshest criticisms for the airline he worked for. I could not help but think that there are so many people who would give almost anything to have his job.

I am very aware that an aircraft is a closed environment and that passengers can see and hear much of what you do and say. I don’t want other people to know my business. Mary doesn’t seem to be aware of the fact, but I am.

‘Mary, I’ll chat later in the galley if that is OK?’

Still it does not work. The best I can do without being really abrupt is try and change subject or involve the passengers seated opposite us. I do both.

The passengers are all very nice and apart from the demanding captain, the day is going quite effortlessly. The day may be going smoothly, but the plane is not. The turbulence has been quite severe at times. The bumps have been caused by clear-air-turbulence, about which the pilots have little to no warning. One of the jolts throws me off my feet in a sideways direction. The seatbelt sign comes on immediately, but I have already bashed into a bulkhead near the galley, then bounced off that and into another section outside the galley before I have the chance to grab a handrail in the galley itself. Mary is already hanging on for dear life.

We clamber our way back through the cabin, bouncing from one seat to the next before we finally get back to our crew seats. We strap ourselves in tight.

On the list of ‘Ten dead giveaways you are a hostie’, number seven was this: Your arms and legs are constantly covered in bruises. You even have bruising from bumping into carts, seats and people in places that don’t seem physically possible.

If my shin is the perfect device to find a glass coffee table in a dark hotel room, then the rest of my body parts are perfect devices for bouncing off pieces of an aircraft. I feel like I’m in one of those bumper cars we find at fairs and amusement parks. The cars, however, have rubber bumpers. When hosties bounce off things in the cabin, we don’t have bumpers and there is little to no rubber inside a plane. When you do bounce off something solid it hurts. Both Mary and I are shaken, slightly bruised, but overall we are not injured enough to make a fuss.

Who does make a fuss is young Amber. Just like Mary and me, Amber stumbled and hit her leg on some part of the aircraft. She is still traumatised when I see her, some twenty minutes after the turbulence subsided. She has tears in her eyes as she shows me the bruise coming up on her leg. I have three or four bruises twice the size as hers, including one on my leg.

I show her my infinitely larger and blacker bruise and she asks me the dumbest question, ‘For how long have you had that bruise?’

I nonchalantly reply, ‘The same amount of time as you have.’

She still looks at me as if I’d bought the bruise at a flea-market.

sometimes crew get very badly battered and bruised

On a flight a few months ago, I had worked with another Amber. This was only her second or third trip. If my memory serves me right, I think her name was actually Holly. She too had been in tears, although not over a bruise but over how a passenger had talked to her. The passenger hadn’t sworn at her or used abusive language, but was just abrupt. If her skin is so thin that she cries over a little rudeness, then lord help her if she does a trip to the subcontinent. Maybe she should do an India trip or two – that will toughen her up.

Not every generation-Y hostie is as soft as Holly or Amber. It can’t be easy for new flight attendants, particularly the really young ones who come straight to a globe-trotting and demanding job like this with no basic life skills and very little experience in dealing with people. I can remember the first time I started flying and how intimidating it was.

It seemed like there were more outrageous characters in the job those days. Often an experienced older guy would put his arm around me and say, ‘If anyone gives you a hard time, you just let me know. OK?’ These guys were respectful and would look out for me, but if someone these days put their arm around a Holly or Amber, they would have sexual harassment charges slapped onto them. Mary jokes that if a guy talks dirty to you, he could be prosecuted, yet if a girl talks dirty, she could get paid $5 a minute.

I was so excited when I first started flying. I had travelled a little before getting the job, but there were so many places I had not seen. I went out every day, and I went out every night. Every trip was an adventure, and the fellow crew members were as exciting to be around as the destinations.

The Holly I flew with a few months ago had never travelled anywhere prior to becoming crew. Our trip was to Johannesburg, South Africa. I have been there many times before, but I still managed to get out and about. Holly barely left her room. I am quite confident she did not leave the hotel.

It was her first trip of any description to Africa, and I even heard several of the other crew members ask if Holly would like to join them in going to a local traditional marketplace. She declined. I went. Holly did not join us for dinner either. I am guessing she sat in her room and ate room service. If someone hides in a hotel room on their first ever visit to a city, what is in store for this girl after she has been to that same city twenty times? I’m guessing she won’t be a hostie long enough to find out.

Mary was never one to sit in her room alone. She has always been a party girl and a party planner.

Even for our current trip, she has made plans for the whole crew, with the exception of the Poison Dwarf and Amber, to meet for drinks the first night we are in Santiago. It is the standard 6 p.m. get-together as seems to be the case in most hotels we stay in around the world.

Both Mary and I have been to Santiago a few times before. Last time I went to San Cristobal Hill. The weather was beautiful during that trip, and the views over the city were great. This time it is a little cooler so hopefully we will have snow on the Andes mountain range, which surrounds much of Santiago. It should make for a spectacular scenic backdrop.

I know I mentioned that the shopping in Santiago was not really in my favourites list, but that is always subject to change. For a die-hard shopper like me, nothing is set in stone as far as shopping is concerned. Mary is not really a shopper. She shops out of necessity, not for the fun of it (like me). Her plan is to party hard at night and sleep during the day. It is not so much a plan, but more a lifestyle for Mary.

Santiago has some great jazz clubs, and I love jazz music. I remember going to several clubs last time in an area called Bellavista. I have trouble remembering most Spanish names, but Bellavista (which means ‘beautiful view’) is easy to recall.

After my mandatory four-hour sleep at the hotel, I decide to go for a walk around town in the near vicinity of the hotel. Mary and I are meeting in her room at six on the dot. From there we can go down together to the hotel bar. There is nothing worse than sitting in a bar on your own and waiting for others to show. It is inevitable that if you are on time and the first one to show up, everyone else will turn up late or not at all.

When we get to the bar, the pilots, minus the Poison Dwarf, already have a drink in hand. One thing I have noticed about pilots is if they say they’ll be somewhere at a certain time, they will be there exactly on time. On the other hand, if cabin crew members say they will be there at a certain time they will be there half an hour later.

I take note that Fiona is a little less reserved than she was on the plane. I am guessing that is because she is away from the Poison Dwarf. Mary sits directly opposite Nick, but I notice Fiona sits beside me and not beside Nick.

Mary and Nick instantly indulge in some friendly banter and not-so-subtle sexual teasing. I am forced to redirect all my conversational skills to the other two techies, which is not so bad as they are both nice people. Peter is soft-spoken, but very genuine. Fiona begins to relax over a drink or two, and I find her very interesting to talk to. She has only been with the company for just over a year and prior to that she had spent a number of years in G.A. (General Aviation).

It must be hard being a female pilot in a male-dominated field. As cabin crew, women need exceptionally thick skin to deal with often chauvinist passengers and occasionally sexist crew. This must be ten times as difficult for a woman sitting up the front with pilots, who are usually men, in the aptly named cockpit.

After several hours and several more drinks, we come to the conclusion that no other crew are turning up. Some said they would, but they did say that before jetlag and fatigue had set in. Peter is going to bed so the remaining four of us decide to go to Bellavista and grab a bite to eat before hitting a jazz club. As the sexual attraction between them builds with every sip of alcohol, Mary and Nick become more and more oblivious to Fiona and me. Thank goodness I have Fiona to talk to as Mary has tunnel vision now.

Fiona and I drink probably half as many drinks as the lovers-to-be do. Even at the jazz bar, Nick barely sits down long enough to drink each drink before returning from the bar with two more full glasses. Note the two glasses, not four. When Nick and Mary stagger away from the jazz club, I barely notice they are gone. Mary does say goodbye and gabbles something about seeing me in the morning. It is not the first time Mary has fobbed me off for a guy. The truth be told, I am not overly perturbed. I don’t particularly like Nick anyway, and I will be seeing a lot more of Mary I am sure. At least this time I don’t have to carry Mary home.

Fiona is quite happy to stay at the jazz club a while longer. She is now totally relaxed and having a really good time. I have been meaning to ask her some questions about being a female pilot; I chose not to ask her this when he was around. Nick is not around now. ‘What is it like being up there in the flight deck with usually an all-male crew?’ I ask.

Fiona is diplomatic and articulates that it varies from crew to crew. She then says something that takes me aback.

‘This trip is a different story though. We have one complete a-hole on the flight deck.’

‘I have heard that the Poison Dwarf has a bit of a reputation.’

Fiona is frank in interjecting, ‘I am not talking about the captain. I am talking about Nick.’

This statement resonates in my head long after we leave the club and even during our cab ride back to the hotel. Fiona seems a little regretful that she had made the declaration, so she has failed to explain herself. She knows Mary is my friend and is also very much aware that Mary had just left with Nick. I am now extraordinarily tired, so I simply bid goodnight (it’s morning already though) to Fiona and then climb into bed, hoping for a long, restful sleep.

I sit up with a jolt. The room is pitch-black except for the glow from the bedside clock: 2.15 a.m. Where the hell am I?

I quickly realise that I am in Chile, and I am in fact still drunk. I have been asleep for like an hour. I can’t take a sleeping tablet because I have been drinking, and I’m afraid of what might happen when I mix the two. I try to get back to sleep, but I can’t.

I switch on the TV but see that all the twenty-two channels are in Spanish. I can only wish to myself that I had learnt to speak Spanish when I was younger. Ironically an old episode of ‘The Bold And The Beautiful’ is being aired on one of the channels, and it stars a much younger Ronn Moss than the one I had met onboard last week. Watching Ronn’s character Ridge Forrester speak in dubbed Spanish should have been too weird to watch, but when you are tried, jetlagged and have had too many glasses of wine then everything looks and seems just about normal. I eventually fall asleep just after the sun rises. I have seen more sunrises than anyone else I know and seen more of them than I care to remember.

I manage to nod off for a couple of hours before getting up. I know Mary won’t be awake yet. Her room is on the same floor as mine, so I write her a note and slide it under her door. I decide to go to the gym. Some of the crew members are already in the gym, including Peter and Fiona.

We hosties talk a lot about sleep – especially when we are away on trips, for it is all the more important to us then. When we see someone from our crew the next morning, the first thing we ask each other is ‘How did you sleep?’.

Peter got a good night’s sleep. Fiona has just spent a night and morning of insomnia like I have.

After a good workout, at least by my standards, I decide to join Peter and Fiona for breakfast in the hotel restaurant; I know that Mary is still some hours away from seeing daylight. As it is Fiona’s first time to Santiago she plans on doing a day tour around the city and invites me to join her. However, I have seen most of the tourist locations in her itinerary, and although I enjoy her company, I explain that I have made plans with Mary. I tell her that I am keen to catch up tonight though.

After breakfast I return to my room, and I see that the message light on the phone is flashing. It is Mary, and she needs to see me as soon as possible. She sounds distraught.

When I knock on Mary’s door, she opens the door and bursts into tears. She doesn’t speak, but lifts up her top to reveal the most shocking bruising I have ever seen.

I am aghast, rendered speechless.

Apparently Nick and Mary went back to his room. He told Mary that he likes his sex a little rough and kinky. Mary is usually up for anything and agreed to be tied up. Nick lied when he said he likes it ‘a little rough’. He likes it a lot rough.

He belted Mary severely, and she was unable to do anything about it. Poor Mary was slapped and hit on almost every part of her upper body with the exception of her face. She tells me that he did pull out clumps of her hair though and degraded her in ways I cannot describe here.

Mary was already emotionally battered and bruised, and now she has the body to match.

beware the fury of a patient woman

I walk to a local supermarket and get Mary some creams to help soothe the pain. I know from experience they don’t really work, but Mary is an emotional and physical mess and this might help her feel better. Mary knows she cannot take the matter to the authorities or the company for that matter. It would be his word against hers, and she already has some bruising from turbulence on the flight over. She was also very drunk, and he would simply say that she fell over (repeatedly).

Mary’s bruising, as severe as it is, will subside, but the mental scars and the hatred for Nick will not. The worst part is that we have to work with and might even have to serve this monster on the flight back.

When we do get back on the aircraft Mary and Nick do not speak. I avoid talking to him as well. I do, however, give him a look of death. I make sure that he knows that I know.

Mary and I are in the same work positions as the flight over, with Mary in the galley and thus in charge of the cooking. When Nick walks past us on the way to the flight deck, Mary cringes in anger.

She waits for him to be out of earshot. ‘Never mess with someone who cooks your food,’ she then hisses. I can see the rage in her eyes.

Mary then asks me, ‘Should I do one lap or two?’

I don’t know what she means.

She still speaks in riddles, ‘One lap or two?’

‘What are you talking about Mary?’ I finally ask.

She explains that she is in charge of cooking Nick’s meals throughout the flight. That I already know.

‘But what does one lap or two mean?’

Mary replies, ‘One lap or two around the inside of the toilet bowl.’

Mary intends to rub into the toilet whatever Nick orders before she cooks it. At least, I’m presuming she meant before she cooks it.

As much as I despise Nick for what he has done to Mary, I remind her that it is probably not the wisest of ideas to poison one of the pilots, especially while we are still flying. Mary still appears intent on revenge – and who can blame her. I personally don’t think that even Mary would do something so foolish. I cannot allow her to risk her job and the safety of all onboard by tampering with Nick’s food. Mary informs me that food poisoning normally takes five hours or so to kick in. Even so, I urge Mary to reconsider her line of thinking, even if they may only be words said in anger.

I know Mary well, and although she is still trying to plot, scheme and talk about it, I interject with, ‘I really don’t want to know anything about it.’ And I make sure I don’t get involved in whatever plan she’s cooking up for Nick.

I know for a fact that Nick will not eat anything from our galley at the start of the flight. He might be a monster, but he is not stupid. He does however eat a meal several hours before landing. Since I was busy in the cabin, I did not see Mary prepare his meal nor did I see if she had compromised his food. I can only trust that she would do the sensible thing.

When we land I say farewell to Fiona. Nick walks briskly past both Mary and me. He has his head down and cannot get off the plane quick enough. It may or may not be my imagination, but I swear that Nick looks decidedly off-colour.

Mary is still stiff and sore with the bruising, but she seems decidedly happier. I never did ask Mary whether she tampered with his food. When I said I didn’t want to know, I meant it.

I help her with her bags because some of the bruising is around her shoulder area and she finds it quite painful to lift her suitcases. I also help her through the customs area and onto our crew bus, which takes us to where our cars are parked.

As I wave goodbye to Mary I feel incredibly sad for her. Apart from revenge issues, she doesn’t have a bad heart. She didn’t deserve the treatment she received. In all fairness, not all pilots, or all men, for that matter, are as cruel and sadistic as Nick. What he did was a rarity. I am sure Mary will not be silent about his actions, and although our airline is quite large, the word spreads. Nick will ultimately get what he deserves and a shattered reputation will be far more painful than one bout of possible food poisoning.

When I finally arrive back to my apartment it is mid-morning, and I am in my usual world of jetlag and fatigue. Helen and I catch up for our customary coffee later in the day. Since our Hawaii trip she certainly has a new appreciation for my job and more interest in my onboard dramas. I don’t have any onboard stories from this last trip to rival the dramas we had on our flight to and from Honolulu, but I do tell Helen about Mary-go-round.

When I first started flying I would tell Helen about some of the outrageous parties and things I saw. The sexual escapades of Mary are about the only current day risqué stories I get to talk about. I am sure some shenanigans still occur; it is just that I rarely get to see it. In my first year or two of flying I saw more wild events than most people would not see in a lifetime. I remember one such party that took place in a hotel crew room. Some hotels have a special room just for crew or crews. In this instance several different airlines shared the same crew room. By the end of this particular night, the room resembled a multicultural orgy. There is a term called ‘cross-crewing’, which generally refers to several different crews from the same airline working together. This party gave ‘cross-crewing’ a whole new meaning.

In another such party in the same crew room, which I didn’t have a chance to attend, a girl from another airline was apparently naked and her posterior was covered in strawberry jam. She was then lifted up in the air and pressed against the ceiling. Apparently there were butt-shaped imprints all over the ceiling.

That hotel subsequently took the crew room away from us. Who can blame them? Sometimes people push the boundaries too far. The minority often ruin things for the majority.

Things do get a little crazy with us hosties sometimes. On a trip I had done a few years ago, I was working with a lovely Thai man called David. He was very effeminate and obviously gay. We were in Bangkok, and I met up with some of the crew in a nightclub in the hotel. Late in the night, a Thai girl came up to me and said hello. My first instinct is that she was a prostitute and was going to proposition me. The prostitutes are often just as attentive toward women as they are toward men, sometimes more attentive.

I turned to her to say that I was not interested, when she said, ‘No, Danielle, it’s me David, from the crew.’

David was not ‘cross-crewing’; he was ‘cross-dressing’.

next time i am on a beach and see a starfish …

Dean and I are excited about our forthcoming trip to Indonesia. Sure, we are doing the trip for charitable reasons, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun while we are at it. I have done some charity work with the company in Jakarta before, and the children we help are beautiful. It feels gut-wrenching to see the poverty and the hardship they endure, but the fact that we are making a difference helps ease their pain a little.

The charity house we assist is like an orphanage, except the kids have not lost their parents, but were abandoned by them. We still refer to it as an orphanage as the children are very much in need of support. In poor countries like Indonesia, when some parents or a parent cannot financially raise their children they sometimes are forced to abandon them. It is sad, but fortunately charity work and the subsequent donations are able to provide some of these kids with a roof over their heads and an education. These children are immensely grateful, and I feel privileged that I have the chance to make a difference in their lives.

I remember reading a story once, about a young girl who was walking along a beach. The sands of the beach were strewn with thousands of starfish that had washed up during a storm. When she came to each starfish, she would pick it up and throw it back into the ocean. People watched her with amusement.

She had been doing this for some time when a man approached her and said, ‘Little girl, why are you doing this? Look at this beach! You can’t save all these starfish. You can’t begin to make a difference.’

The girl seemed crushed on hearing this, but after a few moments she bent down, picked up another starfish and hurled it as far as she could into the ocean. Then she looked up at the man and replied, ‘Well, I made a difference to that one.’

That story had a real impact on me. It changed how I thought about the world and those less fortunate than me.

Today is the day of our trip. Dean sits in Seat 4J. Coincidentally, this is the same seat number Dean had sat on the first time we met. I am actually working down the back of the aircraft, so I won’t be serving him. That suits me fine, although Dean is the definitive nice passenger. He really does have good manners – and he shows it not just with me, but with everyone. A simple ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ goes a long way truly.

On a recent flight, while I had been doing the meal service, a man, seated at the back of the aircraft, asked that he be given a vegetarian meal; he had not ordered a special vegetarian meal, but claimed to be vegetarian. I bent over backwards to search the aircraft and eventually made arrangements to give him a beautifully presented vegetarian meal from the front of the plane. I don’t expect applause, but a simple ‘thank you’ would have been nice. He didn’t even make eye contact. On that flight we had a second service before landing. I did not go out of my way to help him again.

He asked rudely, ‘Where’s my vegetarian meal?’

I replied, ‘The first meal was a crew meal, which a crew member kindly went without so you could have a meal of your choice. Unfortunately, this time, none of the crew members were prepared to go without a meal.’

I once read that the real test of good manners is to be able to put up with bad manners pleasantly. I was pleasant – overly so. I gave him a tray that included a hot meat dish. I placed the tray on his tray table, said, ‘I hope you can eat some of this meal, so bon appetit’ and then moved to the next passenger.

Funnily enough, this so-called vegetarian ate all the meat.

If there is one thing I have been taught over the years it is that we all make mistakes, but we need to learn from those mistakes. This man fooled me once, but he didn’t fool me again.

Some people are not just disrespectful to the crew but to the other passengers as well. When handing out meals we usually start with a cart from the front of a zone and work our way back. Anyone can understand how this system operates, yet a staggering number of people point out that they have not been given a meal yet while you pass then, pushing the cart along the aisle. You feel like stopping and explaining the impossibility of having four crew members and two carts serve over two hundred people simultaneously, but all I do is smile and politely say, ‘We will be coming to you shortly.’

We land in CGK (Jakarta). It is early in the evening, Indonesian time, when we land. I am tired and must not lose sight of the charitable reasons why I am doing this trip. Even so, when we arrive at the hotel, Dean and I decide to freshen up and go to a bar within the hotel. I’ve stayed in a number of hotels over the years in Indonesia and all of them have been splendid. The current hotel is two stars better than splendid.

One of the things I have noticed in many Asian countries is because labour costs are generally low, there are more staff. That excess of staff is noticeable in this hotel as well. The band playing at the hotel nightclub has fourteen musicians on stage – and they are as magnificent as the surroundings. Dean and I dance ourselves silly.

We don’t stay up dancing for too long and wake up early the next morning. It seems almost ridiculous that we will go from the six-star decadence of our hotel to doing charity work for kids who have next to nothing within the span of a few hours.

The next morning, after a quick (six-star) breakfast, we meet the rest of the crew to begin our day of charity work.

I have been to this orphanage once before, and on that occasion we did physically challenging jobs, including construction work. This time, the building is complete and well-maintained. Therefore, today’s exercise has to do more with doing administration-related work, small odd-jobs and spending time with the children. The kids are amazingly well-mannered and a delight to be around. They know how lucky they are to receive the charitable support we give, and we know how lucky we are to be able to help. For someone that doesn’t want children himself, Dean is fantastic with the kids. We spend some of the day observing the children within their classroom. Although the lessons are in Indonesian, a language none of us understand, we still participate in a few exercises. These kids have had such hard lives, but their enthusiasm and cheerfulness is infectious.

One of the jobs Dean and I do together is to mount onto one of the walls a new television bought with the funds from donations. I am sure many of the children have not seen a TV before, so it is a rewarding experience to watch their excited and curious faces peering into the screen. The purpose of the television is not for entertainment, but for education, yet even watching an advertisement becomes entertainment for them.

By the end of the day I think the kids have touched our lives in a way that is hard to describe. The kind of situations that forced these children to end up in this place is too difficult and painful to imagine, yet it is amazing how much love and appreciation they have for life. The experience is truly awe-inspiring.

Often, those that have the least are the ones with the most to give.

Dean and I join the crew for dinner and drinks. Dean hasn’t been to a city like Jakarta before. It is neither a classically elegant city nor a typical tourist destination. However, the crew more than make up for this. They are all warm and fantastic people. I could not have taken Dean away on a better trip.

We leave the hotel and go to a traditional Indonesian restaurant. I am not as fond of Indonesian food as I am of most other Asian cuisine, but it is all part of the experience and Dean really enjoys trying out some authentic local cuisine. Overall, it has been an extremely fruitful day and there is nothing nicer than sharing the experiences with great people.

The next day we visit an area in Jakarta where many of the children from the orphanage had been born. I have been to slums in various countries throughout Asia as well as Africa, and it is a humbling experience, especially watching the children who live there. In this area, the children are playing in a rubbish dump. The stench is overpowering, particularly as Jakarta has just experienced monsoonal flooding, as it often does. We take with us bags of clothing collected by many of the crew, including myself, prior to the trip. Those clothes will be cut up or adjusted and given to those in need. The Indonesians are quite ingenious in their tailoring skills and everything will be used and appreciated. The poverty and conditions are so extreme that even the smallest article of clothing will find a home.

The charitable work we do might be negligible in the bigger scheme of things, but when in doubt, I refer to the story of the starfish and realise that I have make a difference, and will continue to do so.

thank goodness not all people are the same same

For our return journey Dean is fortunate enough to sit at the front of the aircraft again, but this time he has missed out on Seat 4J. He’s in Seat 2C. There is a saying throughout Asia that goes ‘Same same, but different’. In Dean’s case, it is just ‘Same same’, not different. When some retailers in Asia don’t have what you want, they will often pick up something else that is in no way similar and say, ‘Same same, but different’. Most times when they say this, they are smiling.

It is good to have a sense of humor in the retail business. It is also good to have a sense of humor on an aircraft.

The back of the aircraft is full as it usually is. ‘Same same, but different,’ I think to myself.

The passengers are a mix of Western business people, mostly men, and Indonesians. Most of those Indonesians are expatriates visiting their families or are wealthier Indonesians travelling abroad. Also, these people, the more privileged ones, can often can be very demanding and condescending, particularly the women.

Crew members can often be heard muttering ‘Asian Princess’ under their breath. I have already identified several such princesses on this flight.

Since this is a night flight, after the meal service, we turn the lights down to allow the passengers the opportunity to sleep. I take the opportunity to walk up to the front of the plane to check on Dean’s progress – I would put money on the fact that he is already asleep. As I walk down the aisle I notice an elderly Indonesian woman stand up and leave her seat. She looks very unsteady on her feet, so much so that she is staggering quite noticeably. I quicken my walk for she looks like she is about to fall over.

Just as I approach her, she collapses. I manage to catch her, but as her knees buckle she grabs hold of me and turns into me. It is really hard to hold a person when they are facing you. As I attempt to turn her, so I may hold her from behind, she starts vomiting profusely – all over me.

I muster all the strength I can, turn her quickly and lay her down in the aisle, which is not an easy thing to do in such a confined space. Her eyes are shut, but she is obviously conscious as she continues to vomit – and vomit copiously, she does. I roll her into the recovery position while yelling for passengers to get another crew member. The recovery position is where the body is laid down on its side, thus minimising the chances of choking, which is a real threat in this instance. There is not enough space for me to sit beside the woman, so the only way I can work on her is to put a knee either side of her head and bend over her. As she is continuing to vomit I am kneeling in that vomit. I wish there was a way for me to describe the gross nature of this scene without being overly graphic, but there isn’t.

Her eyes have rolled back, and she looks as close to death as one could be. Being covered in vomit is soon becoming the least of my concerns. When another crew member arrives at the scene, I bark instructions to bring more help, an oxygen bottle, rubber gloves and a kit to clean up that vomit.

When the onboard manager arrives I tell him to get Dean – and quickly. In the meantime, the woman starts to come around. She continues to throw-up, but her eyes are beginning to focus. I try to talk to her so I might ascertain what is wrong with her. Between episodes of vomiting, she mumbles something but I am unable to understand her. I know she is Indonesian, and I vaguely remember serving her earlier. She had several glasses of wine and was one of the many Asian Princesses on this flight. I could not remember how good her English was, so the fact that I cannot understand her could be due to her illness as well as her language skills.

Fortunately one of the passengers seated near us is bilingual and offers to assist. I ask her to talk to the woman in Indonesian for me. I am desperate to find out what may have triggered this collapse, so I can help this woman and pass on that information to Dean.

‘My backside has something hard sticking into it,’ the translator says.

What the vomiting woman is referring to is the metal support bar under the seat, against which her backside is resting. The aisle is not very wide, so when I had placed her in the recovery position, one leg was bent over the other, the geometrics of the situation means that she had rest herself against this bar.

Rest, not impale herself into the bar.

Here I am sitting with her, vomit dripping down the front of my uniform and my legs immersed in a pool of bile, and she is complaining that she is not comfortable.

Dean arrives. I really haven’t found out too much about her condition, but another Indonesian-speaking passenger informs me that she heard this woman tell another passenger that she had recently been diagnosed as a diabetic. Her symptoms look consistent with diabetes, and Dean doesn’t hesitate to get the necessary permission to use our onboard medical kit and inject the woman with insulin.

It works.

It’s all very well and good that a simple injection cured the problem, however over thirty minutes have passed since the woman collapsed, and I can tell you, from my own selfish viewpoint, that thirty minutes is a long time to be kneeling in someone else’s vomit.

Dean is again outstanding. He offers to stay with the woman to monitor her recovery, but I insist that we have everything under control and he should return to his seat. I spend at least another hour with the woman, and we place her on oxygen. She steadily improves. The woman manages to doze off, so I take the opportunity to go to the toilets and clean myself up.

I look at myself in the mirror, dripping in someone else’s puke and think, ‘God, don’t I look sexy – not.’

I have been thrown-up on a number of times. With each time I feel a little less violated, but only a little less. Funnily, I was telling Mary-go-round about the flight to Japan with the smelly passenger and the subsequent vomit-fest, and she told me that in all her years of flying she had never been thrown-up on. I found that astonishing.

Dean’s brother, Danny, once told me that he too has had many close calls, but has managed to stay vomit-free so far. However, Danny has not managed to stay so lucky with other body fluids though.

On one of Danny’s flights, a male passenger had obviously mixed drugs and alcohol to the extent that he was hallucinating – and rambling loudly.

This man was looking out the aircraft window and yelling, ‘There’s a hurricane coming! There’s a hurricane coming!’ The sky was completely clear and sunny, and Danny had told the man as much. However, the man refused to be convinced and kept screaming out his hallucinations.

It was decided that this man was not a physical threat, so Danny was taken away from the service and the man was placed in one of our crew-rest seats so Danny could monitor and calm him down. All was going well until the man announced that he had to use the bathroom. Danny let the man go to the toilet and waited outside until he was finished. The trouble was the man opened the toilet door – and he wasn’t quite finished.

The passenger urinated all over Danny’s trousers and shoes. Danny’s compassion for this man left him in that exact instance.

The man was not cuffed, but as soon as the aircraft landed, he was handed over to airport security. However, the man’s conduct toward the security personnel was so inappropriate that he was subsequently handcuffed at the aerobridge. Not only was the man restrained, he was also manhandled – and, according to Danny, manhandled quite zealously.

Danny joked about the incident, ‘I must say that it is better to be pissed off than to be pissed on.’

The Indonesian woman who threw-up on me sleeps until we are about to carry out our preparation for landing. She has not thanked me nor has communicated in any way that she’s grateful for Dean’s and my efforts to save her life. We have organised a wheelchair for the ground-staff to take the woman through customs, but she has improved sufficiently that further medical treatment is not required.

After we land, and after I have assisted the passengers to disembark (including carrying the ‘Indonesian Princess’s bags and helping her to the wheelchair), I meet up with Dean at the duty-free shop. As crew we get a discount on most duty-free items, so I suggest that if Dean wants anything then he should come through the cashier area with me. Dean offers to buy me a present as a thank you for the trip. I decline his generous offer, but do use the time while he is shopping to do what I do best – shop. I find a beautiful watch. It has been years since I have bought myself a good watch. As I notice the number of scratches there are on my current watch, the price tag of this shiny new watch fades into insignificance.

Dean insists on buying the watch in spite of my protests. As we are about to queue before a cashier, I am surprised to see that the Indonesian Princess is at the duty-free shop as well. She has left the wheelchair, while the less-than-impressed ground-staffer has wheeled the chair to the other side of the cashier area. The woman who, only a few hours ago, was lying on the ground semi-conscious and vomiting is now running around the duty-free area like a healthy teenager, her arms laden with bottles of alcohol. Just as Dean and I walk up to the cashier, she pushes her way to the front of our queue. She does not acknowledge us of course, which comes as no surprise to us.

Both Dean and I say nothing to her. Sometimes disgust is best expressed in silence.

there is no such thing as a silly question, just silly people

Two days at home, and I am off again. I contemplate replacing my apartment’s front door with a revolving door. I check the time (on my new watch) as I sit in my car, stuck in traffic. I hate running late, but on this occasion I am stuck in peak hour, caught in heavy rain and heavier traffic.

There is nothing worse than preparing to work a long day and arriving at work already stressed and soaked with rainwater and sweat, dragging a wheelie-bag through puddles in the rain. I dash into crew briefing with only seconds to spare and promise the onboard manager that I will dry my hair and be back to my glamorous self as soon as time permits. Grooming is such an important part of this job, and there are extremely strict grooming guidelines. I am respectful of those rules.

I know there needs to be guidelines, but nitpicking the shape of a pair of earrings or the shade of someone’s nail-polish is overdoing it. I was once pulled aside by an excessively finicky female manager and told that my name badge should be moved a little more to the left. The distance indicated was negligible. I rarely let such small things bug me, but I asked the said manager if there had been a passenger complaint made about the positioning of my name badge. She said no.

‘Have there been any complaints regarding my work ethics?’ I then asked.

She shook her head and replied, ‘Where are you going with this?’

I could have spelt out what I was trying to imply and made her aware that in all many years of flying, I’ve always worn the name badge in the same position and no one had pulled me aside and talked to me as if I were in kindergarten, but I chose to bite my tongue and adjust the name badge that tiniest of amounts.

Thankfully, managers like that are quite rare. They are also the most despised. ‘The Pothole’ (a woman so nicknamed because everyone tries to avoid her) is one such person who upsets everyone she works with. I empathise with managers who have to deal with legitimate breeches of company policy, but treating adults like children is not the way to get the best out of someone. Fortunately, trips with the likes of such managers are few and far between. Today’s manager couldn’t care less that I have a few (wet) hairs out of place. He is empathetic that most of the crew have had to deal with such appalling weather conditions and apologetic that we had to walk/sprint in the rain to get here.

‘Now that’s how you handle crew,’ I think to myself. He knows that I need only two or three minutes in front of a mirror to become my usual, glamorous, international-hostie self once again.

We are off to Singapore. It is daylight all the way, which means we will be flat out. The flight is also full. No surprises there.

Another factor to consider for this flight is the weather. It has deteriorated even more. The captain phones the crew during the boarding process to let us know that due to the strong and changing wind directions there will be a change of runway – and consequently a delay. There is no lightning, but even so the captain is unsure of how long the delay will be. I am reminded again of that silly question I was asked by a passenger on an earlier flight, about how long the lightning would last. I have dealt with thousands and thousands of passengers over the years, and the vast majority of them have been smart. However, occasionally, they are not.

My fellow hosties and I have been asked some pretty silly questions over the years.

On a flight to China, one of the passengers had just listened to a P.A. informing everyone onboard to make sure they have their travel documentation ready, including their passports and visa.

A passenger asked, ‘I don’t carry Visa, but would American Express be OK?’

On another flight, a passenger complained to Damien that he was trying to sleep but the engine noise of the aircraft was a little loud. Was it possible for it to be turned down a tad, the passenger wondered.

Damien replied in his most condescending tone, ‘Sure, I’ll ask the captain if he can turn them off for a while. Perhaps we can glide for a bit and then turn the engine back on after you fall asleep?’

On descent into London’s Heathrow airport, a crew member was asked by a female passenger about a castle we were about to fly over. The hostie said, ‘That is Windsor Castle, one of the most historically famous castles in all of England.’ As the flight attendant left to take her seat for landing, she overheard the woman tell her husband, ‘It looks like a nice castle and all, but why would they build it so close to an airport?’

On a flight to Sydney, Australia, I was asked by a non-Australian if I knew at what age do Australians learn English? This passenger was travelling to Australia for holidays, and as he was from the northern hemisphere he was also unaware that the seasons were opposite in the southern hemisphere. He had organised a tour to the centre of Australia in what he thought was the middle of winter, but was actually scorching summer. I hope he packed a hat, some sunscreen, insect repellent and some extra IQ points.

Another crew, when asking to lower window shades on a daylight flight over the Pacific, joked that there would be nothing to see anyway and that even the International Dateline would not be visible because of cloud cover. The passenger thought the hostie was being serious and lamented, ‘I can’t see anything, but a wing outside my god damn window anyway.’

Speaking of wings, I had someone tell me on a night flight that a light had been following us since we had taken off. The passenger seriously did not realise there is a light at the end the airplane’s wing and it was this light at which they had been looking.

Yet another passenger once remarked, ‘We have been flying over the same barren land for the last 30 minutes. Where are we?’

The flight attendant replied, ‘We are over Arizona. However, you are looking at the wing.’

Such acts of stupidity are hilarious, as long as they do not affect other people. One of the major differences between someone like Damien and someone like me in such situations is that Damien will roll his eyes and be patronising, but I will try and ascertain more information from the person. I do this so I can find out if the question-asker is genuinely devoid of intelligence or if they have simply asked a question without thought. I am not cruel, just curious.

One of the questions I am asked frequently, particularly after a long flight is, ‘Do you turn around and fly back home now?’

Damien would roll those wicked eyes and say, ‘Sure, we have just worked for sixteen-hour day, so why not work a thirty-two hour one.’

I am more diplomatic and explain that we have already worked several hours before we took off, so we will go to a hotel and rest before enduring the long working day back to our home base. Nine times out of 10 the passenger realises how absurd their question was. Other times, the person will come back with an equally ridiculous question.

‘So, do you have to find the hotel yourself?’

Or ‘Do you stay at the airport?’

Or ‘Are you allowed to leave the hotel?’

As curious as I might be, I rarely give these people the opportunity to ask a third question.

We are delayed on the ground for nearly an hour. Sadly when one aircraft is affected by weather conditions as we are, all aircrafts are affected. When we are cleared for taking off, it is not a simple case of turning on the engines and flying off. There were aircrafts adjusted in a holding pattern while the winds were changing and the resultant change of runways was being decided. Those aircrafts now need to land, while the backlog of planes queued for take-off has grown exponentially. Even when everything is running smoothly, the operational systems involved in running an airport and flight schedules is a logistical nightmare. The problems are now compounded.

We spend another two hours on the ground before we even begin to move. Passengers are already concerned and irritable about connecting flights and rescheduling. Again, we don’t have any answers and any complaints should not be made to the company, but addressed directly to God.

Most passengers understand. Flying an aircraft is dependent on a lot of factors. Some of these factors are human, some mechanical and some are out of everybody’s control. If any one of those factors has an issue, you don’t fly anywhere. That’s just the way it is. You can bitch and complain all you want, but that’s not going to change things.

Over the years I have chatted with many pilots about aircrafts. I don’t profess to know much about them (‘them’ refers to planes, but I know just as little about techies anyway) but I do know that an aircraft is an extremely reliable piece of machinery. It needs to be. Planes generally have plenty of back-up systems. On this aircraft, a Boeing 747, there are four engines, and from what I have been told the aircraft could fly and subsequently land on just one operational engine if it had to. There have even been instances of commercial aircraft losing all engines and gliding safely and smoothly to the ground.

I was on a flight some years ago, again on a 747 with four engines, leaving LAX (Los Angeles) when we blew an engine on take-off. There was a loud ‘bang’, and the crew and passengers could feel a minor and temporary deceleration of the aircraft. The plane continued its climb without incident. I am sure the pilot’s workload would have increased, but in the cabin, apart from the ‘bang’, everything seemed normal. Once the aircraft had reached altitude, we went into a holding pattern around the airport. The captain eventually made a P.A. explaining the situation. He reassured the passengers that the aircraft was more than capable of flying on three engines, however it was procedure and aviation authority rules to land as soon as possible. We would be making a routine landing back into LAX.

A businessman passenger stopped me in the cabin immediately after listening to the P.A. and asked, ‘If the plane is more than capable of flying on three engines, why don’t we just keep going?’ Our destination was about five hour’s flight time away, and this man knew that too. This guy was dead serious.

I choose my words carefully: ‘Sir, if you were preparing to drive your car on a long journey, and you blew a tire as you drove out of your driveway, would you continue, particularly if it is illegal to do so? The car is more than capable of driving, but you would fix the problem before you continued, wouldn’t you?’

If this man does run some sort of business, I am pleased that I don’t have a stake in his company.

The pilots spend countless hours in flight simulators practicing this very procedure, and the landing went as per procedure. The aircraft was rendered U.S. (an airline term meaning ‘unserviceable’) and was sent into the hanger to have a new or replacement engine fitted in, while the company managed to get another aircraft for our trip. We were delayed a few hours only, but I am a sure the flow-on effect for the airline when a plane is out of service for a period of time is complicated and extensive.

We will be facing similar disruptions and flow-on effects on this flight today, but for now at least we have pushed back from the aerobridge, and it appears we are underway.

However, a second wave of bad weather disrupts the whole airport yet again. This time we spend over an hour sitting on the runway waiting for clearance and our turn to take-off. What was meant to be an on-time departure is now on a different time zone all together.

As we are on the runway, the crew and passengers are unable to leave their seats. I am sitting opposite three passengers, and fortunately for me they are lovely. As crew we don’t really get the opportunity to talk with passengers for extended periods. I love having a chat with these people and am as interested in their lives as they are in mine. Most of our initial discussions focus on the effects of the growing delay, and then we move on to more interesting topics.

These three passengers consist of a man in his early thirties and a couple in their fifties. The man is travelling to Singapore on business, and the couple is returning home after a vacation. The delay is going to have an impact on their plans, but they are sure that it will all work out in the long run. I like talking to positive people. They understand that some circumstances are out of everybody’s control, like the current one we are in, and are accepting of this. They do ask if the current scenario is a regular occurrence. I have to say that it isn’t. Many flights have the odd delay here and a few minutes late there, but overall, from my experience, the vast majority of flights are either on or close to schedule.

Running an airline is a business. Delays and disruptions cost money – and often a lot of it. This latest delay, where we have been sitting on the runway with the engines running for an hour, must cost a fortune in burnt fuel. Then there is the flow-on effect of rescheduling flights for passengers, and possibly finding and paying for accommodation for some people and so on.

I have been on flights affected by natural disasters or extreme weather patterns. I have been on flights disrupted by hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons, monsoons, tornadoes, fog, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, high winds and, of course, lightning. There are just so many variables to consider when making sure it is safe enough to fly.

Today’s disruption is not great, but leaving late to the destination is still better for the passengers than not going there at all.

When the captain makes a P.A. to say we have been cleared for take-off, the passengers cheer. It is not sarcastic ovation, but genuine relief that we will be finally on our way.

delays are preferable to other consequences

On this flight, not one passenger bitches and complains about his or her seat. Not one person screws up their face in absolute disgust when their meal choice is not available. Not one person grumbles that the cabin is too cold or the engines are too loud. As far as cabin services go, this flight is a dream. I have to thank the delay for this. After that, all these other things seem trivial to the passengers, not worth their time or worry.

Without all the usual time-consuming trivialities it makes a nice change to have time to chat with some of the passengers. There is a little old lady travelling on her own; I had helped earlier during boarding, when she came onto the aircraft in a wheelchair. She tells me that she had been away visiting her children and grandchildren and was now returning home. She was transiting in Singapore, and there was only the one flight going to her destination. She is concerned that she will not make that connection – and rightly so. I reassure her that we will do everything we can to help her. I also tell her that when we get closer to Singapore, we might have some information for her.

We do get that information, and it is not good. The little old lady and a host of other passengers will not make their connections. As I have already interacted with the little old lady, I volunteer to be the one to give her the bad news. I kneel down beside her and inform her of the facts, but advise her that the company is making plans to have her stay overnight in a nice hotel, all at the airline’s expense. They will organise a cab for her the next day to take her to the airport so as she can catch the flight home that next day.

She is not overly upset, but she is confused. I reassure her that everything will be fine and that I will help her when we land. True to my word, I take her bag, assist her to a wheelchair, and then liaise with the Singapore ground-staff. The staff is undermanned and overwhelmed. There are dozens of passengers requiring accommodation and there are dramas-a-plenty. The ground-staff are struggling to cope with the situation, and I feel very uneasy about leaving this slightly disorientated little old lady with the staff. They will expect her to be able to navigate through the customs procedures, and then catch a taxi to a hotel in a city she does not know. Everything including cab fares will go onto the airline’s account, but she still needs to get to the hotel.

I talk with my onboard manager and decide to stay with the little old lady and then take her to the hotel. She is staying not far from our hotel, so I choose to help her get to the hotel, check her in and then inform her of the procedure for her departure the following day. The taxi is being paid for by the airline anyway, so I can then go to my hotel.

The old lady is so appreciative of my assistance. I know she would have struggled without my help, so I happy that I leave her feeling confident about making it back to the airport terminal the next day. Even so I give her my personal phone number so she can call me if she needs to. She doesn’t phone, so I presume she made her flight and then made it back home.

I make it to our crew hotel only half an hour or so later than the rest of the crew. There are several messages waiting for me. My manager has been nice enough to leave a thank you note; he also wants me to confirm that I made it to the hotel alright. I let him know that all is OK. I also have messages from several members of my crew inviting me to a crew party in the room of someone from another crew. That someone is Mary Gomez.

My last message is from Mary herself. Mary happens to have been called out for a trip that goes via Singapore. Being the party-organising-queen that she is, she has offered her room to be party-central. I am tired, and it has been such a long day. Should I go to the party? What the hell, why not?

The party is in full swing when I arrive, and Mary is in her entertaining elements. Some of my crew members are there as well as many, many others. Some I know, some I don’t. Mary’s room is a standard hotel room. If it were a lift, it would come with a capacity warning of ‘no more than eight people’. There are at least triple that number of people inside the room and countless more on the balcony. Finding a patch of bed or chair to sit on is almost impossible. Even so it is fantastic to stand and chat.

Knowing Mary well, I wonder if she has had a room party just to be social or is there some other ulterior motive? Ulterior motives for Mary more than not involve a man. I look around the room (and the balcony) and all the men appear to be gay, except one. But of course, Mary is talking with that one.

Does Mary get her guy? I don’t stay at the party long enough to find out the answer to that question. I am guessing she does.

Will she keep him long enough to know his last name?

I can guess this one too: Probably not.

not all surprises are good, but some are very good

I sit up with a jolt. The room is pitch-black except for the glow from the bedside clock: 2.15 a.m. Where the hell am I?

I once joked that I looked up the word ‘déjà vu’ in an interactive dictionary, and it told me that I had looked up the word before. What some would see in my life as a complete lack of routine is the only thing that’s become routine about my life.

I lie in bed for a period of time, still very afraid of coffee tables, before attempting to scramble my way in the dark toward the window. I suddenly come to the realisation that I am in Singapore. I know the layout of the room, and there are no glass coffee tables here.

I open the curtains to take in the view. It is spectacular. I am never too tired to appreciate a great view.

Over the years, Singapore has grown incredibly, and the new buildings, particularly around Marina Bay, are remarkable. My hotel room overlooks the bay and the city skyline. I should really try to get back to sleep, but then again, I am tempted to remain standing there and soak up the beautiful view. I know I won’t sleep anyway.

I witness yet another sunrise. Equatorial sunrises are amazing. I probably could have gone to sleep an hour or so earlier, but when that glimpse of light starts to appear on the horizon I decide not to. What’s another hour or two without sleep anyway?

Just as I tuck myself into bed and prepare to resume snoozing, I notice that the message-light on the phone is flashing.

Oh no! It is 6:20 in the morning and someone is leaving a message for me. That can’t be good news.

I am normally a positive person, but experience has taught me that early morning messages are not normally from other crew calling in to say ‘Hi’.

I nervously press the play-message button on the phone. In the few moments before the voicemail message begins, I am already imagining all sorts of scary and weird scenarios.

Am I being turned around?

Is my flight delayed?

Has something happened back home? Something awful?

Is it Mary-go-round? With yet another drama?

I listen intently to the message – it is from the company. Part way through the message I become aware that my flight, which was supposed to operate later tonight, has been cancelled. I am now not operating home, but joining another crew some hours later and passengering (also called repositioning, positioning, transiting, dead-heading or alternate paxing) home. I don’t care what the technical name for it is. All I care about is that I don’t have to work on my way back home. Yay!

Very rarely do I get good news like this. Flights and schedules change frequently, yet it normally impacts the crew negatively. My whole crew is now passengering home, and we are entitled to sit at the pointy end of the plane if seats are available. We are also allowed to be out of uniform and blend in with other passengers. That means we are allowed to have a drink. I resist the temptation to scream with excitement. Before I celebrate too quickly, I turn on my computer and check the passenger loads on the flight, particularly at the front of the plane.

I wait with baited breath as the screen loads.

I find that there are plenty of spare seats in the luxury zone. Now I scream with excitement.

One of the dress-code conditions while travelling in civilian clothing is to be in business attire. I haven’t really packed for first-class travel, so I have all day to look for an outfit to wear on the plane. It is a scenario that needs little prodding for me to embrace.

I’m off shopping. Yay and double yay!

The last time I was forced to shop in Singapore was out of necessity, not choice. I had been turned around and sent to Germany at Christmas, in the middle of winter. On that occasion I had to buy clothes to keep me warm, and I only had short notice to get them. This time I have all day, and I can buy almost whatever I want – as long as it qualifies as ‘business attire’.

This will be fun.

I curtail my excitement for the time being, so I can get a few more hours of sleep. My biological retail-clock must be set on alarm mode, and I wake up just as the shops open. I can’t get dressed quick enough.

A short detour via Starbucks, and I have a latte in hand and a grin from ear to ear. One of the real advantages of my job is the world becomes my shopping oyster – and I love oysters, real or shopping ones.

Singapore’s shopping districts are mostly very westernised. There are some more local areas around Little India and Chinatown that are cheap and fun to shop at, but I am in such a good mood that I go straight to Singapore’s shopping jugular: Orchard Road. On this road, there are shopping malls and department stores everywhere. It’s a fashionista’s dream haunt.

Sometimes bigger is better, especially when retail is concerned. I often find the biggest department stores have the best sales. I have been shopping all over the world for so long, and with access to so many choices, that the words ‘paying full retail’ have disappeared from my vocabulary years ago. I have the time and a trained bargain-hunter’s eye to become a shopping guru – and I am.

One such bargain jumps out at me. Normally when a sign says 50% off with an additional 20%, you would expect the clothes to be hideous – and often they are – but today I find a stunning ‘business-like’ dress perfect for tonight’s flight. As I step into the dressing room to try it on, I already know that all the stars have aligned today and this dress will fit like a glove.

It does.

On to shoes, now…

Back in my hotel room, I admire my new shoes in the mirror. They are divine. As I step into the hotel’s lift I smile to myself. I have had the best day shopping, and I am wearing most of those purchases. Now I am ready for the luxurious ride home.

My crew is as excited as me when we board the bus to the airport. ‘Will we all get seats at the pointy end of the plane?’ we all wonder.

We do.

I board the aircraft. As I sit on my throne (coincidentally, Seat 4J) I hear a voice, a very familiar voice, speak to me. ‘Well, well, if it isn’t Danny L – Welcome onboard.’ It is my friend and Dean’s brother, Danny.

I am so pleased to see him. I had no idea Danny was going to be on the crew, and as much as I’d love to wrap my arms around him to give him a big hug, I am aware that there are other passengers seated around me who are not crew.

Regardless, he leans across and gives me an affectionate kiss on the cheek.

‘I’ve been doing a mind-reading course and I’d like to test a theory,’ he tells me before walking away. Danny returns with a glass of champagne and smiles as he places it in front of me.

‘You are a mind-reader,’ I smile.

He quips, ‘I know – it’s a gift.’

Throughout the course of the flight Danny spoils me rotten. It is so invigorating to be the passenger, not the hostie. It is a completely different point of view. And I’m really beginning to like this point of view.

Airline food is so much more appealing when you don’t have to eat standing up. I actually have the time to chew every mouthful and wash it down with a glass (or three) of wine. I sip my wine and indulge in everything I usually don’t have the chance to try when working on the aircraft. I put on my first-class headsets and prepare to watch a movie I have wanted to see for ages. It is great to play queen.

Originally I was meant to be working through the night, yet circumstances now have me watching a movie, sipping delicious wine and even nodding off for a few hours. Then it will be more food, possibly more wine, then landing. This is fun.

The most memorable moments in life are often those we didn’t anticipate.

I have learnt to expect nothing and appreciate everything. And that usually works out just fine for me.

I love my job.

about the author

I’ve worked for twenty years as a flight attendant, and I still enjoy meeting new people and travelling to exotic places. I’d love to hear your comments about my hostie stories. You can also send me your own hostie stories. Send me a message on my Facebook page: www.facebook.com/Confessionsofahostie.

copyright

First published in digital form in 2014 by Monsoon Books

ISBN (ebook): 978-981-4423-70-0

Copyright©Danielle Hugh, 2014

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce, or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Cover Design by Desy Suryani / Elance

Disclaimer

The episodes featured in this book describe the author’s experiences working as an international flight crew. To protect confidentiality, however, the publisher and author assert that not everything the author writes can be taken as the truth and neither party shall be held responsible for any claims of misrepresentation. Some parts have been fictionalised, and names, airlines and locations have been changed. The author has avoided revealing any information that would put colleagues in the air at risk and, most importantly, the author has used a pseudonym and has obfuscated the character of Danielle Hugh to such a degree that the author need not worry about dismissal. The author has taken liberties, and has had some fun, with the facts regarding the personal life of Danielle Hugh to keep identities secret, but the conversations and incidents recounted are based on the truth.

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Contents

a shin is the perfect device for finding a glass coffee table in the dark

they should make all shirts the colour of what you are most likely to stain them with – red wine

nowhere to run and fewer places to hide

the adjective of ‘break’ is ‘broken’

if i were any more affected by jetlag i might need watering twice a week

is ice-cream a food or a frozen drink?

it’s a balancing act

sometimes the job stinks

time spent laughing is time spent with the gods – the japanese say so

rudeness is the weak person’s imitation of strength

never reward bad behaviour

someone’s manners are often a window to their soul

grab my attention, but don’t grab me

a traveller without observation is like a bird without wings

the word ‘paradise’ is often overused, but rarely overrated

how can heaven and hell be so far apart, yet so close?

sometimes you can feel too sorry for someone

some people go one way, some go another

talk may be cheap, but some people are cheaper

you never know if you never ask

not all emergency-related scenarios end badly

collecting bruises is not my favourite hobby

sometimes crew get very badly battered and bruised

beware the fury of a patient woman

next time i am on a beach and see a starfish …

thank goodness not all people are the same same

there is no such thing as a silly question, just silly people

delays are preferable to other consequences

not all surprises are good, but some are very good

About the Author

Copyright