Point of View
Flight attendants now play a critical role
By Carl Heintze
When I fly--which isn't very often--I always, figuratively, take off my hat to the flight attendants.
In part, that's because I admire their calm, courtesy and service and, in part, because I can't imagine myself putting up with all they have deal with these days.
Flying rage seems to keep rising to new limits. Drunken, psychotic and, just plain nasty passengers seem to increase with each passing year. Flight attendants are the first line of defense with such characters.
Even without this peril, flight attendants work most of their day in the aisles, forever being bumped by passengers on their way to or from the toilets. They serve coffee, tea or milk, without spilling in their customers' laps. They have to look calm and collected, even when turbulence is bouncing everyone around the sky, and they are in danger of being bounced off the cabin ceiling.
They have to endure endless reasonable, and unreasonable, demands for water, pillows, blankets, aspirin, air sickness pills and so on.
And, they have to smile occasionally, even if they don't feel like it. In my days of flying, I've had flight attendants show me card tricks (I admit, this was in a time when traveling by air wasn't what it is now), tell me about their children, give me pens when I didn't have one, and serve me meals which, if not great, were at least palatable. (I also have to admit the meal times were before today's harried packed flights existed.
And, I am not unmindful that for years, flight attendants swam through a sea of smoke, when smoking was still allowed on flights. On a flight to Europe or Australia, this was definitely a continued hazard to their health.
Nor can I forget the heroic flight attendant on a Hawaiian inter-island flight, who crawled up the aisle when her plane's upper skin peeled off, and fell into the ocean. She was checking seat belts. Her fellow attendant was not so lucky. She was swept away to her death in the Pacific.
Flight attendants got their start as a kind of reassurance for what was once, largely, a male cargo. They were hired because they were young and pretty, and few men would be likely to admit that, if these young women seemed calm and assured about flying, they had to be, too.
A lot has changed in flying since then. Flight attendants are no longer solely female, and their duties have increased with the passenger load. They are now vital to the way airlines operate.
They herd passengers aboard, make sure they aren't going to fly out of their seats during turbulence, manage evacuations when necessary, and handle in-flight medical emergencies, including heart attacks, epileptic seizures or just plain nerves. In between, they make coffee, heat meals and serve them, clean up after lunch, dinner or breakfast, work the in-flight movie screens and head sets, and do most of this in a space that is as long as the plane and as narrow as one and half hips, side by side.
True, I suppose there are rewards. One of them is being able to fly a lot, and to fly to a lot of places. But most flight attendants don't have all that much time. In contrast to the old days when they got laid off if they were pregnant or sort of "over-age," many flight attendants these days are mothers and wives. Not as many marry pilots, as once was the case, and their lives in the air, certainly, is far from being as glamorous as it is supposed.
In many ways, they have gained respect. Male harassment has declined, though it is still present. The flight crew, which changes from flight to flight, knows it is necessary to the safe and proper operation of a flight.
Alas, a lot of passengers take flight attendants for granted. They tend to think of them as part of the plane. They're just there, and, if they aren't, passengers get upset and complain.
For all this, I admire them. And, although, as I said, I don't fly very often, almost all my flight-attendant experience has been positive. I can only remember two or three I wished were somewhere else, and almost all of them were on foreign carriers.
So, as I say, my hat--if I wore one--is off to flight attendants, male and female. I wouldn't have your job for a million bucks. On the other hand, keep up the good work. I want you to serve me just as you have been, when I go aloft again.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
