FLIGHT ATTENDANTS SPILL AIR SERVICE SECRETS SO YOU CAN FLY HAPPIER (AND AVOID THEIR WRATH)

Flight attendants have a unique window onto the strangest of human behaviours, as they observe travellers interacting in their flying metal box in the sky. While some people focus on the luxury of the job, and some think it’s the worst customer service gig there is, some flight attendants just love to prank their passengers.
In an anonymous and somewhat shocking interview with Men’s Health magazine, three flight attendants spilled the beans about some of what’s really going on once the cabin doors are closed. Everything from beverage service to the ‘sleeping’ passenger next to you suddenly comes under suspicion.

 

A lot of what they’re doing has less to do with pranking and more to do with managing the social environment of the cabin.

 

Flight attendants have to deal with issues that occur amongst passengers on board, so it’s no surprise that they’ve developed some tricks of the trade to encourage a flight to go as smoothly as possible.

 

Coffee

It all starts with the coffee. Clearly these flight attendants speak for their own routes and not for any industry standard or FAA regulation, but the bottom line is, you probably don’t want to drink airplane coffee if you end up on a flight with one of these three.

 

First of all, ‘Brian’ suggested that some flight crew don’t even bother making separate caffeinated and decaf coffee pots.

 

If you end up on a flight with properly caffeinated coffee, the airplane standard still has a much lower caffeine level since nobody wants a plane full of anxious, fidgeting travellers, according to ‘Alison’.

 

While these aren’t the flight attendants’ real names, the sometimes unpleasant details make it hard to disbelieve their stories. Apparently the water used to make coffee and even refill water service bottles in any cabin that isn’t first class is pumped from a tank that is unlikely to have been cleaned in the recent past.

 

Death

One of the more traumatising tidbits the flight attendant trio shared has to do with untimely death on an airplane. Crewmembers are trained to discretely cover the passed passenger with a blanket and buckle his or her seatbelt. Neighbouring passengers have to spend the duration of the flight next to the body, and flight attendants try to pass it off as anything but death to the best of their ability:

 

“We told the other passengers he was drunk. It was insane! It was like Weekend at Bernie’s!”

Ouch.

 

Tips to get ahead

Despite the fact that these confessing flight attendants are clearly not the ones you want to be flying with, their tips might be helpful for future flights, especially if you’re a jerk.

 

Apparently many flight attendants share the motto “don’t get mad, get Visine”, and won’t hesitate to mess with a passenger’s food if he is rude or unruly.

 

It may not have crossed your mind to tip a flight attendant before, but these three say it’s not a bad idea.

 

“We can make your flight experience so much better, if we want to,” said ‘Alison’. And if you’re an attractive passenger, it’s entirely possible that the flight crew will notice.

 

Of course, if you’re getting free booze because a flight attendant finds you attractive, you should still not be a jerk. If you’re not getting free booze because a flight attendant doesn’t find you attractive, don’t be a jerk!

 

Flight attendants have apparently been known to target nasty passengers with flatulence, and even have a term for the aggressive act of walking slowly down the aisle, passing gas the whole way: crop dusting.

 

Look, flight attendants are people too. If you’re not the kind of person who would be nice to a flight attendant anyway, consider that if you’re good to them, they’ll be good to you.

 

Keep in mind that they can unlock lavatories from the outside, and they probably know if you’ve snuck in there to join the mile-high club.

 

When in doubt, take it from ‘Alison’: “Never eat the dinner rolls. Never, ever, ever eat the dinner rolls.”