“Surly demeanor” is what bugs passengers most about flight attendants, confirming any suspicion anyone’s ever had about customer service in the airline industry. More than 5,100 readers weighed in on a USA Today survey, with 38 percent saying that attitude was the worst part of dealing with flight attendants.
What else can’t we stand about flight attendants? According to USA Today, 21 percent of respondents can’t stand flight attendants “gabbing together in the back”, with 20 percent irritated when they won’t deal with “unruly passengers.” Twelve percent of passengers are annoyed by the “schoolmarm attitude” and 9 percent by drink and food service that isn’t fast enough. I suspect the 9 percent result would have been higher if so many amenities hadn’t been cut during the recession … which has effectively eased the workload.
The results were surprising, according to the article, which thought passengers would be irked by flight attendants who won’t deal with problematic passengers, but it seems we don’t like flight attendants more than we don’t like our fellow fliers:
I thought refusing to deal with bothersome passengers would come out higher; that’s what irks me most. I rarely have seen an FA challenge an obnoxious drunk, the person who hogs more than his or her share of space or the loud talker who clearly is making the flight miserable for anyone within earshot.
[photo by alexindigo via Flickr]