Gadling

Click on a label to read posts from that part of the world.

Recent Comments:

Galley Gossip: Frequent flier pet peeve - rude flight attendants {Gadling}

Aug 13th 2009 10:28AM I think everyone is so amped up and ready to explode over air travel that we blow up over tiny things. Something about crossing the threshold of an airport just erases any semblance of courtesy, patience, or general getalonginess (what, that's a perfectly cromulent word) that we might have in any other arena in life.

There is a BIG difference between "unintentionally gruff" and "totally mean" and I think in this case the FA leans towards "unintentionally gruff."

I've flown internationally since I was a child, growing up as an American expat overseas and only once has any FA been actually awful - it was a KLM flight back in the early 90s (back when you could still smoke on international flights, remember that? God, how awful, but I was a smoker at the time, so I booked in smoking). Well, keep in mind smoking was allowed (and I'm not trying to start a debate on whether or not it should have been, I'm totally behind the banning of smoking on airlines) and she FREAKED out on me when I lit a cigarette (after, I should add, we had reached safe cruising altitude, and the non-smoking light went off, and other people had lit cigarettes). I figured even then that she was just having a bad day.

It is amazing to me how entitled passengers feel regarding the way that FAs should behave towards them. There's some latent sexist illusion that FAs need to be completely subservient and flirty and unfailingly kind (ever notice how pretty much every FA that gets complained about is a woman? Never heard a peep about male FAs being rude), and when they don't meet that, the hue and cry comes up about how "I paid $$$$ for this ticket and HOW DARE YOU NOT KOWTOW TO MY UNREASONABLE DEMANDS." Even though airfare is cheaper now than it has been in years, and working conditions for airline employees has gone down the tubes.

Not to mention that the primary use for the FAs is to save your keister in the case of an "incident." They can sit in their jumpseats and tell you to cram it with walnuts for the entire flight if they need to, because while it is very very nice that they give us drinks and food and help us when we need it, that's all icing compared to them opening the doors, deploying slides and yelling at you to get out of the damn plane.

And re the video/safety briefing? Statistically you're more likely to survive a plane crash if you pay attention to that EVERY SINGLE TIME you fly. Read this article and then tell me if you don't take the stupid 5 minutes you're on the plane to review the safety card and count the rows of seats before you and behind you to your nearest exit.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/03/04/survive.airplane.accident/index.html