Flight Attendant's View of Life in the Air

Air travel is hard on passengers these days -- and on flight attendants too

What's the quotation about not judging a man until you have walked a thousand miles in his shoes? Michelle Higgins, who writes "The Practical Traveler" column for the New York Times, did just that. "In a behind-the-scenes look at the other side of air travel, I donned a navy suit and starched white shirt earlier this summer and became a flight attendant for two days," she wrote. "With the cooperation of American Airlines, I first went to flight attendant training school at the company’s Flagship University in Fort Worth, Tex....I then flew three legs in two days: a round-trip journey between Dallas and New York, and then back to New York the next day. And though the other flight attendants knew I was a ringer, the passengers did not. Thus I got a crash course in what airline personnel have to put up with these days — and, after just one day on the job, began to wonder why the phrase 'air rage' is only applied to passengers."

Her piece is called "Flying the Unfriendly Skies," a title many of us writers have used in many ways but not with such grueling,in-the-trenches research. One of the cabin crews that she flew with comprised three veteran flight attendants with some 70 years of experience among them. "Is there a less-enviable, more-stressful occupation these days than that of a flight attendant? Just the look on their faces as they walk down the aisle — telling passengers that no matter how many times they try to squeeze them in, their suitcases are not going to fit into the overhead bin, or explaining yet again that they will not get a single morsel of decent food on this three-hour flight — tells you all you need to know of their misery," she continued.

The decisions made by airline executives that have resulted in increasingly crowded airplanes, usurious surcharges for everything from peanuts to pillows to pets in the cargo hold are not the flight attendants' fault, and neither is an air traffic control system, congested airports or weather that results in delayed or canceled flights. Imagine the air-travel mess today with Hurricane Ike slamming into the Texas Gulf Coast, including Houston, the seventh-busiest airport in the US and Continental's main hub.

So next time you fly, don't take your frustration out on the flight attendants, or the gate agents for that matter. They are coping with the same air-travel mess you are -- day after wearying day. The article is a good read, and it's a good reminder to display a bit of empathy next time you travel.