More Confessions of a Hostie (7 page)

Even so, one does not deliberately stick their hand into a bee hive. Aircrafts should be respected, and flight attendants therefore take safety precautions very seriously. Any passenger that doesn't show the same respect is usually quickly and efficiently dealt with.

On a recent flight, I had a difficult situation when a passenger refused to open their window-shade prior to landing because the sun was shining in. I understand that it is inconvenient, but it is a black and white safety issue. I explained this to him and then suggested the passenger use a magazine or a pillow to shield his eyes from the sun.

‘What's the difference between keeping the shade closed and placing a pillow over the window?' he grumbled.

It is a valid question, but aviation rules require all shades to be kept open for landing, so we and the passengers can see through the window for fire and other sorts of dangers. Rules are rules for a reason. Sure, the probability of anything happening is one-in-a-million, but being careful and making sure others are too is our job. That is why we train, and that is why we study, and that is why we take safety issues so seriously. And that is why airline travel is so safe.

Should a passenger disregard our safety instructions, the consequences of their carelessness can be dire for that passenger.

Once on a flight, a passenger who seemingly belonged to a biker-gang was sitting in one of the exit rows. He refused point blank to listen to the flight attendant's safety-related instructions and even threw a few words of profanity at the hostie. Cutting a long story short, the captain was notified; when the plane landed, the police were there to meet and greet the biker.

The biker did not physically assault or threaten anyone, nor did he cause damage to the aircraft. He simply did not adhere to safety-related instructions – and that is an offense. The biker was charged, fined and consequently banned from flying on our airline in the future. I am also sure that his details would have also been circulated within the customs department and if any other international carrier were to allow him to fly, he would be ‘red flagged', thus requiring customs officials to go over his possessions with a fine-tooth comb.

All of this happened because the man didn't like to be told what to do. You don't like to abide by the rules and regulations of airline travel? I suggest you walk, drive, hire a boat or stay at home instead.

On this flight home, fortunately, there are neither problems nor problem-passengers. I am also happy with the amount of studying I have done. I've even managed to get an hour and a half of sleep onboard. Jetlag and fatigue are still my mortal enemies, but I actually feel like I can give them a good fight now.

‘Dare I risk catching up with Dean tonight?' I can't help but wonder.

This flight has landed in the morning, like most of my flights tend to do. I text both Dean and Helen to tell them I have landed and will talk later in the day. I have kept my options open. I guess different flight attendants have different routines when they land. Dean's brother, Danny, has a wife and kids, so he has no choice but to take part in the family situations and obligations that present themselves. When he is back home in the morning from a trip, he usually gets some sleep first and then picks up his children from school, even go for parent-teacher meetings if he has to. Such plans sound good in theory, but don't work out all the time.

Once, the flight Danny was working on was diverted because of an onboard emergency – a passenger had a heart attack and they had to land immediately. The aircraft was then stuck on the ground for several hours due to bad weather. Danny's flight eventually landed mid-afternoon and he raced straight to the school to pick up his child and meet with the teacher. By this time, Danny had worked for twenty-two straight hours, without any sleep or breaks.

Danny was beyond deliriously tired when he walked into his daughter's school. He was a blithering idiot, as he put it himself. While the teacher was trying to have a serious conversation with him, and all he could do was look at one of the student's paintings on the wall. The artwork of a tall building suddenly caught his attention, but it looked to him like a gigantic penis, and he couldn't stop looking at it. The teacher noticed how distracted he was, and Danny tried to apologise for the way he was acting; however, he didn't get that right either. Instead of saying ‘nice painting' to the teacher, he said ‘nice penis' and then walked away feeling stupid.

Danny is one of the most thoughtful and intelligent people I know. If he turns into a mumbling fool with jetlag and tiredness, there is surely no hope for me. No, I don't think I will catch up with Dean tonight. That's not such a good idea, after all.

After my mandatory four hours of sleeping-tablet induced sleep, I meet up with my best friend for coffee. Helen is extremely excited that she will be boarding a flight to Hawaii in several days. I have taken Helen on a few shorter trips, so she knows the procedures and the protocol. Those other trips were to what I call ‘shopping destinations'. In those places, we shopped and shopped till we dropped. Usually, Helen doesn't really care about where she is going to as long as she gets some time away from her family for a few days. This time, however, Helen is more excited by the destination. Honolulu is a stunning place. Helen can't wait to get there.

Before I booked her ticket, I checked the passenger loads to see if we were OK. We were. And unless things change dramatically in the next few days, it looks as though the flight will have plenty of spare seats. I also looked up the crew list for the flight and found that Damien is coming along. Damien was on my last trip to Honolulu: ‘the flight to paradise that went via hell'. On that trip Damien was head-butted by a sumo-sized Polynesian man and suffered a broken nose. The giant had been cuffed and restrained – not an easy task for several policemen let alone a handful of hosties. But we did it. On that same flight, we had a young girl who mixed her alcohol and sleeping tablets, and then decided she was Lady Godiva, only without the horse.

As Helen and I sip our lattes, I tell her all about the flamboyant nature of Damien and some of the antics I have heard of him doing over the years.

I had met Damien for coffee in our crew hotel in Singapore, not long after that fateful Honolulu trip. His broken nose had been mended by then. ‘My beautiful face is thankfully still beautiful!' he had cheered. Damien is actually not that good looking. He is a rather large man with chubby cheeks and a mischievous grin. For his size, he moves more gracefully and with more femininity than most of my female friends. Over coffee he narrated to me the ‘the flight to paradise that went via hell' story in detail, as if he had forgotten I was on the flight. In his recollection of that day's events, the Polynesian man was even bigger, the bruising to Damien's face extended from ‘ear to ear', the girl had not walked but ‘had run wildly' through the cabin naked and the crew should have been given ‘bravery awards of the highest merit'.

The last statement I agree with. We should all get bravery awards, indeed. All the company had sent us were a generic letter that read ‘Thank you for your efforts'. That was about it.

I don't do the job for awards or even the acknowledgement of my efforts, but sometimes it helps. I have won a number of awards and commendations over the years for both service and safety related events, and I truly appreciate the recognition I have received from my company – even those few accolades were for minor happenings.

Damien was very angry with the company that we were not formally commended for the incredible job we did on that sector to Honolulu. However, he didn't quite verbalise his feelings in such a diplomatic way. Damien is far more cutting than that.

I do find Damien's brutal honesty refreshing and his sense of humor devilishly funny. As long as it doesn't upset too many passengers, it will be fantastic having him come along on this trip. My ‘flying friend' Mary Gomez recently did a trip with Damien and relayed some typically funny stories about him. Damien had an altercation with yet another passenger. Fortunately this was merely a verbal altercation, not a physical one.

According to Marry, a woman passenger had been asking a million questions, and she had asked Damien one question too many.

‘What is the captain's name?' the woman then asked. By this point, the whole crew, and particularly Damien, had all had enough.

Damien didn't bat an eyelid when he replied, ‘Captain Speaking. His name is Captain Speaking.'

The woman had surprisingly believed him. When she had heard the next P.A. from the flight deck, however, and heard the captain say ‘This is your captain speaking…' she had realised that Damien had been sarcastic. The rest of the crew had thought it was hilarious, but the woman had become very upset and been unwilling to laugh at the joke.

Damien often tells me such funny and often shocking anecdotes about himself. Once, on a flight out of India, a passenger had informed him that a young child had used the aisle as a toilet – and not for number one either. It sounds like a far-fetched scenario, but this has happened to me once too, on flight from China. How I handled the situation was a lot different though compared to how Damien did.

The passenger had told Damien that the child had returned to his mother, who was seated in 28D. Damien marched up to woman and confirmed that she did indeed have a young child seated next to her. Damien read this woman the riot act. She didn't understand English or what the screaming was about, so he led her to the offending offering left behind in the aisle some rows away. Although the Indian woman was unable to speak English, she vehemently denied that her child had anything to do with the mess.

Undeterred, Damien gave the woman a pair of gloves and a plastic bag. ‘You clean it up!' he yelled at her.

The Indian woman still argued that neither she nor her child had anything to do with the mess, but eventually Damien's insistence paid off, and the woman reluctantly got down on her knees and cleaned up the child's excrement. When the woman had finished and disposed of the bag, she returned to her seat, 28D, while Damien walked away feeling victorious. However, the passenger who had informed Damien about the mess approached Damien. ‘You must have misheard me. I said the woman with the child was in 38D, not 28D,' he said to Damien.

Damien went to 38D, and sure enough there was another Indian woman there, with several children seated beside her. Damien had made the wrong woman clean up the mess.

Damien thinks this story is hilarious. I feel sorry for the poor woman.

I am sure that at times Damien has held onto his job by the skin of his teeth. However, even after twenty years of flying, Damien has not changed one bit, and that is what makes him so likeable. If he is on your good side, he is a pussycat; if he is on your bad side, he can be one ferocious cat.

When I'm done telling Helen all the crazy Damien stories, Helen seems very impressed with how much fun he seems to be. She can't wait to meet him.

Well, Damien or no Damien, Helen can't wait to get to Honolulu. I just hope the trip lives up to her expectations.

never reward bad behaviour

The crew members are given a briefing before boarding the aircraft that will take us to Honolulu. It is nice to see Damien again, and he seems to be in terrific form. All the other crew seem really nice as well. Our manager is an attractive woman named Kate. I think I have flown with her before, but I am unable to recall when or where. My first impression of her is that she is delightful. She says that she has not been to Honolulu for over eight years: she is as excited as Helen to be going there.

I purchased an upgradable ticket for Helen. That means that she is entitled to sit at the pointy end of the plane should seats be available. It sounds good in theory, but it doesn't always work out the way it should. On this occasion everything goes to plan, and the spare seats that my computer research had showed me earlier are indeed still available.

Helen gets to sit in 1A. Helen's excitement knows no bounds; it actually goes up a few notches, if that is at all possible.

I am greeting passengers with Kate at the front door, and when Helen comes onboard I introduce her to Kate as well as to the crew working at the front of the plane. They all make a big fuss over Helen, and as she takes her seat in 1A, the smile on her face could light up even the darkest of voids in the universe. Not only does Helen have the best seat in the house, the ground staff told me that the seat next to her is vacant. This is perfect, I think to myself.

Damien is working down the back of the aircraft, but comes up specifically to meet Helen. He asks me what Helen's last name is, and I tell him it is Windsor. Damien approaches Helen and greets her with a formal bow. ‘Welcome onboard, Ms. Windsor – or should I say “Your Majesty”.'

Helen doesn't quite get what Damien is on about, but smiles politely anyway. Damien uses his most refined voice to explain himself, ‘The Queen of England's last name is also Windsor. You are a Windsor, and you are sitting in 1A – the royal seat of this aircraft. You must be of royalty, so as your humble servant I shall refer to you as “Your Majesty”. Is there anything I can get for you, Your Majesty?'

Helen giggles, already taken with Damien, and replies, ‘No thank you, but thanks for asking.'

As Damien walks past me he whispers ‘She's a doll', referring affectionately to Helen.

I am pleased that Damien made the effort to meet Helen, and thank him for his gesture.

While we are talking, a tall and handsome man walks through the front door. He has his hand outstretched, his boarding pass held ready for us. I recognise the face. He is a well-known actor starring in one of the most popular soapies on television. Until I read the name on the boarding pass I was unaware of his real name; however, I do already know his character's name on the show.