Flying by the Seat of My Pants: Flight Attendant Adventures on a Wing and a Prayer Read Online Free PDF Page A

back of the aircraft stood up and rubbed his aching back. As he exited his row and grabbed his belongings, he said, “It feels so good to be mobile at last.” Suddenly every passenger within ten feet turned to him and spoke in one voice: “It’s
Moe Beal.”
    So the next time you land in Mobile, Alabama—whatever you do—do not suggest anything about being mobile.

C HAPTER 12
     

     

The Offended Passenger
     
    T he airport in Fresno, California, is a small airport where stairs are pushed to the boarding door and passengers must climb up the steep stairs to enter our aircraft.
    One day as I stood at the plane’s boarding door watching our first passengers walk across the tarmac, I noticed that one woman, the first person coming toward our plane, appeared to be furious. She was an ample woman, and her entire body shook as she took each step, as if she were attacking the tarmac. She stomped up the stairs, appeared before me, and said, “I want to see the captain now!
Now!”
    “Can I help you?” I said, hoping I could at least diffuse a situation that must have occurred inside the terminal. “Is something wrong?”
    “Yes
, and I only want to discuss it with
the captain!”
    When the captain heard the ruckus, he stopped his pre-flight and came out of the cockpit. The angry passenger wasted no time. “I’d like to report that gate agent,” she stated, pointing to the terminal. “He was extremely rude. The rudest man I’ve ever met!”
    “What did he do?” asked the captain, grabbing a pen and paper to take notes.
    The passenger held up her ticket jacket and exclaimed, “Look at what he wrote on my ticket!”
    Sure enough, there in big, bold letters, in indelible ink, the agent had written the word
FAT
across the face of her ticket jacket.
    “I am so sorry,” I said. “It stands for Fresno Air Terminal.” I grabbed the ticket from the passenger behind her. “See? He wrote it on everyone’s ticket.”
    “Oh,” said the woman, as she glanced at the other tickets with the word
FAT
across them. “Oh.”
    Then she turned and walked to her seat and never mentioned the incident again.

C HAPTER 13
     

     

What Do You Have in This Bag?
     
    E very day passengers bring bags on board that they are not able to lift into the overhead bins. So they turn to me, and say, “Will you lift this for me? I don’t want to hurt my back.” I am tempted to say, “Oh, I
do
want to hurt my back! Here, let me.”
    Sometimes I think,
I can’t lift fifty pounds over my head any better than you can
. Other times I simply ask a male passenger to assist me. Most times, though, especially if the person askingis a little old lady, I feel sorry for her and offer to carry her bags. That is how I got myself into carrying the heaviest bag I have ever lifted.
    It was a shoulder bag. A woman who told me she was seventy years old came to the airplane in a wheelchair with her bag hooked on the back of the chair. I met her at the door and helped her to her seat. Then I went back for her bag. When I tried to lift it, I realized it must weigh close to a hundred pounds—more than twice our luggage limit.
    I work out with weights. Even so, I was barely able to carry her bag to her seat and get it stowed. After the flight, she wanted me to carry the bag off the plane. I knew I couldn’t ask anyone to help me, so I just went for it, huffing all the way up to the exit door.
    “What do you have in here?” I could barely speak for the strain of carrying her bag. “Gold bullion?”
    “No,” she said sweetly. “Rocks. Lots of rocks. My daughter’s house is next to a rock quarry. I just went over there and filled my bag with some big ones. For my garden and all, you know.”
    I set the bag down. And made a mental note:
Ask passenger if she has rocks in bag before offering to lift
.

C HAPTER 14
     

     

The Mistaken Beverage
     
    W e were doing trips from Seattle, Washington, to Juneau, Alaska. Juneau is a rugged place. And sometimes