You’re kidding me, right? Source: Getty Images
IF THERE’S any group of people who have seen and heard everything, it’s flight attendants. Maybe it’s the recycled oxygen, the access to booze, or the cabin pressure, but air passengers say the darnedest things. And they usually say them to flight attendants.
“People don’t have a filter with us,” says veteran flight attendant Emily Witkop. “They have that comfort level with us where they’ll say anything.”
These strange flight attendant interactions are often funny, but sometimes not so much (in Dubai, a British man recently was convicted of telling an Emirates flight attendant he would chop her into pieces if she didn’t serve him another drink).
Whether rude or outlandish, there’s very little flight attendants haven’t heard. At the risk of forcing them into therapy after accessing a repressed memory, we asked some of our favourite flight attendants to recall the craziest, meanest, or weirdest things ever said to them during a flight.
“I’m going to write a [complaint] letter about you! You like to read? Because obviously you don’t like going to the gym.”
Former flight attendant Shawn Kathleen, creator of Passenger Shaming, recalls this bitter response from a male passenger who was mad at her for making him sit down and buckle up while the plane was taking off (because how dare she enforce the rules of every single airline on the planet).
“I was upset,” says Shawn Kathleen. “But I didn’t want to give this guy the satisfaction of seeing me upset.”
Sometimes, it’s better to just belt up. Source: Getty Images
“I’m stuck in coach because the agent didn’t like me because I’m too pretty.”
There are lots of reasons why we may not get our desired upgrade, but this woman blamed the scourge of Flying While Hot. “A blonde girl in her 20s rang her bell, and I could see even before getting to her row that she was angry,” remembers flight attendant “Betty,” an anonymous flight attendant who writes the Confessions of a Fed-Up Flight Attendant column.
The woman was flying standby on a buddy pass given to her by a pilot friend, who had told her she might get upgraded to first class. And she would have gotten that upgrade, too, the woman reasoned, but for a meddling gate agent with a prejudice against beautiful people.
“The agent didn’t like me because I’m too pretty,” the woman railed. “This is bull****! Women hate me because I’m pretty!” Betty says, “I told her it didn’t matter how pretty she was, first class is full.” (Betty has more flying horror stories in her book, Betty in the Sky With a Suitcase: Hilarious Stories of Air Travel by the World’s Favorite Flight Attendant.
“I was … umm … using my lighter to see something.”
Shawn Kathleen recalls this dubious excuse offered by a passenger who’d just set off the smoke detector in her plane’s bathroom.
As the alarm blared, and with a part of his hair clearly singed, this guy stuck to his story that he was using his Bic for illumination rather than for an illegal cigarette break. “It was a fully lit bathroom,” a suspicious Shawn Kathleen responded.
Put that out! Source: Getty Images
“So am I going to make my connection?”
That same passenger, after Shawn Kathleen and her fellow flight attendants found what had really set off the smoke alarm: the crack pipe the man had been smoking. He didn’t make his connection, but he did have a lengthy layover with the cops.
“Do you have children? Would you like some more?”
A flirty cowboy made this unwanted offer to flight attendant Emily Witkop during a flight to Midland, Texas. “I’m busy, but thanks,” was Emily’s reply.
Calm down, cowboy! Source: Getty Images
“This soup is cold!”
Betty remembers this complaint, lodged by a woman in first class with a “haughty, dismissive voice.” Betty had to tell her that her cold soup was, in fact, yoghurt.
“You’re a goat!”
Flight attendant Heather Poole had never been insulted in quite this way before.
“I’ve been called all kinds of things, good and bad, for things that weren’t even my fault,” Poole says. “But the one that stands out the most was the unaccompanied minor who called me a goat. A GOAT! I was like, “That’s ‘ Mrs. Goat’ to you, dude.” (Poole shares many more crazy in-flight memories in her book, Cruising Attitude: Tales of Crashpads, Crew Drama, and Crazy Passengers at 35,000 feet).
You’ve GOT to be kidding me ... Source: Supplied
“That blasted noise is driving me crazy. I demand that you make it stop!”
Betty remembers this complaint a woman barked at her. “I nicely responded, ‘I think you are referring to the engines, and we better all pray that they don’t stop’.”
“I just talked to my husband in Los Angeles, and he says it’s sunny there.”
This unsolicited weather report was from an irate passenger on a flight whose takeoff from NYC was delayed by a bad weather report on their flight route. “You do know there’s a few thousand miles of weather in between L.A. and New York, right?” Shawn Kathleen said.
But it’s fine at our destination ... Source: ThinkStock
“When did you start wearing uniforms?”
“That was one of those moments when I had to concentrate on not raising my eyebrows or rolling my eyes,” Betty remembers about that nonsensical question asked of her by a male passenger. But her restraint didn’t last long.
“I usually stifle comebacks, but this time I responded, ‘Oh, yes, the days of the naked flight attendants are long gone!’ All the passengers around the man laughed, but he did not!”
“M-I-C-K-E-Y. F-@-#-%-I-N-G. M-O-U-S-E”
Emily recalls this hilarious incident that took place as passengers — many of whom had just been to Disney World — boarded a flight in Orlando. The pilot was greeting passengers when he saw a little boy holding a Mickey Mouse doll.
“Who’s your friend?” Emily remembers the pilot asking. The boy didn’t say a word as he made it back to his seat. And when the pilot greeted the boy and his family once again after they’d been seated, the boy stayed mum during any and all questions about his doll.
“So, why don’t you want to talk about your friend?” the pilot asked the boy.
The boy, tired of being badgered, finally responded. “Because my dad told me if I said one more f***ing word about Mickey Mouse, he’s going to take it away from me!”
Shh about Mickey Mouse. Picture: Tom Huntley Source: News Corp Australia
“If you wanna fly through a thunderstorm, fine. But let me off first.”
Shawn Kathleen’s reply to passengers who’ve complained about their planes having to divert because of bad weather. “People get in your face and literally start screaming at you because there’s a thunderstorm, asking why we have to go around it,” she says.
“Can you not release that smell you put out on landing?”
Betty was baffled by this question asked of her near the end of one flight: “A woman rang me over to ask, ‘My stomach is really upset, so can you not release that smell you put out on landing? I don’t think my stomach can handle it.’
At this point I’m thinking, ‘What? What scent do we release on landing?’ We don’t have some sort of air freshener fog that rolls through the aeroplane before landing. Sometimes it’s easier to just appease people than argue what’s real and what’s not. So with my best fake smile I assured her we would refrain from releasing the smell on this flight just for her. She was very grateful.”
“Are we going to see nothing but water the whole flight?”
This was said to Betty on a flight … to Hawaii.
Nothing to see here, folks. Source: Getty Images
“Ma’am, I lost my teeth.”
Emily got this desperate plea from a passenger who’d removed his partial plate during beverage service and was unable to locate it.
Emily and her fellow flight attendants had to scramble around on the floor, in the dark, looking for the man’s lost teeth, which they eventually found. “He just popped them back in,” a grossed-out Emily recalls. “Does he know how dirty aeroplane floors are?”
This article originally appeared on Yahoo Travel and was sourced via the New York Post.
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