Cruising Attitude

by Heather Poole

  The last thing the psychic had told me was my life would completely change. Boy, did it ever. Thirty days after she walked on board my flight, something horrible happened. On September 11, 2001, I landed in Zurich early in the morning. I was on vacation. After a short nap, followed by a quick shower, I sat on the end of the hotel bed with wet hair and turned on the television. With a hairbrush resting on my thigh, I watched in horror as the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center. I did not move from that spot for hours. Being so far away only made it worse. I didn’t care that at that moment Switzerland was probably the safest place on Earth. All I wanted to do was go home.

  Even though I’d been told by an airline representative not to bother going to the airport as a standby passenger, I went anyway so I could get my name on the list. I guess others had the same idea because I wound up being number nine-hundred-and-something on the list. I could have bought a full-fare ticket in coach for $8,000 that would have guaranteed a departure on the twenty-first if I weren’t broke from having to pay a hotel every night and an overpriced espresso and croissant at the airport each morning. After two weeks of checking in and out of a Swiss hotel and lugging my bags on and off a train to get to the airport and then back to the hotel every day, I finally made it back to the United States. I landed at an airport in Texas because my flight to Chicago had been canceled. Instead of continuing on to New York, I decided to stay with my parents for a while. I had the time off because my route, the flight I’d flown for almost two years, New York–Vancouver, had been wiped off my schedule for the month, never to return again because it was an unprofitable route that catered to cruise lines. I was lucky because I got a little time off that most of my colleagues did not. They had to go right back to work. Of course, there were a few that quit, like my friend and ex-roommate Jane, who was now married and pregnant, but the majority of flight attendants I knew soldiered on. I can’t even imagine what it must have been like to fly in the days right after.

  I returned to work less than a month after so many people lost their lives. As I stepped out of the Kew Gardens cab in front of my apartment building in Queens, the smell in the air was strange and unexplainable. It lingered for months. The black soot that accumulated on our windowsill in the apartment had to be cleaned off every day. A pile of cardboard moving boxes sat on the curb, waiting to be loaded into a truck. Every morning they were there, the same boxes with different shipping addresses written on the label, different neighbors dispersing to different faraway cities. When I noticed a few of them were headed for Japan, I felt sad knowing the opera singer I’d never met other than a quick hello in the elevator would no longer be filling our hallway with beautiful music. As people left New York in droves and the odd smell refused to dissipate, my colleagues and I went back to work, back on the airplanes. And while we did so, memorials for coworkers who had lost their lives were set up in Operations.

  During one memorable flight into New York, we were low over the city, and all the passengers were glued to the windows on one side of the aircraft to get a good look out the window at where the World Trade Center had once been. A dark hole on the ground was the only thing left. It smoldered for far too long. I wondered if the pilots were tipping the wing of the airplane in its direction in respect to what had happened.

  Flying had changed. We were all scared. Conversation on the jump seat only seemed to be about one thing. During takeoff, one flight attendant sitting beside me asked, “What are you going to do if something happens?”

  I had a few ideas of what I could do, but I didn’t know exactly what I would do, if, in fact, it came to that. God, how many times did I pray sitting on the jump seat during takeoff that it wouldn’t come to that? And if it did, I prayed it would happen before we finished the service because I didn’t want to have to do all that work and then die.

  “Here’s what I’m going to do,” said the voice beside me. I was so busy thinking about dying that I had forgotten he was there. He motioned to the insert of soda sitting on the linoleum floor beside the jump seat, an FAA no-no. Grabbing a can of Pepsi, he made quick and aggressive throwing motions. “Bam! Bam! Bam!”

  “You’re going to kill them with Pepsi?” I asked.

  “It’s better than nothing!”

  Every flight attendant I met had some sort of plan, and each plan was more original and ingenious than the next. Broken wine bottles, hot coffee, and seat cushions became some of the weapons we could use. One flight attendant carried packets of salt and pepper to rub in their eyes. My weapon of choice also became a can of soda. But I wouldn’t be throwing it. I would place it inside a long sock that I would swing over my head like a lasso if anyone tried any funny business on one of my flights. I kept the sock and a can of soda hidden in the seat back pocket behind the last row of seats in whichever cabin I happened to be working that day.

  Meanwhile, flight attendants and passengers came together like the rest of the world did. We were a team and everyone offered their support. There were times, only a few, when questionable things would happen. Like the time the dark-skinned man kept going in and out of the bathroom with a McDonald’s bag. It felt like he might be doing a “test run” to let others know how we would react if someone decided later on to hide a bomb housed in a McDonald’s bag in the bathroom. After we reported the guy, every suit from every agency on Earth met our flight at the gate in Los Angeles. After speaking to him for an hour, they didn’t arrest him, but we later learned that he had purchased a one-way ticket with cash. His passport had also just been issued to him. Was it also a coincidence that he would soon be going to school in Florida? Maybe. Maybe not. On that same flight there were three other Middle Eastern men, musicians who walked on board with three guitars. They kept switching seats in flight. We moved their instruments from the first-class closet behind the cockpit to the one located nearest the rear of the plane. Just to be safe. There were other times when passengers did things to obviously take advantage of the situation. An elderly gentleman from the Middle East sat in the first row of coach and kept his Koran and book about weapons displayed on his tray table for all to see. We ignored him, and his evil glare, as it was all too aggressive to be taken seriously. Plus, we knew there was a lawsuit just waiting to happen.

  Even now, ten years later, whenever I hear about any accident involving an aircraft I’m taken back to that day in September. Most people don’t have to think about it every time they go to work the way I do. From the moment I step out of my shoes to go through airport security until the aircraft slides into the gate, I think about what happened to those planes. They were my planes. My coworkers. My passengers.

  After 9/11 many flight attendants lost their jobs. The ones who stayed took pay cuts, watched days grow longer while layovers grew shorter, and began working flights staffed with FAA minimum crew. Things we took for granted, like pillows, blankets, and even a few airlines, slowly began to disappear. At yearly recurrent training we were taught something new: karate. We talked about throwing hot coffee at lunging terrorists along with other things I’m not at liberty to discuss.

  If passengers weren’t afraid to fly, they could no longer afford to do so, so the airlines had to drastically lower ticket prices. A one-way ticket could now be had for the same price as a pair of designer jeans. In July 2011 my airline advertised a fare from Los Angeles to Las Vegas for $46. That’s about the same price it costs to take a cab from JFK Airport to Manhattan. Because airlines are determined to fill every seat by offering rock-bottom airfare specials, commuters have a difficult time getting to work. I’ve seen flight attendants trying to get to work come to blows over who’s next in line for the one and only jump seat on a flight. In an effort to stay in business, free food in coach was the first thing to go. Airlines no longer had to pay for the food, or the food’s weight in fuel, or the caterers who delivered the food to the aircraft, or the extra flight attendants required to serve the food.

  Slowly but surely people returned to the skies. First-class
closets were taken away and replaced with extra passenger seats. Ticket prices stayed low, and everyone and their grandmother could afford to fly, many times a year. In the past it was during the summer that our flights were filled with kids, but after 9/11 our strictly summer passengers turned into year-round passengers. There’s no longer a busiest season of the year—it’s now a constant. Frequent fliers multiplied, so the airlines had to create a VIP top tier to separate the million milers from the three million milers. Flights were booked full and the lines at security grew. Passengers began losing their patience, not just with airport security but with one another. No longer did they remain seated on the plane when it arrived at the gate so those with tight connections could deplane first and not miss their flights. It didn’t take long before I started having flashbacks to an earlier time. It was like working at Sun Jet all over again, but now I had to dodge insults and keep a watchful eye on the cabin for up to fourteen hours on the job after an eight-hour layover at an airport hotel.

  These days when passengers complain about “bad service,” I take it personally. There’s only so much I can do with the tools I’ve been provided. I work hard, harder than ever before, to do a job I still take pride in. The reality is that passengers are not getting bad service, they’re getting limited service—à la carte service. I’m still serving passengers the same way I was taught fifteen years ago. The only difference is, we charge $7 for a small bottle of wine and $10 for a turkey sandwich with chips in coach. My career changed to meet the demands of the flying public—cheap tickets. But now everyone seems to have buyer’s remorse, including my husband, who is a frequent flier who travels more than a hundred thousand miles each year for business. When we first met he used to joke around about hitting the jackpot: an unlimited amount of travel passes. Nine years later he prefers to pay for tickets.

  And speaking of my husband—four months after the psychic made her crazy prediction he walked on board my flight to Los Angeles. I didn’t notice him right away. But as I pulled the salad cart to the front of the cabin, I spotted the best-looking deli sandwich I’d ever seen sitting on a tray table. I couldn’t believe a business-class passenger had brought his own food.

  “That looks good,” I said, passing him by.

  “Want a bite?”

  Oh boy, did I ever! But I declined since I was, well, working. I appreciated his kindness and handed him an extra bottle of water as a thank-you. Normally we’re only catered one per passenger, but the load was surprisingly light for one that departed two days before New Year’s Eve. Then again, it was only four months after 9/11.

  At the time 10J wasn’t my type. As you might remember, my type had a tendency to suck. For one, he was shorter than I preferred, even though he was (just barely) taller than me. And bald. Okay, so he shaved his head—the point is, he had no hair and I liked hair, lots of it! But he was nice. And cute for a guy who wore jeans and a T-shirt and didn’t look at all like he belonged in business class.

  What I liked about him was this. The guy knew how to share—and with a flight attendant no less! This is not normal behavior on an airplane, which is how I knew he was special. I’ve had thousands of passengers borrow pens and never give them back. Some have taken newspapers or magazines lying on top of my crew bag. One even stole an egg McMuffin right out of my jump seat and thought nothing of it once he realized who the rightful owner was! Even if 10J hadn’t offered me a bite of his sandwich, I still would have pegged him as someone I could be interested in because that sandwich alone told me he was a man with a plan, a man who knew how to take care of himself, even in business class!

  I come across a lot of helplessness in the premium cabins. I once had a passenger refuse a meal tray because his turkey sausage was touching his scrambled eggs. Another passenger, a famous singer, had me run for several cups of tea because there were “black thingies” (tea leaves) floating in the hot water. And then there was the woman who wanted me to discard a single cube of ice from her glass of club soda because she had asked for three cubes, not four. Although at least she wasn’t one of the ones who complain about their ice being too cold (seriously!). And in addition to saying “please” and “thank you,” 10J also made eye contact whenever I addressed him. But he didn’t flirt. I don’t like flirters because I assume if they flirt with me they probably flirt with everyone else. That or they’re about to ask me to send an extra dessert to a friend in coach who didn’t get an upgrade.

  It didn’t go unnoticed that instead of taking advantage of the call light, 10J actually got out of his seat and stepped into the galley to ask for a cup of coffee. When he did so I immediately stopped talking to my coworkers about the guy I was dating at the time, but because he had overheard some of what I had said, he wanted to know more. I told him. Why not? The flight was light and there was nothing else to do. Plus, he was a straight guy and I needed a straight man’s opinion on some questionable behavior.

  “I don’t care how many guys you date—one or five. If they’re not treating you like you’re number one you shouldn’t date them, and he’s not treating you like you’re number one,” said 10J, after I asked him if he thought I was acting paranoid.

  And that’s when the bell rang in my head. It didn’t quite alert me that he was The One, because surely The One couldn’t be short and bald. Not that there’s anything wrong with frequent-flying, short, bald guys. It’s just that’s not what I had imagined for myself when I dreamed of walking down the aisle toward the nameless, faceless, groom that day five years earlier when Georgia mentioned the wedding I never did get an official invitation to. Anyway, I realized 10J was right. I deserved more, a lot more than a guy with a sexy British accent who dressed in fine tailored suits and couldn’t be bothered to wrap my Christmas gift—or remember we had plans. Those wise words in the galley, coupled with the fact that after 9/11 I just wanted to settle down, get married, and have kids in three years with someone who shined with goodness, made me want to give 10J a chance—if he asked. And thank God he did!

  I agreed to go out with 10J, but I was worried that I might be unduly influenced by the psychic. At the three-month mark I told him not to ask me to marry him in an attempt to slow things down. I didn’t want to make something happen that wasn’t supposed to happen just because I had a crazy idea in my head. I might have even subconsciously tried to sabotage things on our second date, when I laid my cards on the candlelit table at an Italian restaurant fifteen minutes from the Los Angeles airport. Besides telling him exactly what I wanted in a life partner, I informed him that while I didn’t want to work my you-know-what off, I wouldn’t quit my job—EVER! No matter what. I was shocked that he stuck around. And even though I bought a wedding dress four months into our relationship, it was only because I really liked the dress, not because I was in love with him. Who knew when or if I’d find another one like it!

  But a year and eight months after we met, we walked down the aisle in Carmel, California, overlooking the Pacific Ocean at sunset. As far as I know we still hold the record for the cheapest wedding ever held in the history of the Highlands Inn. There were only twenty-four guests, including the photographer, and you better believe I packed my beautiful wedding gown that was on sale (and discontinued) for $199 inside my crew bag.

  My life completely changed again two years after the wedding when four different pregnancy tests came back negative, positive, negative, and positive again—all in the same day. Flight attendants are allowed to work the first few months of their pregnancy, but I chose to go out on a maternity leave the very next day. Although radiation has not been proven to harm an unborn fetus, I wasn’t taking any chances by flying seventy hours a month! Or even thirty hours a month. Flight attendants who do choose to work while pregnant are allowed to drop trips, no questions asked, whenever they like. At twenty-eight weeks they’re forced to go out on maternity. The best thing about working while pregnant is getting to wear a maternity uniform top. It’s a button-up dark blue “jacket” with capped sleeves and pl
eated flares under the bosom. It looks like a great big pleated belly skirt. One look and it deters passengers from asking for help lifting their luggage. This explains why one flight attendant I know who is no longer pregnant continues to wear it.

  It was around this time that my mind turned to mush. As my pregnancy went on, I could no longer stand the thought of rewriting the serial killer flight attendant book after every agency and publishing house on earth rejected it—four times. (One agent who is famous for being snarky wrote on the bottom of my manuscript that she was now afraid of all flight attendants and that she hoped to never see me on any of her flights.) Writing a book requires a working brain, as well as time, lots of it, which was something I didn’t have, trying to juggle motherhood and a flying career. So I put my book on hold and decided to create a blog. A blog post, I figured, only requires me to use half my brain and the baby to nap on a day off.

  I got my first paycheck for writing a blog about flight attendant life in 2008, seven years after I met the psychic. In 2010 an editor at HarperCollins contacted me after reading one of my blog posts and then asked if I’d be willing to write a book. So far none of my friends have betrayed me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t sleep with one eye open. And just like I promised my husband on our second date, I’m still flying—and the stories just keep getting better, like the elderly woman in business class who yelled at me for talking too loudly to another passenger, then asked me to help her get her bra on later in flight, and then—well. You’ll have to read about that in the next book!