A flight attendant has told us three things she hates about passengers. Here are three pet peeves I have against flight attendants.
Three Reasonable “Pet Peeves” I Have Against Flight Attendants
An American Airlines flight attendant named Ally Case shares that she has three particular “pet peeves” about passengers, including:
- Talking during the safety demonstration
- Expecting flight attendants to help with your bags
- Poking flight attendants
https://www.tiktok.com/@allycase1/video/7220424714190114094?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc
I think those points of concern are all reasonable. Talking loudly during a manual safety demonstration is rude to those who may be trying to pay attention. Poking flight attendants for something like a beverage or to collect your trash is just uncouth. While I do think flight attendants should be willing to help with bags, their contracts do not require it and some passengers stuff so much into their carry-on bags that this may be a good thing…
But let me use this opportunity to share three pet peeves I have about flight attendants:
- Talking loudly in the galley
- Frowning when addressing passengers
- Failing to monitor cabin
Let me quickly elaborate.
Don’t talk loudly in the galley!
It is unacceptable for flight attendants to carry on in loud conversation in the galley, especially on overnight flights when passengers are trying to sleep.
Don’t frown when addressing passengers!
Notice, I’m not insisting that flight attendants must always smile…that may be asking a bit much. But I can never understand why some flight attendants must be so gruff or rude. Have the decency to treat passengers with respect or find another line of work.
Don’t fail to monitor cabin!
The cabin should be monitored during the flight. I do not like it when flight attendants perform a beverage or meal service at the start of the flight then totally disappear for the rest of the flight. The culture against using the flight attendant call button in the USA makes this even more important.
CONCLUSION
In my experience, most flight attendants, even in the USA, are just fine. They are courteous, service-oriented, and kind. So while these may be my personal pet peeves, I do not mean to insinuate that I encounter these problems frequently.
Still, if flight attendants are going to count up all their pet peeves against passengers, I think it only reasonable we state our own pet peeves.
What are you pet peeves against flight attendants?
image: @allycase1 / TikTok
These are just examples of poor work ethic.
“…But I can never understand why some flight attendants must be so gruff or rude. Have the decency to treat passengers with respect or find another line of work.”
We’re looking at many of you, senior AC FAs!
I flew Swoop recently a LCC in Canada. One beverage service. Then the FA congregates in the Fwd Galley and alternate walking through the. cabin.. not a lot but they did. They were proactive to answer FA call bells. It was mentioned during boarding announcement “ FA are here primarily for safety first, then service”. They demonstrated this very well.
All three suggestions from Matthew are good suggestions for all airline staff . I sympathize with airline staff because US domestic passengers have deteriorated into rude , demanding boors . I have usually traveled international on JL , LH , or SIA , and the atmosphere on those flights is decent and polite .
Those complaints are reasonable, so I’ll give her that at least.
I’ll add failing to acknowledge the call button on a long-haul flight to the “failing to monitor the cabin” point. I’m looking at you, Lufthansa coach class flight attendants, who never fail to just turn off the button without actually asking the passenger why they rang it in the first place.
The “we’re here primarily for your safety” shtick might be my biggest pet peeve, though. Nothing sets the table for the “we regard you as self-loading cattle” attitude more than those dreaded words, and at that point, I’ve pretty well made up my mind that I’ve gotten poor service, even if it ends up being acceptable.
On top of that, the current physical state – health and fitness, that is – of many MANY FAs in the US is such that a good lot of them would be an actual detriment in a real emergency. I have seen way too many geriatric and/or overweight FAs on many recent flights across the US3 – domestic and international – to ever actually believe that they’d be able to do anymore beyond yelling “Brace! Brace! Brace!” into the PA system in the event of an emergency.
Beyond that, I think it’s fairly apparent to the casual observer with even a shred of common sense that many current FAs would actually need saving FROM a passenger. The very premise of “here for [our] safety” is beyond laughable on the US3.
Let’s do away with these over-entitled waitresses. We don’t need them anyway. (3…2…1 before one of them yells in barely intelligible English about FAA rules. Yes we know, wh*re).
Look at this one. She has the crazy eyes.
One of the comments reminded me of a joke at Air Canada’s expense:
A man is alone in an airport lounge. A beautiful woman walks in and sits down at the table next to him. He decides because she’s wearing a uniform, she’s probably an off-duty flight attendant. So he decides to have a go at picking her up by identifying the airline she flies for, thereby impressing her greatly.
He leans across to her and says the British Airways motto : ‘To Fly. To Serve’?
The woman looks at him blankly.
He sits back and thinks up another line. He leans forward again and delivers the Air France motto: ‘Winning the hearts of the world’?
Again she just stares at him with a slightly puzzled look on her face.
Undeterred, he tries again, this time saying the Malaysian Airlines motto: ‘Going beyond expectations’?
The woman looks at him sternly and says: ‘What the f*ck do you want?’
‘Aha!’ he says: “Air Canada “.
Personally, I do not trust Flight Attendants. They are suspicious of anything you say or do and will find any excuse to kick you off the flight. Don’t say anything to them. Sit down and shut up is my attitude.
FA should be appreciated for their intelligence, not their ability to massage the ego of pax.
Matthew, why do you routinely regurgitate Gary Leff’s articles? I enjoy your original content, but it drives me batshit when I see you and Gary recopy each other’s clickbait articles days later.
Not when it’s actual news – for example the Delta devaluation – that warrants independent multiple discussions and perspectives.
But when it’s clickbait crap on a slow news day, I’d rather you just post nothing. Same goes for Gary when he copies your clickbait days later. Both of your blogs should be better than that.
If it wasn’t already clear—1.) clickbait pays the bills and 2.) I (we, if I can speak for Gary), enjoy writing on these topics.
And unlike others, whenever I use material I found first on Gary’s blog, I use a backlink and give him proper credit.
What a sad commentary on our society, that clickbait articles — such as meaningless drivel by some random flight attendant tiktok wanna-be influencer — or the stupid story of the day about the latest bad behavior pulled from reddit — is the content that people click on and that’s what pays the bills.
Your original content is great Matt, and I always appreciate reading it. Same for Gary’s. I just get batty when the same non-original frivolous content is picked up by every blogger over the course of the week (well, ok, all three or four of the bloggers I bother to read lol).
@CMT hopefully you recognize that all media, main stream, down stream, no stream engage in some form of clickbait to pay the bills. From CNN to Fox and going back 100 years to WR Hurst, the “news” is was and always will be all about getting the most people to engage. If we, the consumers, don’t like it we should ignore them. But we don’t. So they will continue chasing the most dramatic material.
Don’t think for one second that all the anchors at CNN or MSNBC actually want Trump to lose. Love him or hate him, he’s ratings gold.
@Ryan, good points. I’m typically one of the most cynical people I know, but sometimes idealism catches me off guard when it comes to journalism. Your comment about Trump beat the last vestiges of that out of me pretty quickly though lol. Unfortunately, you are probably correct, on all points.
Glorified waiters and waitresses, get a grip Ally. We don’t care what you think, do your job and STFU complaining
Glorified waiters and waitresses, get a grip Ally. We don’t care what you think, do your job and STFU complaining
I was just thinking (yeah, that’s dangerous) that this ties into another recent posting by Matt about how a passenger got kicked off a flight for questioning an FA’s orders. On the one hand, they want compliant, obedient, and quiet passengers who know-their-place and will stay in their seats but on the other, this makes the passengers even more needy and dependent. Some people are going to be afraid to click on the FA call button but yet they may need water or even to express a concern they’re having. In the very least, as we hear often, “they are there primarily for passenger safety”, shouldn’t they at least do a walk through every 5 minutes to keep a basic eye on things?
I recently in First Class had a flight attendant disappearing act happen. For 45 minutes. With finished meal trays out in the cabin. I “bussed” my row and took the trays to the galley because I needed to get up and use the lav lest I pee in my seat. No, I didn’t use the call button. Because I didn’t want to get yelled at for that.
Flight attendants are solely here for your safety and your credit score (in the reverse order on American).
Ally Case is quite attractive, aside from the acne.
Going to add this too! Especially for a U.S. flight attendant, she is quite good looking. This brings a positive for AA.
Make sure you don’t fly Iberia then. They go for the hat trick every time I fly them. And I only do so sometimes because I’d rather take a crappy direct flight than connect somewhere out of the way.
What’s this cultural aversion in the USA about using the call button – is Europe significantly different in this regard?
personally, I never disregard a call button. As it has happened a few times to me, it can be a medical situation that needs immediate attention. And yes, even tho the pax could easily get up and ask for assistance, the thought-process is to use the ‘call button’.
You people crack me up !!! You all know nothing about the FAs job and what goes on behind the scenes. As a license Psychologist typically people who rant about others job and how they’re are doing it , just means you are miserable in your own lives. They need to bring back regulations and raise ticket prices !!!
Oh Tim.
Your unabashed anger tells us you are not a successful “license” (your typo) psychologist. You should work with a counselor. Please get some help.
I’ve been a flight attendant for 36 years. People are very passonate with regards to our job. Unfortunately, the industry has become basic public transportation in the air. Too many passengers, crew, and airline uppers act accordingly, making travel difficult for all. Couple that with a less than stellar work ethic accepted and staff cuts during the pandemic that never returned, it’s a recipe for a lot of stress.
I work for a major that employs over 20K fa’s alone. we are a cross section of American, good, bad, and ugly. Thats just the reality of the world we are in.
Things this FA hates:
1. Poor announcement or no announcments about delays from the pilots.
2. The credit card pimping.
3. Passengers who see you talking to them but act like taking the earphones off is a chore.
4. Airlines catering just enough food for those boarded and not enough to sell on domestic.
5. The disappearing flight attendant.
6. Call bells that ring TOO LOW to hear. (major reason ignored.
7. Leaving a mess in the toilet.
8. On international, crews rushing to have longer breaks.
9. The lack of emphasis on chatting up customers.
10. Staffing cuts. Makes #9 more difficult.
11. FA’s who cause me to have to put out fires. (rude, mean, aloof)
12. Cramped planes.
Bonus: CEO’s who put Wall Street first, customers and employee tied for the bottom.
That’s just a few but
It’s not part of our contract to not help pax with their bags… the real reason is, any injury that may happen when lifting a heavy bag, will not be paid for when filing ‘workman’s compensation’. It’s all out-of-pocket expenses.
I am a former flight attendant and a user of Chat GPI. I started with a basic search – “ratio of applicants to job offers for flight attendant” Here is the response:
“According to the web search results, the ratio of applicants to job offers for the job of flight attendant is very low. One source estimates that only 1% of applicants get hired as flight attendants1. Another source states that only 1-2% of applicants get hired at Delta, one of the major airlines in the United States2. This means that for every 100 people who apply to become a flight attendant, only one or two people are accepted. The competition for flight attendant positions is predicted to remain strong, partly because of the perceived glamour of the airline industry and the opportunity to travel3. Therefore, becoming a flight attendant is a very challenging and selective process.”
If this question was asked 50, 40, 30, 20,,10 or 5 years ago, research would show that the answer would be the same. So for those of you who dismiss the work as “glorified waitress” are only showing your complete ignorance of the fraction of the effort it took for these maligned individuals to obtain and maintain their position as a member of your cabin crew. The first five years are the hardest. We make $18.25 an hour and are only guaranteed 72 hours of flying per month – gross. Do the math. That is why for the first few years, we live in “crash pads” with 8-15 people, sharing bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchens and washing machines. Sometimes we do not know until 3 hours before take-off that we are working a trip and where it is going. It could be going to Boston or Buenos Aires. Our carry-on bag, which we must squeeze onboard with yours, must contain clothing for either climate, along with all of our required paraphernalia (flashlights, passport with up-to-date visas to every country we fly for which we each go in person to each embassy/consulate and wait all day on our days off to obtain with no compensation, safety manuals (though I hear they are now on iPads which must be fully charged). We must arrive 120 minutes before take off for domestic and 180 minutes for international flights. Arrive means seated in the briefing room, in full uniform, for women, full hair and makeup. After briefing where our emergency exit doors and cabin service positions are assigned by the purser based on seniority, we make our way to the gate where we hope the aircraft is there and if it is, it has been cleaned and catered so we can get started. Each flight attendant has a designated storage space for their bags – carry on usually by the medical or safety equipment, our personal bags with valuables like our phones behind passenger seats with walls behind them (yes, I had an iPod and a Kindle stolen by a passenger on a flight to Shanghai). We then have a list of 7-12 safety items such as medical equipment kits, portable oxygen tanks, ceiling mounted escape slides that we must check to ensure the pressure gauges are in the correct range, We are encouraged to to perform these tasks as quickly as possible because must also have an onboard briefing with the cockpit crew and on international flights and bid for breaks. Then comes time to board the aircraft. Everyone has a boarding position except the crew working in galley. The crew in the aisle are primarily there for “situational awareness.” In other words, while smiling and greeting people, we are also trained to assess certain suspicious behaviors in people that may indicate they require further scrutiny by our security teams. Assuming we encounter no suspicious behavior, business and first class crew head for the galley to load trays with pre-departure drinks – water, champagne, orange juice or mimosas which we then distribute through the cabin. When the ground crew delivers the final paperwork to the purser and the cockpit crew, we close the aircraft door.
For EVERY MINUTE of work performed before the aircraft door was closed, NO MEMBER OF THE CREW WAS BEING PAID. My $18.25 per hour salary starts exactly when the wheels of the aircraft start to move and not before. The most junior member of the crew always work business class because it is the most chaotic and back breaking assignment. There are up to 70 people and the meals are served in plated courses from carts in the aisles. Starting with menu orders, hot towels, mixed nuts and cocktails and ending with desert and cheese, it is a three hour non-stop gauntlet of monitoring the rate at which drinks, bread and meals are being consumed and a trip through the aisles with the needed item running low on the tray tables. By the time we are done and galley is clear, we sit in our jump seats and eat the meals that the company has catered for the crew. The senior crew are long gone. They have worked either in economy or first class where the service is completed in half the time so they start their breaks sometimes 90 minutes early. The junior crew who have been running nonstop for over three hours in business class are eating into their break time, When we ware due back on duty, it will be time to serve breakfast, in courses. While we are taking what is left of our break time, the senior flight attendants are the ones in the galley gossiping and trashing the company and ignoring passenger call lights. We are supposed to walk through the cabin every 15 minutes with a bottle of water and a sleeve of plastic cups and offer water, I have only seen a senior flight attendant do that twice. I have been told more than once that I should not walk through a dark cabin with water because it will make the other flight attendants look bad and the passengers will come to expect it or even ring their call bells if they want water.
When we arrive in, say Paris, we are loaded onto a bus and shuttled downtown for our layover. I realize that many people would be envious of a Paris layover, but on my last Paris trip we had a three hour delay departing Chicago waiting on an engine part, so we were three hours late getting to Paris. By the time we got to the hotel and I was in my room it was nearly 5:00pm. The plane stayed parked at the gate so we were not paid for he extra three hours. I was exhausted but also hungry. I had asked a few other crew if they wanted to grab dinner, but everyone said they were not leaving the hotel until the bus came at 9:30 am the next day to to take us to the airport to work the flight back, I found s nice bistro near the hotel, ordered steak frites and a glass of Beaujolais. The next thing I remember, two waiters were waking me up and asking me if if I needed a doctor- I had fallen asleep at my table before touching the food or the wine. Luckily, I speak French, so I asked the waiter to trade the wine for an Orangina, ate what I could of my meal and resolved on the walk back to the hotel that it was time start seriously thinking about leaving all of this “glamor” behind before I ended up collapsing on the jetway.
Aside from managing as a team during the meal service, there is very little that I have written here that can remotely be ascribed to the life of a waiter or waitress, glorified or not. I spent the time to write down a small portion of what the life of a flight attendant is like to debunk the stereotypes and tropes and the belief that all we do is “push the cart and serve the drinks.” We do that for sure, but we do a hell of a lot more than that. We deal with sadistic probationary supervisors waiting to find a reason to fire you for some ridiculous infraction. We deal with other crew members who hate their jobs – hell, they probably hate their lives, and they take it out on you by yelling at you and belittling you for six hours from Boston to San Francisco. As a new flight attendant, it is drummed into you that the worst possible thing you could do is report another crew member, It will come back to you and the union will blackball you and you will be treated like trash on every trip you work.’
For me, the passengers were the best part of the job. After a rather brutal downsizing, I applied and was accepted for the job during the financial crisis of 2008 and I lasted 2 1/2 years in the job, Before that, I was working as a technical trailing consultant for a global company and flew business class all over the world and I often thought, “I could do this job so much better.” And in many respects, I did. I am thankful everyday that the wealth I accumulated was tied up in 401Ks and other untouchable investments, Otherwise, I would have drawn down my retirement funds just to have my own apartment when I finally realized how inconsistent and uncertain my actual take home pay was going to be. I lived on next to nothing, maxed my credit cards despite the fact that a year earlier I was earning six figures.
They say that five years is the magic number, That is when you start to break even salary-wise, There is even a company-supplied flow chart that illustrates just that. Looking at that chart was another “aha” moment, It didn’t matter if you were great at your job or if you just showed up and did the bare minimum with a bad attitude – everyone climbed the salary ladder at the same pace. It was a compensation system where performance or merit played absolutely no role. Your supervisor was not someone who helped you in your career development and provided resources if you needed them. They counted late check ins and absences. Too many and they called you in for a meeting. The meetings meant nothing until you reached a certain number of infractions in a calendar year stipulated in the contract where certain sanctions would begin to apply. You get the idea – once past probation, the contract protected you and there was no incentive beyond personal pride to show up and do the bare minimum.
I have since returned to the traditional workforce in my lifelong profession but in many ways, my 2 1/2 years as a working flight attendant were some of the most valuable of my entire career. Working that job has made me a better manager, better able to see ideas, issues and problems from a 360 degree perspective and to give equal respect to the positions of those with with the least power within the organization.
I try not to betray my past life when I fly fly these days. I am usually in business class and they do not need one more audience to add to the list of people they need to please. I also travel with large box of Godiva chocolates and I give the box to the purser right after meal service on overnight flights. Someone did that on one of my Tokyo flights when I was new and I thought it was a cool gesture.
My message in sharing all of this with the forum – learn a little about what the person you feel the urge to demean or belittle before you do it either more honestly in person, or, more cowardly, in a cheap, pile-on post to an airline forum.
LOL, ok, Karen. 90% of your job is being a waitress. Act like it.
I’ve got an add to the passenger complaint list. Don’t press the call button right after the pilot instructs the FAs to be seated.
On my last flight I saw a passenger press the button 3 times right after the pilot’s announcement because she wanted a drink. One FA did walk quickly back to her and apologize to her that he could not bring her a drink because the pilot asked them to be seated. Not right she should have apologized to him. And I saw him apologize again to the passenger as she got off the plane.
That passenger was in the wrong and that very nice FA apologized to her twice. She didn’t reply back either time.
FAs deserve better.
I don’t know if American passengers have become dramatically more crass as much as they’ve displaced what used to be large volumes of business travelers. People engaging in commerce were replaced by people seeking leisure.