The Friendliest ex-Continental Flight Attendant of the Year on United Airlines

I do complain quite a bit on this blog, but want to take today’s post to praise Brenda, a wonderful ex-Continental flight attendant that served in first class on my Houston-San Jose United Airlines flight on Saturday morning. She was great!

I’ve written before that my experience with Continental flight attendants has not been the greatest. More so than Newark and Cleveland based crews, I’ve found them to be lazy, less-polished, and often rude. In fact, on my Philadelphia-Houston flight, I had just that experience, starting with the pilot announcing, “Folks, thanks for joining us today on CONTINENTAL AIRLINES. This is a REAL CONTINENTAL AIRLINES crew and we are going to George Bush Airport in Houston, TEXAS.” (capitalized words indicating emphasis from pilot).

But I don’t want to dwell on the negative–I get why some flight attendants and pilots are disgruntled, but I just wish they would keep their opinions to themselves, like Brenda.

Brenda was a gem–smiling and courteous, she graced the 8-seat first class cabin with dignity and finesse. She called each passenger by name and constantly checked on us throughout the 3.5 hour flight to ensure our glasses were full and we were comfortable. She even went out of the way to get blankets for us, even though it was a day flight and no one had requested one.

And she was always smiling! I just loved that in particular–you don’t see that too often anymore, outside of UA’s Honolulu-based flight crews and the occasional exceptions at other stations. Now that is a broad assertion, but it has certainly been my experience and I fly United often enough to make that assertion (3.5 months into the year, I am already at 85K elite miles).

Lastly, she was no spring chicken and therefore demonstrated that age truly doesn’t matter, it is all about attitude. I tend to get along with FAs very well, but often have to strike up a conversation with them (just wait for my story tomorrow about my last Los Angeles-Philadelphia flight) in order to make a connection. This was not necessary with Brenda–from the initial greeting to the goodbye at the end of the flight (she personally stopped by each first class passenger’s seat to thank them for flying United Airlines), she needed no coaxing–she was just nice to everyone.

I won’t typically write about a good experience. All fight attendants should be like Brenda, afterall. But she was great and deserves an extra little bit of praise. While many Continental FAs bicker about their new company (and legacy United FAs continue to bicker), I see hope on the horizon.