In January 1990, having grown tired of working the sometimes-not-so-friendly skies, I secured a temporary leave of absence, hung up my flight attendant uniform and used my employee discount to buy a one-way ticket to Sydney, Australia. Those were the happiest two years of my life. I spent most days at Bondi Beach, rubbing sunblock lotion on near-naked women who lay sprawled on the sand like survivors of a shipwreck. At night I wrote articles for second-rate magazines and poured drinks from behind the bar at a funky Sydney nightclub.
Intrigued by all the fun I was having, especially the fun at the beach, my good friend Rick came to visit from New York. Like me, Rick was a New York-based flight attendant. Like me, he traveled often and impulsively. Like me, he loved women more than life itself. Armed with about 86 tubes of sunblock lotion, he showed up on my doorstep with a suitcase and a grin.
But Rick never made it to the beach, at least not with me. Immediately upon his arrival, he took a liking to my platonic flatmate, Rita. Rita was a hair designer, a 31-year-old double-divorcie who smoked too much dope and blasted Vivaldi on her stereo before stumbling off to work each morning. She was the proud owner of three passports — Australian (country of origin), Canadian and British (acquired in marriage from hubbies one and two respectively) — and was not bashful about the fact that she was looking to own a fourth.
From the beginning I’d felt there was something suspicious about Rita: a certain calculation in the eyes and in the semi-automatic smile she used to get whatever it was she needed at the time. But she had offered to let me share her luxurious apartment, and so I gratefully accepted and kept my mouth shut.
Rick took an immediate liking to Rita and she responded in kind. That first night, the three of us drank Tasmanian beer in the Soho Bar on Victoria Street. Rita told stories about growing up in the Tasmanian rain forest with hippie parents who shunned electricity and lived off the land. Rick and I took turns telling airline tales about wacko passengers and drunken layovers in Barbados. We drank and laughed and drank some more until finally we staggered back to the apartment and fell asleep.
Later that night, I was awakened by strange noises. I crept into the hallway and shot a glance toward the living room. Rick was missing from his designated spot on the sofa. I heard Rita giggle and moan from behind her bedroom door. Then she released a delighted shriek. The sound repeated itself over and over and over as her headboard bumped rhythmically against the bedroom wall. I shook my head and laughed, and went back to bed.
For the remainder of his stay, Rick and Rita were inseparable. They spent long days exploring the city, sampling great restaurants and drinking vodka tonics at the Soho Bar. Each night, the headboard bumps grew louder.
When the time came for Rick to leave, he pried himself away from Rita’s bedroom long enough to tell me he was in love. I was sitting at the kitchen table, choking on my very first Vegemite sandwich, when he shared the news. I looked him dead in the eye, spit out a wad of Vegemite and laughed. “It’s the long-distance thing,” I told him. “You’ll get over it.”
Three weeks later Rick was back in Sydney. Had he been required to pay the astronomical full-fare ticket price, I seriously doubted he would have flown back so soon. I doubted that anyone would, even if they had the money. Sydney was 10,000 miles from New York, impossibly far for a long-distance relationship — unless, of course, you were an airline employee who knew how to rearrange your work schedule. But even as a savvy airline employee, this is what Rick had to endure: flying six hours from New York to Los Angeles in a center seat on a crowded airplane, then getting bumped from the connecting flight to Sydney and having to pay for a Los Angeles hotel room, returning to LAX the following night to wait at the ticket counter for his name to be called (knowing there was a real possibility he’d be bumped from the flight again) and being elated to get a coach center seat for the 14-hour flight to Sydney, and finally worrying that on the return trip he might get bumped again and arrive home late and miss his work trip — thereby getting fired and losing the great privilege of flying cheap and on perpetual standby.
Despite all that, Rick was back, wide-eyed and horny as a Labrador retriever on Viagra. Rita’s headboard immediately sprang into action.
This time he stayed for a week. I hardly saw the guy, only clues that he existed: swim trunks drying on a bathroom towel rack, an extra suitcase on the floor in the hall closet, a half-hearted note saying, “Maybe we can all have dinner on Thursday” and of course, the omnipresent thunder from Rita’s room.
The night before his departure, he stopped me in the hallway as I was leaving for work. “I really think I’m in love,” he said. I just shook my head and laughed. “It’s the long-distance thing,” I told him before walking out the door. “You’re so far away from Rita that when you’re back in New York, all you can do is think of her. Right?”
“Well … “
“Trust me,” I continued. “The farther away a woman is, the more desirable she becomes.” I told him that all the classic love stories had been written about love lost, denied, forbidden or far away. Not about love around the corner. “If Rita lived in New Jersey instead of Australia, you’d be complaining about not having enough space.”
Despite my warnings, Rick flew back and forth between Sydney and New York three or four times within a five-month period. He became an antipodal yo-yo, a 20th century Odysseus jetting halfway around the world to hook up with the woman he loved. But in this case the woman was a bored Australian divorcie who wanted a green card to add to her document collection.
In the sixth month, Rita flew to New York. A couple of days later I received a phone call. Rick and Rita were both on the line. “We’re getting married tomorrow,” they said in unison. “What do you think?” For a moment I was speechless. Then I said, “Don’t you think you two need to spend more time together? You’ve only known each other for five or six months. And in that time you’ve spent, what — maybe six weeks together?”
“Yeah, but we love each other,” said Rick.
“Six weeks!”
“Relax,” he said. “I’m sure about this. Never been more sure about anything in my life.” I could hear Rita laughing in the background. To the untrained ear, that might have sounded normal — the laughter of a blushing bride-to-be — but to my ears it was the laughter of a cat who had swallowed the canary and would spit it out when she was good and ready.
They married. They moved to the States. They experienced major marital problems almost immediately. As Rick’s wife, Rita now enjoyed the same airline flight benefits as he (I wondered if this had been part of her plan all along). Together, they flew to Jamaica and London, to Honolulu and Spain. Occasionally they enjoyed each other’s company, but mostly they argued. According to Rick, after only one year of marriage the headboard rarely bumped against the wall, and when it did, there was hardly any noise.
By this time my leave of absence had ended. I was back in the States, living in an apartment only six blocks from Rick and Rita’s. On the rare occasion when Rick came to visit, it was mainly to voice a complaint. Rita is a bitch. Rita is jealous. Rita is impossible to live with. It took every ounce of restraint for me not to say I told you so. I just listened and tried to give support.
Four years, three cities, two countries and more than 100,000 air miles later, Rick finally ran out of fuel. Next month his divorce becomes final. Rita, soon to be a triple-divorcie, resides in Arizona. She still smokes dope and blasts Vivaldi in the morning, but her employee flight privileges have been ceremoniously stripped. Me? I vacation in Sydney almost every year. And I still hang out at Bondi, rubbing suntan lotion on near-naked women who lie sprawled on the sand. Rick hasn’t made use of his employee travel privileges lately, but on my next trip to Sydney, he’s agreed to come with me. And we’re spending all our time at Bondi Beach.
Dressed in my poly-wool flight-attendant uniform, a set of gold wings
glinting from my lapel, I am standing in an airport concourse in front of
departure gate B-12. As the final Caribbean-bound vacationers file into the
jet bridge, I collect their tickets and welcome them aboard the aircraft. It
is precisely 5:52 p.m. The flight is scheduled to depart at 6. Two
passengers walk up and present their tickets, but they hesitate before
handing them over. They are a married couple in their late 30s. They are
well dressed and seemingly intelligent. This is the conversation that
transpires between the husband and me:
“What time does the plane leave?” he asks, looking at his watch.
“Six o’clock,” I say.
“Do we have time to buy a bagel before departure?”
“Well, sir, the plane is departing in eight minutes.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he says in an irritated voice. “But do we have time to
buy a bagel?”
“As I said, sir … the plane –”
“DO WE HAVE TIME TO BUY A BAGEL?”
Now, here’s my dilemma: If I say, “No, I don’t think you have time to buy a bagel or a newspaper or
a souvenir for your kid,” as I’ve said to countless last-minute boarders in
the past, he may respond — as some of those last-minute boarders have — as if I have a personal vendetta. “YOU, a lowly
flight attendant, are telling ME that I don’t have time to get a bagel?”
(This makes me wonder why they bother to ask in the first place.)
If I say, “Yes, you have time, but hurry,” and the passenger returns to find that the
plane has departed without him, he’ll want to sue the airline. “So what if
it took me 45 minutes — the flight attendant told me I had time to get a
bagel!”
So, in an effort to maintain my sanity and my job, I respond to the
bagel-loving husband with politically correct logic. “I’m sorry, sir, but I do not know how long it will take you to walk to the
bagel counter. I do not know how many people are standing in the bagel line.
Nor do I know how quickly the bagel people can prepare, package and ring up
your bagel order. Furthermore, I don’t even know where the bagel counter is.
What I do know is that this plane is departing in exactly (I look at my
watch) seven minutes. If YOU think that’s enough time to buy a bagel, then
by all means go and buy a bagel.”
Both the husband and wife give me a dirty look. They stomp into the jet
bridge, twin Travel Pros swerving behind them like tiny black automobiles
out of control. The husband tosses a last-minute insult over one shoulder.
“We’re never flying this fucking airline again.”
Once our plane reaches cruising altitude, I begin the dinner service with my
flight attendant colleagues. The woman in window seat 12-A is staring at the
ocean some 30,000 feet below. When I ask if she’d like dinner, she turns and
stares at me. She is about 45 years old. She is well dressed and seemingly
intelligent. This is the conversation that transpires between the
woman in 12-A and me:
“Can I ask you a question?” she says.
“Sure.”
“Why did the airplane stop moving?”
“Excuse me?”
“The airplane. It’s not moving anymore. Why did it stop?”
“What exactly do you mean, Miss?”
By now, passengers sitting within earshot
are beginning to stir in their seats. Eyes widen. Brows wrinkle. In an
attempt at suppressing laughter, the flight attendant working the other side
of the meal cart bites her bottom lip. She bites so hard, I am
surprised there is no blood.
“I mean the plane isn’t moving anymore,” the woman in 12-A continues. Her
voice has gotten louder. The teenager in 11-A doubles over in a fit of
silent sniggering.
“Trust me,” I say. I push my open hand toward her in the universal gesture
that says: Calm down, everything is fine. “I assure you the plane did not
stop moving, Miss. As a matter of fact, it’s traveling at almost 500
miles per hour. Look out the window. See those clouds?”
“Uh huh.”
“See how they’re moving away from us?”
“Oooh, yeah,” she says after about 20 seconds. “Thanks.”
An hour later, I answer a flight attendant call light. The passenger in
seat 20-F is complaining about the man sitting directly behind her. Each
time she reclines her seat, the man pushes her seat back to the upright
position. I turn to look at him. He is a businessman. He is well dressed and
seemingly intelligent. This is the conversation that transpires between
the businessman and me:
“Sir, why are you pushing this woman’s seat to the upright position?”
“Because I don’t have enough room.”
“But, Sir, she has the right to recline her seat.”
“And I have the right to the space in front of my face.”
“Well, Sir,” I say, “she has the right to recline her seat, and you are
entitled to whatever space remains. If you need more space in front of your
face you have the option to recline your seat.” He stares at me as if I just
insulted his mother.
“What is your name?” he says.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. What is your name?”
I give him my name.
“You are rude and unaccommodating,” he says. “I’m going to complain to your
supervisor and I’m never going to fly this airline again.” The woman in 20-F
shakes her head incredulously. She turns around, hurls a profanity-laced
insult at the businessman, then offers to write a countermeasure letter to
my supervisor.
A few minutes before landing, I make a final pass through the cabin to
check for seat belt compliance. The woman seated in 26-C is wearing her seat
belt. She is well dressed and seemingly intelligent. Her daughter, a
precious 4-year-old, is sprawled across a row of seats on the opposite
side of the aisle. The sleeping 4-year-old is not wearing a seat belt. This
is the conversation that transpires between the woman in 26-C and me:
“We’re landing, Miss. You might want to make sure your child is buckled
up.”
“Oh, that’s OK,” she says.
“Excuse me,” I say.
“She’s sleeping. I don’t want to wake her up.”
“You don’t want to wake her up?”
“I don’t want to wake her up.”
“It’s not safe for her to land without wearing a seat belt, you know. The
FAA requires all passengers to buckle up.”
The woman in 26-C glares at me in silence. A moment later she says
something under her breath. Something sharp and rude and insulting. Still,
she makes no attempt to buckle up her child.
I glare back at her.
“Look!” she says, realizing that I’m not leaving without a response. “My
daughter is sleeping!”
“Let me rephrase this,” I tell her. I lean forward and speak in a
confidential whisper. “When this plane touches down on the runway it will be
traveling at more than 100 miles per hour. Do you understand? If the pilot
is forced to hit the brakes prematurely — as pilots have been known to do
on occasion — do you think your child will still be sleeping?”
A wave of understanding washes over her face. She gets up, fastens the
seat belt around the groggy kid, then throws a dirty look at me.
It happened on a sun-baked taxiway as our Boeing 727 prepared to depart from the Caribbean island of Curacao. And although I was right there, in the middle of the action — along with a planeload of passengers and six fellow crew members — I still can’t believe it actually happened.
A few moments before we departed for Miami, I performed my part of the routine safety demonstration and then headed for my seat. Of the four flight attendants on board, two were assigned to the jump seat near the forward entry door. The other attendant and I were to occupy the seat attached to the emergency door at the rear of the aircraft.
The plane was full of suntanned vacationers, their smiles slowly fading as paradise became just another fond memory and the realities of the real world began to occupy their thoughts. None of them knew they were about to witness one of the boldest heists in aviation history.
After the captain made his departure announcement, the engines roared, the plane lurched forward and the aircraft began to roll down the taxiway. Some passengers dozed, others flipped impatiently through magazines. I chatted with Amy, the flight attendant beside me.
Suddenly, the plane came to a halt. From my seat at the rear of the aircraft, I saw the cockpit door swing open. Our captain — a no-nonsense, ex-military type — marched down the aisle at a gait that made everyone nervous. His face was a mask of professional indifference that aroused more suspicion than it averted. I turned to Amy. She threw a look at me. Without opening our mouths we came to the same conclusion: Something was terribly wrong.
As the captain approached, we unbuckled our seat belts and stood nervously. Like waves closing behind the wake of a speedboat, a mass of passenger heads leaned into the aisle as the captain passed their seats.
“The cargo door indicator light came on,” he told me in a hushed voice. “I’m going to go check it out.”
He opened the aft emergency door, pulled a lever that lowered the stairs, and a moment later he was gone. Just then, I noticed a passenger with both arms flailing. Apparently, he’d been trying to get our attention for a while. He was seated at a window seat on the left side of the aircraft, and as I approached, he began pointing out the window. “Just before the plane stopped, we saw a guy run underneath the airplane,” he said. “He just ran underneath and disappeared.” Several passengers nodded their heads.
A man sitting on the opposite side of the plane chimed in. “Yeah, and we saw a guy come from under this side of the airplane. He ran off carrying a bag.”
Were we in danger? Was this some kind of terrorist activity? Amy and I exchanged a glance, but before I could run up to the cockpit to alert the first officer, a first-class passenger came running down the aisle. Beneath the thick lenses of his black-framed glasses, his eyes were wide with panic. They were also vaguely familiar.
“Someone ran off with my bag,” he told me in a winded voice. “It was in the cargo bin. I … I just looked out the window and saw someone running away with it.”
I grabbed the man by his shoulders to settle him down. That’s when I remembered who he was. Over the years I’d seen him on one flight or another, sitting in a first-class seat, chatting with flight attendants he knew by name. He was an air courier for one of the best-known companies in the money transportation business. Air couriers like him are responsible for accompanying large sums of cash and negotiable bonds, but the money is stowed in the cargo hold, not in the airplane cabin.
Here’s how large sums of cash are flown from one location to the next: Moments before an airplane departs, an armored truck pulls alongside the aircraft. Gun-toting officers dump the bags of cash into the cargo hold, then watch carefully as the airline ground crew closes the hatch and the plane pulls away from the gate. The operation runs in reverse at the point of arrival.
Suddenly, everything was clear.
The captain came back up the stairs with a puzzled look on his face. “The cargo door is wide open,” he told me. “How the hell could –”
I interrupted him, relaying the new facts. His eyes narrowed, and he rushed down the stairs again. I went after him. The courier followed. The three of us stood beneath a smoldering Caribbean sun, mouths open, heads shaking, staring into an open cargo compartment that was missing one rather important piece of luggage.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out what happened. According to the courier, there were two money bags. One was filled with unmarked bills in small denominations; the other held negotiable bonds and other monetary instruments. Apparently, the thief crept onto the taxiway and ran alongside the aircraft as it rolled down the taxiway. There were two cargo compartments, but he knew exactly which one to open and exactly how to open it. He also knew which of the two bags to take. It was definitely an inside job, and the rogue was long gone.
After reporting the incident to airport authorities, the crew readied the airplane for a slightly late departure. Realizing there was nothing he could do in Curacao, the courier decided to join us. He had some very bad news to relay to his superiors in Miami.
“Exactly how much money was in the bag?” I whispered as I escorted him back to first-class. His heavy gaze fell upon me, and in that moment I felt sick to my stomach.
“A little more than $500,000,” he said.
The three culprits, one of whom worked for the airport, were caught within a month after going on a conspicuous, on-island spending spree. Two years later, they’re still in prison.
A few years ago on a United Airlines flight from Buenos Aires to
New York,
Gerard B. Finneran, an investment banker, went totally bonkers. Newspaper
accounts said that after becoming intoxicated, Finneran demanded more
alcohol from the flight attendants. When they refused, he began helping
himself to the liquor supply. After being cut off a second time, he became
visibly angry. He pushed one flight attendant (federal offense No. 1), verbally
threatened another (federal offense No. 2), interfered with a third who was
assisting a sick passenger (federal offense No. 3), then walked up to the
first-class cabin, dropped his pants and defecated on a service cart in plain
view of the passengers and crew. Then he stepped in his own feces and tracked
it through the main cabin (federal offense Nos. 4, 5 and possibly 6).
Finneran was arrested upon landing in New York. He subsequently
pleaded
guilty to assault and was sentenced to two years probation. In addition, he
was given 300 hours of community service and a $5,000 fine and was ordered to pay more than $50,000
in restitution to the airline and to reimburse fellow passengers for the
price of their tickets. (Not surprisingly, Finneran’s lawyer said his
client was “ill” when he committed the now infamous in-flight atrocity.)
Every one of the estimated 110,000 flight attendants currently flying in the
United
States has witnessed strange behavior in the air.
Occasionally, as in the case of Finneran, passenger misconduct exceeds
all rational limits. Sometimes these in-flight incidents are violent;
sometimes they’re wickedly funny. Either way, the following examples
will give you a better idea of what flight attendants put up with every day:
Seated side-by-side on a 14-hour overseas flight, two business-class
passengers became romantically involved. At some point they began kissing
and fondling each other while sitting in their seats. The passion became so
intense that the couple began having sexual intercourse in their
seats. Bewildered passengers immediately began ringing their flight attendant call
buttons. Despite the flight attendants’ urgent pleas, the couple refused
to terminate their airborne lovemaking. Ultimately, the captain had to
intervene. It was necessary for him to physically separate the lovers to get
them to stop.
While a female flight attendant was serving food from the meal cart, a
female passenger thrust a small bundle of trash toward her. “Take this,” the
passenger demanded. Realizing that the trash was actually a used baby
diaper, the attendant instructed the passenger to take it to the lavatory
herself and dispose of it. “No,” the passenger replied. “You take it!” The
attendant explained that she couldn’t dispose of the dirty diaper because
she was serving food — handling the diaper would be unsanitary. But that
wasn’t a good enough answer for the passenger. Angered by her refusal, the
passenger hurled the diaper at the flight attendant. It struck her square in
the head, depositing chunks of baby dung that clung to her blond locks. The
infuriated attendant leapt upon the passenger, strangling her until
passengers could separate the two.
During a full flight between New York and London, a passenger noticed that
the sleeping man in the window seat looked a bit pale. Sensing that
something was wrong yet not wanting to wake him, the concerned passenger
alerted flight attendants, who soon determined that the sleeping man was
actually dead. Apparently, he had died a few hours earlier because his body
was completely cold. Horrified by the prospect of sitting next to a dead
man, the passenger demanded another seat. But the flight was completely full; every single seat was occupied. Finally one flight attendant had an inspiration. She approached a uniformed
military officer, and he agreed to sit next to the dead man for the duration of
the flight.
Passengers on a flight from Miami to San Juan, Puerto Rico, were stunned
by the actions of one deranged passenger. He walked to the rear of the plane,
then charged up the aisle, slapping passengers’ heads
along the way. Next he kicked a pregnant flight attendant, who immediately fell to
the ground. As if that weren’t enough, he then bit a young boy on the
arm. At this point the man was restrained and handcuffed by crew members. He was
arrested upon arrival.
When bad weather closed the Dallas/Fort Worth airport for several hours,
departing planes were stuck on the ground for the duration. One frustrated
passenger, a young woman, walked up to a female flight attendant and said,
“I’m sorry, but I have to do this.” The passenger then punched the flight
attendant in the face, breaking her nose.
A flight attendant returning to work after a double-mastectomy and a
struggle with multiple sclerosis had a run-in with a disgruntled passenger.
One of the last to board the plane, the passenger became enraged when there
was no room in the overhead bin above his seat. He snatched the bags from
the compartment and threw them on the floor, then put his own bag in the empty
bin. After hearing angry cries from passengers, the flight attendant
appeared from the galley to see what the fuss was all about. When the
passengers explained what happened, she turned to the offending passenger.
“Sir, you can’t do that,” she said. The passenger then rose from his seat
and broke her jaw with one punch.
For some reason, a drunken passenger began throwing peanuts at a
well-built man across the aisle. The man was sitting with his wife, minding
his own business. When the first peanut hit him in the face, he ignored it.
After the second peanut struck him, he looked up to see who had thrown it. He
threw a harsh look at the perpetrator, expecting him to cease immediately.
When a third peanut hit him in the eye, he’d had enough. “Do that again,” he
warned, “and I’ll punch your lights out.” But the peanut-tossing passenger
couldn’t resist. He did it one last time. The victim got out of his seat,
then triple-punched the assailant so hard that witnesses heard his jaw break. The
plane was diverted to the closest airport and the peanut-tosser was kicked
off.
