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
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—a 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 pleated 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
