that way at first! Dumbfounded, we just sat in our seats staring at the board as he drew lines to represent aisles, boxes for carts, and arrows to show movement. And every plane seemed to have at least two different “plays” for us to memorize.
The way in which we were instructed to serve passengers depended first on the airplane. There are “two- class” and “three-class” flights, as well as three different services. A two-class flight has a first class and coach cabin. (Imagine two big boxes with several smaller boxes inside.) A three-class flight includes business class, but here’s where it gets confusing. A three-class flight might only provide a two-class service if the business-class seats have been sold as coach seats. It happens. (Two sets of three small boxes lined up side by side with six arrows pointing forward
Many smaller airlines only fly one type of aircraft, so their training, I imagine, is fairly simple. At my airline we work on all different kinds of airplanes, so we had to be trained on each one of them: F100, S80, 727, 757, 767, MD11, DC10, A300. We took on a new airplane every week. Each aircraft type is a completely different configuration in terms of number of passengers, lavatories, and galleys; the use and location of emergency and medical equipment; the operation of window and door exits; and how to command an evacuation. Over time an airline might retire its aging fleet and replace one type of aircraft with something newer. Flight attendants will then have to fly back to the academy on a day off to be trained. If flight attendants don’t get qualified on a particular aircraft, they are not allowed to work it. And because they’re unable to operate and command an evacuation if necessary, they are not considered “jump-seat qualified,” which means they will not be allowed to take a jump seat on a flight that’s full when they’re trying to use their travel passes to go on vacation or get to work.
Each aircraft galley is completely different when it comes to size and storage, so the type of plane affects the service. The 737 first-class galley is so small that a can of soda can’t stand up on the counter because an oven is located right over it. Some flight attendants might be inclined to pull out a cart, park it in front of the first-class entry door, and use the top as extra counter space. We didn’t learn this technique in training because the airline didn’t want us to block an exit, even in flight when it’s physically impossible to open the door. I don’t get it, either. The DC10 has the exact opposite problem. The airplane has a monster galley that first class, business, and coach all share. Carts are stored underneath the galley, so a flight attendant has to take a one-person elevator down to where the carts are kept and to spend the remainder of the flight sending up the correct cart at the appropriate time. You can imagine how popular this assignment is with new hires. Antisocial senior flight attendants love it.
The easiest way for a flight attendant to know which service to provide is to open up all the food carts and take a peek inside. A vegetable crudite after takeoff or salad toppings that include something other than a sprinkle of parmesan cheese and a choice of dressing is a sign it’s a true first-class service. But during training, when we finally got to practice what we’d learned on a mocked-up section of an airplane galley, the cart was empty! There was no way to guess the service when no food or beverage was allowed on the trainer. With only a single empty cart, an empty coffee pot (to serve both decaf and regular coffee, as well as tea), an insert of empty soda cans, and half a stack of plastic and Styrofoam cups to work with, I placed a real napkin down on a real tray table and asked a couple of classmates with opened flight manuals resting in their laps if they’d like something to drink. The instructors scribbled notes down on their clipboards as we made small talk while I served a pretend vodka tonic with a twist of pretend lime. Nobody complained about the service, or even the food! In our minds it tasted delicious.
On long-haul and international flights the service in the premium cabins is elaborate. There are predeparture drinks, appetizers, hot towels, salads, entrees, an assortment of breads and wines, desserts, and more. In first class, we were taught to use a three-tiered cart for amenities such as magazines and newspapers, as well as for salad and dessert delivery. Imagine my surprise to learn that our tiny drink carts at Sun Jet were really three-tiered dessert carts at other airlines. No wonder it had taken forever to do a service! It turned out that at a normal airline, the dainty silver cart was supposed to be accompanied with the “horse shoe” method for serving appetizers and desserts to first-class passengers. This meant we served one side of the first-class cabin, pulled the cart up, and then served the other side. Drinks and entrees were to be hand-delivered. In business class, drinks and entrees were also hand-delivered, while salads and desserts were to be served from a regular cart, not the three-tiered cart.
In coach, regular carts were used for everything. On most flights in coach, we were taught to move the carts forward-aft (front to back), but sometimes an aft-forward service worked best. That is until the aft-forward service was cut out altogether a year or two later—in coach. In first and business classes it still remains. The direction of the service depends on the flight number (even or odd) and the direction we’re flying (north-south or east-west). On shorter flights using larger aircraft, we learned to converge two carts if we wanted to finish the service. One cart would work aft-forward while the other worked forward-aft until they met in the middle in order to make the service quicker. (After 9/11 we stopped doing this, because having enough flight attendants on board to work two carts simultaneously in coach became so rare.) Then there were the “wide-body” (two-aisle) versus “narrow-body” (single-aisle) flights. On the wide-bodies—767s, MD11s, DC10s, and A300s—the instructors pounded into our brains that we must keep the carts as close together across the aisle from each other as possible. Not always an easy task to accomplish when some crew members were faster at serving than others.
Successfully passing a test on one aircraft didn’t mean we had a clue what to do on another. Take, for instance, the emergency exits. There are single slides, double slides, tail cones, and wings. Even on a single aircraft the emergency doors and windows operate differently. The commands one classmate had to yell while at a window exit were completely different from the ones I yelled while at a door on the same plane. We were tested on a mocked-up section of a plane that looked exactly like it did in real life—except that the first-class entry doors were about eight rows from the window exits, which were about ten rows from the rear exit doors. This became even more confusing and difficult because there were always at least three of us being tested on evacuation drills at the same time, one of us positioned at each exit. We had to remain focused. The best way to do it was to outscream one another. To add to the stress, our instructors would throw in things like a fire or an exit door that wouldn’t open or a slide that wouldn’t inflate or a passenger who was too afraid to jump. Then we’d have to break into a whole new set of commands and procedures. We could score an A, B, C, or D on the computer tests that covered medical, safety, or security, but when it came to an evacuation, it was pretty much pass or fail. If we looked out an exit window in the wrong direction to make sure our pretend slide had indeed inflated, buh-bye! If we pointed to the back of the plane at the pretend engine and told passengers on the ground to run “that way,” the wrong way, adios! Forgetting to position ourselves between the jump seat and the fuselage wall while the slide inflates with air and a pretend frantic passenger eager to escape a smoke-filled cabin might push us out to our death. One wrong word, one slip of the tongue, one teeny-tiny mistake and we were immediately told to stop without an explanation. After three strikes, we were out for good.
Linda would get so worked up before her drills she’d start to feel ill. But medical training is the only thing that frightened the heck out of me. I’ll never forget the day our most laid-back instructor placed an infant doll on top of a table in front of the classroom and told us about the time a passenger rang her call light because her child was turning blue. Our instructor grabbed the naked plastic doll and checked for breathing. Resting its back on the length of her arm with her hand cradling the baby’s head, she then flipped the doll over, balancing it on her other arm that rested on her thigh and began banging it with the palm of her hand—
It didn’t matter how many times I went over the conscious and breathing versus unconscious and not
