If the flight attendants on your last flight seemed a little snippy, please don’t take it personally.
They have their reasons. It isn’t just that most of the major airlines are broke, that employee pensions are being cut, or even canned, or that employee morale is in a tailspin.
No, that’s just the half of it. The also have to put up with increasingly agitated passengers on increasingly full flights. For example, air travelers have done the following recently:
- A flight was diverted because an unruly passenger lit a cigarette and urinated in the aisle.
- An airline passenger bit a fellow passenger who tried to restrain him after he insisted on wanting to get off the plane before take off. The pilot decompressed the plane and the aircraft began taxiing back to the gate, but not before the passenger opened the plane’s door and leapt many feet below to the tarmac. He was restrained by local authorities with a stun gun.
- Another passenger threatened that he had a bomb, then fled the plane and was shot and killed by air marshals.
But it isn’t just what passengers do that sets off the crew. It’s what they say. When you aren’t sure where your next paycheck is coming from, and your passengers are mouthing off to you like whiny preschoolers, it’s enough to test the patience of even the most mild-mannered crewmember.
So in the interests of keeping the peace at 36,000 feet, here is a list of things that you should never, under any circumstances, say to a working flight attendant. Scratch that. Don’t ever say it to a flight attendant:
1. “Hey, what happened to the food?” As if the flight attendants can do anything about that. “Also, don’t bother complaining if the food is lousy, or if there isn’t enough of it,” says Sally Williams, a travel book author in Berkeley, Calif. “Or if they are charging for it, that it costs too much.” If you’re on a flight where food is served, you should probably shut up and be grateful. Most flights are food-free these days.
2. “Am I going to make my connection?” Admit it, you’ve wondered it many times. Maybe you’ve even asked an attendant. Please ask no more. Crewmembers don’t know if you are going to make your connection (they do receive connecting gate information, but can’t monitor every individual flight). What’s more, inquiring if you’ll make a flight is about as easy as predicting the future. And if flight attendants were any good at predicting the future, most of them wouldn’t have become flight attendants in the first place.
3. “No wonder your airline is bankrupt.” “That’s so annoying,” says one veteran flight attendant for a bankrupt airline. “It is just the kind of thing that a selfish, self-absorbed coach passenger would say when the service isn’t up to snuff, or there isn’t enough airline food.” In fact, most flight attendants refuse to discuss their airline’s precarious financial situation with customers — it’s just a bad topic, period. Telling a crewmember that their company deserves to be bankrupt isn’t going to win you any brownie points. You might even find that they run out of airline meals before they get to your seat with the meal cart. Sorry about that!
4. “I have a bad feeling about this flight.” Leave your premonitions in the terminal, or better yet, don’t travel at all. And if you do decide to fly, please don’t share your misgivings with the crew. Truth is, many flight attendants have had a bad feeling about their flights for a while now — albeit a different kind of bad feeling. However, if crewmembers hear you mumbling about a bad omen, they’re probably going to interpret it in the worst possible way. Maybe you know something they don’t. Maybe the plane is going to go down. Then again, maybe you’ll be escorted off the plane by police before takeoff.
5. “If your airline goes out of business, what will happen to my miles?” “That’s a valid question,” says James Wysong, a flight attendant for a major airline and author of “The Plane Truth: Shift Happens at 35,000 Feet.” “But it should be directed to a proper source, like the specific mileage program’s office. If you ask a flight attendant that, all she is thinking about is, ‘How am I going to pay my mortgage?’.”
6. “I have a bomb in my bag.” If I have to explain why you shouldn’t say this, then you probably shouldn’t be let out of the house — let alone on a plane. “Since 9/11, I have become much more aware of the cabin environment,” says a flight attendant for a big airline. “I constantly scan the cabin during the boarding process as well as the deplaning process at the end of a flight. I closely listen to comments made by passengers. The safety of my fellow crew members and those passengers aboard any of my flights are first and foremost and of paramount concern to me.” In other words, your bomb jokes are definitely going to . . . bomb.
7. “Hey, stewardess!” The term “stewardess” and “steward” are widely considered to be archaic, if not derogatory. They are especially offensive if they’re used while, at the same time, you repeatedly press the flight attendant “call” button over your seat. Flight attendants are not airborne waiters. They are bona fide crewmembers who have undergone many hours of safety training. Yeah, they serve drinks — but if the plane goes down, they can also save your butt.
Now perhaps more than ever, you have to watch what you say on a flight. The skies aren’t so friendly, for a variety of reasons — of which passengers are one.
“No one likes to be yelled at, spoken down to, bossed around, mocked or ridiculed,” says Corey Caldwell, a spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants. “But if you speak to us in a polite manner — like you would if talking with a friend or coworker — you will find that we are pleasant as well.”
✓ Get the latest travel news, tips and commentary from Elliott’s E-Mail, the subversive newsletter from industry gadfly Christopher Elliott. You’ll travel like a pro. Sign up here. It’s free.
Sign up for my 
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Good story! It’s funny, but oh so true — FA’s are back there with the passengers, and not hidden behind an armored door. You can’t really blame them for being a bit, shall we say, testy these days.
You forgot the one about not complaining about how late you’ll be as you’re safely sitting on the ground in a badly-broken airplane.
Alright, so there are bad passengers. But are all flight attendants such angels? Let’s try for balance here.
I am generally a happy traveler, looked upon as “crazy” by my friends when I tell them that I love to fly. I have never, NEVER mistreated a member of a flight crew or ground staff. Granted, I fly premium class and pay premium fares for every flight, but I still experience bad attitudes from the flight staff. At one point I actually timed the length of time it took to get a smile from the flight attendants from boarding and settling into my seat – 1C – on a flight from New York to Moscow. Time from boarding to smile – 87 minutes. I have no sympathy for flight attendants who do not believe in the customer service part of their jobs and allow themselves to see their customers as the enemy. I know that they are my first and only resource for safety, but with over three million miles to my lifetime account, I have never needed their safety training (luckilly!). My Mother-in-law, a flight attendant with a US airline, tells me that I fly more than most FA’s…yet I’m treated as the enemy.
On a somewhat related note, I manage Loss Prevention for a multi-billion dollar retailer. Somehow, I have been able to see most of our customers as what they are – our largest asset and the reason we are still in business. 99.9% of them are not theives, and I do not see a reason to treat them as such.
Neither flight attendants nor passengers are the enemy, yet passengers are being treated as a class with more and more animosity. There are FAs out there who deserve to be reviewed more critically, yet the airlines have taken the point of view that a passenger’s complaint is generally unsound once in the air.
I love the websites which train passengers to be better passengers, yet I find a severe lack of reference to genuinely poor service.
Elliott, do you really think that the passengers that need this information are reading this website? The bad passengers don’t even know how to check in, let alone become involved in website and forums about travel. Let’s focus on allowing flight attendants to be able to enjoy the majorty of passengers while providing information on how good, happy fliers can help their less-fortunate travelling companions (or strangers in the next seat) to enjoy their experience.
I too fly a fair bit (about 150 flights last year) and agree with Mr. Lewis’ comments.
I offer the following:
In my experience, on a % basis, the number of flight attendants who seem ambivalent about making the customer experience positive far outweigh the number of unruly passengers.
To wit, in my 150 flights last year, I might have been on one or two where a passenger even slightly made a nuisance of themselves. On the flipside, I would say that at on at least 10% of those flights, the flight attendants were “cranky”.
So in effect, I submit, are we all being “punished” for the misdeeds of (very) few?
We think nothing of tipping waiters and maitres d’ for doing the basics of their job and when the food was done by someone else entirely. The flight attendants ought to be tipped when we consider the work they do for a bunch of often frazzled and impolite travelers; they do a lot more than any doorman or taxi driver or bus boy.
Sure, there some who are nearly as ornery as the passengers but, all in all, they do a great job under tough circumstances
Let’s just face it: when you’re up in the air, the flight attendant (stewardess to us old guys) is in command. Anything that could annoy her is taboo, and in this post 9/11 environment, the courts will come down very hard on any passenger who makes trouble. In fact, whether you are right or wrong makes no difference: the stewardess can still call for the cops to haul you away when the plane lands. And in that case you miss your rental car, your hotel, or your flight connection. So, the stewardess is always right. Smile and do what she says. If she says, “Stand on your head!”, you had better do it. Sue later, if you must, but don’t do anything that could possibly annoy flight personnel. Just be smart about it.
Whether a passenger or a member of the crew, when you fly you assume the inherent risks.
When I have paid good money for a seat on an airline, I am a customer and expect to be treated with attention and courtesy. I do not expect to be made feel as though I am a nuisance if I request a glass of water.
The flight attendents are being paid to do a job. That job entails interacting with passengers. We are not a nuisance. We are the reason the flight attendents are employed.
I do not accept or intend to tolerate “surly” employees, no matter what their personal concerns.
If these flight attendents are not happy with their positions, may I suggest they find other employment.
If you take the paycheck, meager or otherwise, then do the job.
I can think of no other industry where employee apathy or downright rudeness is tolerated because they are “unhappy”.
We all have our burdens, but on the job we are expected to perform our duties in a professional and polite manner.
As for their extensive safety training, based on the treatment I and my family have received over the las few years, in the event of an emergency, we fully expect to fend for ourselves!
For Mr. Steinsky,
Your comment “on a % basis, the number of flight attendants who seem ambivalent about making the customer experience positive far outweigh the number of unruly passengers” shows your limited vision.
Obviously you haven’t had to deal with the 200 passengers sitting BEHIND you!
i’ve learned using the words ma’am/sir, please, and using the ter “if you could when you have time”, usually gets me what i need. Try to be non-impulsive or rude about your request and your pretty much garenteed what you need. even stuff that the flight attendents are supposed to charge for.