Blown slides and crying in parking lots
My beginnings as a flight attendant
Hello there,
You know those times when you’re holding everything together and you’re thinking, wow, somehow I’m okay?
And then all the g-forces align and then tip you into a glass case of emotion?
Many of you know that I’m about a month into my new career as a flight attendant. I no longer live in Seattle, and pretty much everything else in my life is upside-down in this new strange/sad/happy reality I live in.
For my first rotation, I flew one 45 minute leg to Omaha and got a 29 hour layover upon arrival. At first I thought, this job is too easy!
The crew consisted of 3 other newbies, all gals, and we all grabbed drinks multiple times over the course of our sit in the 100 degree city.
Then about a week later, I was called on reserve to deadhead and fly with a Boston based crew to Phoenix and back. The only issue? One leg included a red eye.
If you know me, you know I love sleep more than most things in life and that I fall apart when I can’t get any.
And that’s exactly what happened after the deadhead flight to Minneapolis from Boston had to deplane due to a crew mistake.
Let me explain.
Basically, the airline paid me to fly as a passenger to and from Boston to distribute staffing better. They call this deadheading for those who don’t know.
A crew member on the previous flight on the same plane must’ve left the door armed, thereby inflating and “blowing a slide,” which can be dangerous and cost you your job.
It also cost me my last hope of a morning nap and any remaining sanity after working a red eye. Fast forward to 7 hours after we had landed in Boston, 36 plus hours of no sleep, and I found myself quietly sobbing near the hotel shuttle signs in the arrival drive-through feeling way too far from a familiar bed.
In the end, the airline put me up in a super swanky hotel in downtown Boston. I got some exercise running past Paul Revere’s grave, took myself out for a beer and tacos, called mom, and calmed myself down enough to get a few hours sleep before a 5:30 a.m. flight out of there.
You might be thinking, why is she telling me her sob story?
Well, I’m a Scorpio and an Enneagram 4. If that means nothing to you, then I’ll just say that melancholy is sometimes the most comfortable feeling for me.
There’s so many YouTube channels and Instagram stars that glorify the life of a flight attendant. And it is glorious a lot of the time!
But I’m not a super glamorous person, and I want to show a more real side to this lifestyle. Thus, stories about crying in parking lots.
I’ve also been described as having a “sunny personality.” Or maybe people mean a “sonny personality,” and they’re really saying it’s easy to be chummy with me.
Either way, I like the name Flightlandia for my newsletter. It's a nod to one of my favorite shows about the absurdness of living in Portland (called Portlandia) and I imagine there will be a lot of absurd things that happen in the sky. I'm okay with this as long as it doesn't involve feces. Unfortunately this seems like a strong possibility based amount of flight attendant stories I've heard on the topic.
Stay tuned as I rediscover my writing voice, figure out this new job and head into the great wide open.
Stay fly,
Megan
P.S. Oh yah, I almost forget to give you a travel tip.
Tip of the week: It's never worth it to use a third-party booking platform. You'll end up paying more in baggage fees, years of your life and lost time than you would booking direct through the airline.
Once, I booked a flight home from Thailand through Expedia and upon checking in at the Bangkok airport, I learned that I couldn't board my flight because Expedia didn't warn me about Chinese visa requirements for layovers. I could've looked this up but it's still 100% Expedia's fault. Thanks Dad for bailing me out of Thailand.
P.P.S. If you just thought, what a lame travel tip! let me know other ways this newsletter could be more useful to you and what you want to hear from me.