Not My Hero; But I Did Laugh

When I began this post last night, I wrote: “Over 45,000 people ‘like’ Steven Slater on Facebook.” As of 7:45 this morning, that number is over 100,000 fans. In case you live in a vacuum, Steven Slater is the JetBlue flight attendant who quit his job Monday—and quite dramatically, at that. After an unpleasant encounter with a passenger, Slater opened an aircraft door, inflated the emergency evacuation slide, grabbed a beer, and exited down the slide. My first reaction when I heard about it on the radio was: “Well, he did what every one of us would have liked to do at one time or another in our careers as flight attendants.

I’m going out on a wing here and betting that a majority of those 100,000 fans are flight attendants, past or present. And while most flight attendants may have fantasized about popping a slide, grabbing a beer, and blowing the big aluminum tube, thankfully, we are, for the most part, a stable group of people.

“Move ‘em on, hit ‘em up, Rawhide.” Tiomkin and Washington

Last week I was in Detroit and trying to catch a flight back to Dallas/Ft. Worth. After about an hour’s drive in morning rush-hour traffic, my brother dropped me off at the airport on the departure level, and I entered the terminal building. It was a mob scene inside. There were people lined up for the automated check-in machines and dozens of people working their way like a conga line through stanchions and velvet ropes to speak to a live ticket agent.

Then it was off to the security line. Nearly 50 people were in line ahead of me and there were only two x-ray machines with working crews. For the next half-hour we did “clutch and go’s:” pick up, push, or drag your bag…inch ahead a little…move bag…move feet…move bag…move feet. You get the picture, right? All the while a morbidly obese, uniformed TSA agent was weaving back and forth in front of the crowd, shouting orders about security procedures. It was dehumanizing and nerve wracking.

Sardines in a tin.

My flight to DFW was on an MD-80 airplane with the five across, two-seat/three-seat configuration. The overhead bins were jam-packed full, and as we used to say, there was a butt in every seat and a face in every window. Does any of this sound glamorous, exciting, or even remotely pleasant? No. So, imagine being locked in an aluminum tube for a few hours with 140 paying customers who have just been treated like cattle and feel as defensive as I did.

Something happens to some people when they are cooped up in an airplane, surrounded by strangers. Their language may become shockingly vulgar, they may become physically abusive, and they often reject any kind of authority—especially from a woman or a gay man. Most flight attendants accept that the stress of getting to the airport, getting through security, and being stuffed into a crowded airplane in combination with delays, service cutbacks, and too much alcohol many times, triggers the bad behavior. But believe me, there have always been people who behave badly on a plane—long before 9/11 and today’s challenges.

It’s not only on airplanes that people behave badly. A policeman I know once had a woman deliberately drive her car into him when he gave her a traffic direction she didn’t want to follow. He said she was lucky he didn’t shoot her. Flight attendants don’t have weapons, except for their wits and their training. Since 9/11, they have not been able to rely on the pilots to come out of the cockpit and help if things get out of control in the cabin. On the other hand, since 9/11, more and more passengers are more than willing to jump into a fray and help defuse a bad situation.

Flight Attendants don’t make the rules, but they’re dying to.

Most altercations between passengers and crews on the airplane happen because of a “rules violation,” and flight attendants can seem like “rules Nazi’s” at times. Turning off cell phones, stowing luggage, fastening seatbelts, staying in seats, and smoking in lavatories, are a few of the issues that make problems for cabin crews. It is said the rules of aviation are written in blood, and all of the rules about these issues have been written in someone’s blood. If you think that sounds a little overstated, I assure you it’s not. Aircraft accident investigations have revealed that these seemingly small issues have caused loss of life.

I’m not a fan of Steven Slater and his behavior. I like to think that I held it together pretty well for forty years, with some minor exceptions. I’ve been shoved, verbally abused, and insulted by the very customers whose lives I was expected to save in an emergency. I’ve been permanently injured doing my job. And yes, I have fantasized about opening a door, inflating the slide, and zipping off the job, but I’m one to worry about consequences. Our real heroes are the flight attendants of US Airways Flight 1549 and others whose professionalism and bravery saved the lives of their passengers and coworkers. What Steven did was irresponsible, but give us this moment to relish in our umm. . . .folk hero?

Donna