Flight Attendant Peeves
Hurry Up and Wait
Have you been on a flight where the flight attendants have announced over and over again about hurrying to get on board, stepping out of the aisle, and get settled? Hurry up, hurry up.
I have no problems with flight attendants encouraging folks to be considerate and move along. Admonishing customers to hurry up, saying that you’re going to cause us to be late, and doing so multiple times, just really annoys me.
We’re not going to take off with folks in the aisle. It’s completely within the airlines control as to when we board the plane. Just making folks hurry, and feeling bad, or causing anxiety, to just sit around is annoying.
(Recently I was on a flight where the flight attendant asked folks to step out of the aisle to move along the process in order to help get everyone out of the cold. That made sense. It wasn’t pushy, it was well phrased, and it was effective.)
Swinging Hips
Flight attendants that continue to bump into me when I’m sitting in the aisle seat also annoys me. If I can figure out how to walk down the aisle and not hit everyone, they should be able to do the same thing, because they have to do it all the time at their jobs.
Chatting and Ignoring the Customer
This annoys me more when I’ve been upgraded. But I’ve been on a number of flights when after doing the first round of service, the flight attendants disappear and just chat away with one another. Um, I shouldn’t have to hit the call button to get your attention. Just wander through every 10 minutes, and not every 45.
I should probably stop now, I’m sure I’m using up some of my flying karma posting this.
I’m a flight attendant and I even think FAs can get carried away with the boarding announcements, that being said, you need to put yourself in our position…but that would be much longer than this post…lol!
“chatting and ignoring the customer”…how about chatting and ignoring the FA…everyone has headphones on when we do our service now and they do not pay attention to when the cart shows up.The funniest part is after we ask 4X what they would like to drink and they finally respond with, “what?” Ummmmm….what do you think we’re there for??
Sara, thanks for your comment!
For what it’s worth, I try pretty hard to be prepared when the Flight Attendant comes by to ask a question. I am one of those flyers that wears the noise canceling headsets. But about 90% of the time I’ll already have one of my ears uncovered by the time the flight attendant gets to me (even though I often understand them better with the headset on), and the other 10%, I’m ready and answer their questions with the headset on.
Mostly though, it’s situational awareness, and being polite.
I may have to finally write up my post on different “characters” I’ve encountered on planes…the kid that kicks the seat in front of him (and the parent that doesn’t stop him), the chatty seatmate and so on.
Thanks again for the comment.
Grr…bad blog. My own blog ate my reply :(
[Edited: Actually it marks my own posts as spam for some reason.]
For what it’s worth, I do wear noise canceling headphones most of the time. However, about 90% of the time, I have one ear free before the flight attendant gets to me. And the other 10%, I’m already looking at the flight attendant and prepared to answer his/her question about drink/food/whatever.
It’s all about situational awareness and being polite. Neither of which seems to happen much anymore.