here they come!

Every time I start feeling sorry for myself, I seek out a healthy dose of reality from my best friend, Helen. I tell her about Danny and how I miss having someone to share my life with. In turn, she tells me about some of the problems she has to deal with on a daily basis, and I eventually pull my head out of my self-absorbent sand and realise that the grass is not always greener on the other side.

Helen asks, ‘Where’s your next trip to?’

I almost feel too embarrassed to say Honolulu.

I just know that will get her into the all-too-familiar ‘Oh, how I wish I could…’ speech.

She does.

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So is life. Most people, like Helen, would give anything to spend even a few weeks in my shoes. I sometimes lose sight of that.

I pack for my Honolulu trip. I am only there for a day or so, and the packing is easy: swimming costume, sun-screen, sunglasses, an outfit for a night out, my Macy’s shopping card. Also, I know my routine before I even get there: I will have a nap, wake up, go to Waikiki beach for a swim and some sun, then go to the Ala Moana shopping centre.

Just before I zip up my wheelie-bag, I check the internet for the Honolulu weather forecast. It seems perfect, just like it always is when I am there. I double-check my choice of clothes for the trip and confidently close my wheelie-bag again, knowing that I have packed well and even have room to bring home a Macy’s purchase or two.

We are working on a mid-sized aircraft, a 767, and even though there are only seven of us working on the trip, it is still a rarity to be with a crew where you know everybody. Apart from Damien, I don’t know the others very well, but the boss, Geoff, I remember as an experienced and a straight-down-the-line type of guy. The crew seems great though, so all is good so far, except for the fact that I just had a visit from ‘Auntie Flo’. At least, I have got my period before I got onto the aircraft, thus giving me time to prepare myself, even if my internals do feel like they are tumbling in a washing machine.

Honolulu flights are generally hard work. The planes are usually full of holiday-makers, so booze flows freely and, as many aren’t regular flyers, passenger expectations are fairly high. I find that those who travel regularly know how to behave and what to expect on a flight. With them, drama happens only if they don’t get what they are used to. However, the passengers who only travel once every blue moon have no idea of what really goes on and want everything, and want it yesterday.

Both sectors to and from Honolulu are listed as full. I am allocated to work on a cart with Damien in cattle class – I would much rather be working up the front. Considering that work positions are chosen based on seniority of positions, and both Damien and I are the most junior crew on this flight, we don’t have a say in where we work.

Damien and I stand on opposite sides of the aisle, chatting as we await the throng of holiday-makers to board. We talk about our mutual friend Jackie. As I had suspected, she is still single. I have heard the term ‘fag hag’ being used frequently, both in the airline industry and outside. A fag hag is a girl who associates predominately with gay men. Jackie tends to spend most of her time with Damien and his gay friends. They are classy men, dress immaculately, indulge in the finer things in life and are highly critical of those who don’t. No straight guy can measure up to their lofty standards, and Jackie has adopted the same expectations. She is a stunning woman and attracts more than her fair share of admirers, but picks holes in every man she ever meets. A man who dates Jackie must be prepared to be a duck in a shooting gallery, and most are not.

Damien does tell me that Jackie did have a date with a passenger she met on a recent flight. Damien was also onboard then. In Damien’s words, ‘He was quite nice, but was wearing the most hideous shirt. Really, who wears shirts with diagonal stripes these days?’

I like Damien, but he can be very caustic and condescending. Lord help you if you get on his bad side. Damien speaks out what most of us think, and that’s what gets him into trouble. He will pick holes in everyone and everything, and tell people about it too. Thankfully he doesn’t do it to me.

Having said that, I do know he has a really good side to him: I have seen him sit down during his break with a little old lady who was fearful of flying. He held her hand and reassured her that everything was OK.

Now, as we watch the first group of passengers walking up the aisle, towards us, he turns to me, ‘Oh God, here they come, and this is going to be hideous’.

It becomes quickly apparent to me that this is going to be no ordinary flight. The first twenty or so passengers are middle-aged to elderly women, each travelling on their own, each frowning and each standing in the aisle and waving her arms frantically to get our attention.

Oh great. There must be a cat owner’s convention in Hawaii.

I am quite sufficient at handling one boarding problem at a time, but not twenty. Rather than talk individually to a mob of bitter and twisted single, older women who are complaining about the same thing, I decide to nip it in the bud and talk out loud to all of them. Hopefully anyone else queued up and ready to complain listens as well.

‘May I have your attention everyone? This is a full flight, so if anyone has a seating issue, we cannot change your seat during the boarding process. If you could take your assigned seat, we will verify your check-in sequence number and deal with the issue after take-off. Thank you.’

Damien has heard (and thoroughly agreed with) what I have announced and tells several cat owners on his side, ‘You heard her, luvee. Sit down.’

Most of the cat owners reluctantly sit down. One however marches toward me with fire flaring from her nostrils.

She snarls condescendingly, ‘If I cannot have an aisle seat, then I need to get off this plane!’

I don’t get paid enough to deal with loonies like this, so I don’t argue with her and instruct her to grab her in-cabin bags and come with me to the front door.

She probably didn’t think I was going to react this way, and although I can’t really tell if she is bluffing, I make my way with her against the flow of boarding passengers toward the front door. A huge Polynesian man is blocking our path, so I slide into a vacant seat to let him pass. He reeks of alcohol, but it is hard to tell if that’s why he is staggering through the cabin; he is so large that he hits every seat on his way through anyway.

I step into the aisle again and feel like a salmon swimming upstream as I wiggle my way through the oncoming passengers. I finally get my queen-of-the-cat-owners to the front door, where our boss Geoff is doing the boarding.

‘Geoff, this lady needs to get off the plane if we cannot give her an aisle seat.’

He understands the situation exactly.

Geoff is decisive, ‘Thanks Danielle, leave her here with me. If she won’t take her assigned seat, we will get the ground staff to offload her.’

As I leave I can see the fear in the woman’s eyes.

I am confident that Geoff has her measure. In between boarding other passengers, he will explain to her the conditions of travel as per her ticket. It is tough for our managers during the boarding process. He has to manage the boarding of over two-hundred people, basically on his own, and he has only minutes to do this. Should a problem arise (and they always do) he has to deal with it quickly and effectively, and he does.

I walk back down the aisle, following a youngish girl who is probably in her early twenties, but acts so much younger. She makes several comments that appear innocent, but I can tell that she is not overly bright. The wheel is spinning, but me thinks that the hamster is dead.

The boarding mayhem continues. Most of the cat owners remain standing in the misguided hope that somehow a whole row of aisle seats will magically appear before them. One of these women has an expression on her face that could curdle her cat’s milk.

She’s is going to be so much fun to deal with on the flight.

I can see the young girl, who I have followed down the cabin, staring at her boarding pass and then studying the seat numbers under the in-cabin lockers. It seems like finding her seat is obviously rocket science to this girl. She looks at her boarding pass again, with the intensity of a world championship chess contender, and then moves through a few more rows, to repeat the same routine.

The large Polynesian man is sitting in an aisle seat. Well, at least some of him is. The rest of him spills over the poor passenger beside him and the aisle itself. I look past his hulking frame to see the young girl, and I finally realise what seat she is in.

The aisle seat that this young girl is staring at is the only free seat in the area, but for some reason she stares at her boarding pass and the placard featuring the seat numbers at least four times to make quadruple-sure. Totally oblivious to the last of the passengers queuing behind her, instead of moving into the seat with her bag and letting them pass, she tries (unsuccessfully) to put her bag in the already full overhead locker.

Airline manufacturers design and make their aircraft based on the assumption that each passenger is going to carry money, a passport, a camera and a toothbrush onto the plane. Most passengers, however, bring along half the contents of their bedroom wardrobe, enough toiletries to outlast a nuclear fallout, the complete fiction section from the local bookstore and their kitchen sink.

The young girl’s bag is not as big as some I have seen, but the lockers directly above her are full. This girl just doesn’t have the brain-matter to work out that she might have to manoeuvre the other bags or use another locker to fit in her own luggage. I am still busy dealing with other passengers, however I keep one wary but amused eye on the young girl. Even though I am some distance away, I can tell that her bag is not going to fit in the locker she is trying to push it into.

Hell, Blind Freddy could see that it isn’t going to fit there.

Regardless of the bleeding obvious, or the advice of the passengers frustratingly queued up behind her, the young girl continues to think that if she tries a different angle the results will be different. It is not until I make my way to her and open the locker next to the one she has bludgeoned for the last five minutes that she realises that there are other options apart from futility.

Amidst the young girl’s locker shenanigans, I notice that the woman who I had taken to the front door has taken her seat, and it is not an aisle seat. She looks like she is ready to commit multiple murders, but she is at least seated.

Well done, Geoff!

I look across to try and get Damien’s attention as I’d love for him to see the expression on this sour woman’s face, but I noticed that he is in his own world of boarding pain. A woman has just dumped a massive bag in the aisle. The bag obviously weighs a ton, but she nonchalantly and quite rudely tells Damien to put it in the locker.

She didn’t even have the decency to make eye contact with Damien as she says this. She then turns her back to him and walks away.

Damien is going to read her the riot act, I think to myself. I can see the look in his eye, and although I would love to listen to what Damien has to tell her, I am busy with my own rude passengers. I will have to wait to find out what blunt words of wisdom he gave her.

I know that he will make her put her own bag in the overhead locker, and I just hope he uses words such as ‘occupational health and safety’, ‘if it is under the allowable onboard weight limit’, ‘for the safety of all passengers…’ and so on. That way when there is a customer complaint (and there usually is with Damien) and I get called into the office, I can back up his claims and insist that he acted professionally.

There are so many times that we must witness a display of rudeness by passengers, on a scale most people could not fathom dealing with in their own workplaces, but we still need to hold it together and choose our words carefully. I know Damien won’t be that thoughtful.

I just hope he doesn’t swear.

When the last passenger has boarded, Geoff makes his ‘Welcome onboard’ PA, including instructions for cabin preparation and for all passengers to be seated. Getting the last of the cat owners to climb into their non-aisle seats is as hard as trying to pry a toy out of a child’s hands. I give them an extra reminder. So does Damien.

I grab an extension seat belt and make my way toward the large Polynesian man whilst dozens of voices ask me for food and drinks. When we are preparing the cabin for take-off we need to take control quickly and surely, and this often means having to look at the passengers collectively and not as individuals.

Using my well-chosen plane speak, I reply to most passengers, but without breaking my stride, ‘Only safety-related duties at the moment, thanks folks’. It is hard not to appear as rude, but time constraints rarely allow us to give personalised service.

In the past twenty years of flying, I have never been called into the office for something I have said. However, if they could know what I sometimes think about, I would have been sacked years ago.