The Secret Life of a Flight Attendant

Since it is not very likely that any one close to me will ever travel on one my flights I have decided to bring a flight to you.  I have done my best to take pictures of all the secrets of the Embrear 135.  The drawers, the cabinets, the controls and even then teeny tiny trash cans that will hold 37 passengers worth of soda cans, cups and snack bags.  (All captions pertain the photo below it.)

This is my aircraft.

   

The first thing I do when I get to work is get my snacks ready.  These are the drawers we load with food and beverages.  The cart they are sitting on is what we use to haul everything to aircraft.

 

Once inside the aircraft I put everything away.  It’s amazing because everything has a place, and when it’s in it’s place, it seems to have just disappeared.  If you look around the aircraft the storage places are so well hidden it’s almost as if they don’t exist, at least to the naked eye.  So, here is your sneak peak into how in the world we get everything to fit on the plane.

My first example is these cups.  This space looks very small, but look at how long these sleeves of cups really are.  We can get 2 sleeves of plastic cups (25 cups per sleeve) and one sleeve of hot cops into this space.

   

This tiny drawer is only tiny until you open it.

This is the food and beverage cart.

More storage, and me holding one of the baskets for size reference.

Once the aircraft is loaded and I do my emergency equipment checks, I am ready for passengers. 

(View from where I sit.)

Which is here. 

If anything ever happens on your aircraft this is what the cabin will look like.

In this picture the cabin is pitch black and my flash is off.  This is how well the emergency lights light up the plane.  The green lights on the floor lead you to an exit.  The large white light you see on the ceiling reads, “exit”.

This is what is like to try to stuff all the trash into the teeny tiny receptacle.

Below is the trash can and its cubby.  No joke the trash can is no more than 6 x 18 x 24 inches.  (When you are flying and need to throw away a water bottle, leave the lid off so that it can be crushed to save space.)

This is my control panel.  I can control cabin lights, cabin temp, emergency lights, and passenger service units (reading lights and call buttons) all from this central location.  It is directly in front of me when I am sitting on the jump seat.  You will also notice the air mobile phone.  This is so we can contact someone on the ground in case of an emergency.  One time we had to divert to College Station to wait for the weather to clear out of Houston.  The chief pilot, who was on the ground in Bartlesville (our hub) could not get a hold of the pilots, who were flying, because they were talking to Air Traffic Control, so he called me on the air mobile to tell me how much pizza to order for the passengers.  Praise God, these are the kinds of emergencies I am most likely to encounter.    

These are the guys who I happened to be entrusting with my life on this particular night. 

This is the view from the door on the other side of the aircraft.  It is referred to as the service door because it is the door we use to load our snacks and beverages onto the plane.  My cart and trash can await me. 

These are the people I have just told to have a wonderful evening walking down the ramp and into the terminal. 

These are the mechanics at the Houston Hangar.  They are hanging out watching us leave.  You can’t see it, but they are waiving to me.

So, this is my life as a Flight Attendant in a nutshell.  Every flight attendant is there for basically the same reason, safety first.  It’s the details that make the job different for everyone.  I would venture to say that I have one of the cushiest flight attendant jobs there is.  How do I know?  Because I have the fewest stories to tell.   And this is how I would like for it to remain.