I agree with just about everyone, I used to fly short haul, on a 4 sector day, we usually had time to eat on at least 3 sectors if we wanted ( even if it was a bit rushed).
On long haul sectors, we have rostered time off after the meal service ie, everyone on the left side goes off for 3 hours, the rest stay and play with the pax, then swap over. ( I must add some of our sectors are 15 hours long !!). We have bunks in the 747-400 and on selected services on the B747-300. The B747-200/SP/B767's have curtained off seats for us to snooze in.
It's all about time management on short sectors !!
If you have a 4 secotr day, and you havent had time to eat on the first 2, then you have to adapt the service to accommodate you (a hungry & fatigued f/a is a safety hazzard!) a good rule of thumb for this situation would be to look after:
a)cabin crew b) techies c)pax in that order. But with proper time management, you should never get into that situation !~!
You have to look after yourselves and your fellow cabin crew in order to be able to look after the pax !!
If your airline is that bad, I would really suggest you cahnge carriers !!
Oh and whoever that SLF was who complained about the f/a sitting down reading the paper - what would you have him do? Laps of the cabin for five hours? Sit there twiddling his thumbs for five hours? Serenade the pax to sleep? What ?? I'm sure if you pressed your call button, he'd put the paper down and help you. Geesh! no pleasing some people!!
