flyblue
3rd Oct 2001, 10:29
The new take on flight attendants: Thank you for flying with us
By David Montgomery
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON -- The first blue platoons reach Dulles International Airport at dawn. With perfect hair, they debark from employee shuttle buses, snap out the handles of their black rolling bags, and step smartly through the terminal -- the men silent on thick rubber soles, the women clicking and clacking on short, square heels.
Their uncovered heads and the diminutive stripes on their uniform sleeves signal their place in the pecking order. Hats and fat stripes are for captains and first officers. These are flight attendants, and pretty soon they'll be serving coffee.
Now it's time for some respect. Twenty-five flight attendants died in the line of duty on Sept. 11. At least two were stabbed by hijackers, according to cell phone conversations reported later. At least two others reportedly made calls to their supervisors on the ground, giving details about the crimes in progress, doing their jobs until the end.
Hundreds of others were in midair throughout the hemisphere when word of the terrorist attacks reached their planes. Federal officials ordered pilots to turn around, or divert to unexpected locations. In those scary minutes it fell to flight attendants to keep the passengers calm -- while they wondered if their own planes might be next.
When takeoffs resumed, most flight attendants pushed aside fear and grief, and returned to duty. On this morning at Dulles, the facial expressions are resolute, the small talk minimal, as the blue platoons file briskly down the corridor to the security barrier.
The firefighters who rushed into the inferno of the World Trade Center have been turned into folk heroes, deservedly so. Flight attendants haven't enjoyed a fraction of the acclaim.
Maybe we're finding it just a little hard to ascribe personality, biography, emotion, heroism to airborne actors stuck with lines like "Please place your seat backs and tray tables in an upright and locked position."
What thanks are flight attendants getting?
How does this sound: You're fired.
Since Sept. 11, airlines have announced more than 90,000 layoffs. Some details announced so far: Continental says it will furlough 1,800 flight attendants; American says it will furlough 1,000 who have less than six months' seniority; United will cut 5,000 for the month of October, with future plans to come, according to the attendants' union.
They're scared, all right: of terrorism and unemployment, not necessarily in that order.
Let us then inquire of the blue platoons. What is going on inside the well-coiffed head, behind the reassuring mask?
Francois Schneider, a United Airlines flight attendant bound from Dulles to Brussels, has the bearing of a man going to war. "It's so unsure what's going on with the layoffs, safety on the planes," he says, furrowing his brow. Then his body stiffens and his face clears. "I won't let those people get to me and I won't let them change my way of life. . . . No matter what, I will make sure people know they are safe."
As they pass through security and file to their gates, there's something to add. It is the universal prayer of flight attendants -- a plea for respect.
It's on the lips of Betty Malish, heading to Denver with United: "They might see us as a little bit more than a waitress."
-- -- --
Their job is to be the smiling face of flight. The public identity of a critical chunk of the economy is distilled in that peppy figure at the front of the cabin.
With base salaries topping out around $39,000, they are trained to handle crash landings, births, air rage -- though not terrorists bent on suicide. Since the late 1960s they've been living down "Coffee Tea or Me?," the bestseller purporting to chronicle the adventures of two stewardesses.
They're so good at what they do that we stopped paying attention. We did not get out the laminated safety information cards to study the closest emergency exit. We were sold: Flying was safe and easy, and flight attendants were the hired help to ease us on our self-absorbed journeys to fabulous vacations and vital business meetings.
Now the smiling face of flight is grieving and scared, mostly on the inside. Still, some can't quite nail the main trick of the trade anymore, the underappreciated ability to communicate at a glance a profound message: "All is well."
Hundreds have sought counseling. Some disappear into lavatories to collect themselves when rogue insecurities threaten that outward unflappability.
Some return to duty a little too tightly wound. Last week a Northwest Airlines flight attendant mistakenly declared an emergency on the Dulles tarmac, prompting the pilot and cockpit officers to abandon ship via rope ladders. (The flight attendants were afforded no such means of escape -- something else for them to ponder.)
Some have been temporarily grounded by horrible nightmares.
"People put on that uniform, and they get through security, and they can't do it," says Jennifer Grega, a United flight attendant who provided emotional support at Dulles as co-chair of the Association of Flight Attendants' employee assistance program. "The hardest part for everyone is getting on that airplane. Once they're on, they can keep it together."
The images in a flight attendant's mind are still horrifyingly personal.
"Those bastards were here," Grega says. "They were in this airport. You walk through security and you see the same people looking at those screens, and you tell me: What's changed?"
Martine Primm, with US Airways, watches replays of the fiery crashes, and pictures herself inside one of the doomed cabins. "I could imagine getting my neck slit in order to move the passengers back to the back," she says. "I know what went on in the galley. I can see the fear. I can feel the surprise of it."
-- -- --
The actions of the flight attendants on the four hijacked planes may never be known for sure. Almost certainly they operated under the old assumed ground rules. Hijackers were thought to be desperate to reach a particular destination, extract ransom or score political points without necessarily sacrificing their own lives.
Flight attendants were taught not to resist and to keep everything calm. "We need to make sure that gets updated to reflect the realities that we know now," says Dawn Deeks, spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants.
Aboard American Airlines Flight 11, which took off from Boston's Logan International Airport, flight attendant Madeline Sweeney used a cell phone to contact a ground services manager, according to an FBI report disclosed in the Los Angeles Times.
Two flight attendants had been stabbed, she said. "A hijacker also cut the throat of a business-class passenger, and he appears to be dead."
The manager asked if she knew her location. She responded: "I see water and buildings. Oh my God! Oh my God!"
The call ended abruptly, and Flight 11 was the first to crash into the World Trade Center.
Aboard United Airlines Flight 93, some passengers with cell phones learned from people on the ground about the earlier hijackings. They apparently resolved to regain control the aircraft.
Flight attendant Sandra Bradshaw called her husband and told him the flight attendants were boiling water to throw at the hijackers, according to her hometown paper, the News & Record of Greensboro, N.C.
"We're all running to first class," she said. "I've got to go. Bye."
The plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania.
At about that instant, flight attendant Tammie Andersen was high above the Atlantic Ocean, aboard a United flight 3 ½ hours out of London's Heathrow Airport, heading to Dulles.
The first officer emerged from the cockpit to speak to the purser, the lead flight attendant. Then the purser quietly informed Andersen that two airliners had crashed into the World Trade Center.
Over the intercom, the captain told passengers that the United States had declared a state of emergency, and he was flying the plane back to London. He connected a BBC news feed to the cabin that passengers could listen to on their headphones. The news was constantly updated, and soon the passengers knew more than the flight attendants. The passengers told them of the crashes into the Pentagon and Pennsylvania.
Andersen didn't know whether to let herself -- force herself -- to smile. She wanted to put on a brave front for everyone.
"You find yourself smiling, have-a-nice-day type thing," she recalled. "Then you think, how can you smile? You also want to show you're human."
Three days later, Andersen was preparing for that tense initiation, the first post-Sept. 11 flight. She picked up a Gideon Bible and started reading the 23rd Psalm, a favorite of her grandfather's. She noticed some of the words echoed in a newspaper headline in the hotel room: "Shadow of Death."
The same crew and many of the same passengers were booked on the flight to Dulles, but one flight attendant declined to make the trip. It was too soon after the tragedy.
Andersen discovered she did not feel afraid. "I'm not going to let this take over my life," she told herself.
Airborne, she gingerly attempted a little humor as she and some first-class passengers chuckled over having to use plastic knives to cut airline pork -- no easy task.
One passenger came up and hugged Andersen, saying: "I'm back and here for the flight and so glad to see you. Is your family all right?"
Andersen was struck by the shift in passengers' attitude toward her. Flight attendants from many airlines have been reporting the same phenomenon: Passengers are treating them more like real people.
An answered prayer. How long will it last?
On that first flight, one of Andersen's colleagues was pushing the meal cart through the cabin. The dinner selection was not to the liking of one passenger.
"Don't I have a choice?" she wailed.
Nothing the flight attendant said would console the hungry passenger. The smiling face of flight retreated, before losing its temper.
Andersen recalls the incident later, as she watches a bomb-sniffing dog patrol the Dulles terminal.
"We were all just thinking: People lost their lives, and you're worried about a meal choice?"
[ 03 October 2001: Message edited by: flyblue ]
By David Montgomery
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON -- The first blue platoons reach Dulles International Airport at dawn. With perfect hair, they debark from employee shuttle buses, snap out the handles of their black rolling bags, and step smartly through the terminal -- the men silent on thick rubber soles, the women clicking and clacking on short, square heels.
Their uncovered heads and the diminutive stripes on their uniform sleeves signal their place in the pecking order. Hats and fat stripes are for captains and first officers. These are flight attendants, and pretty soon they'll be serving coffee.
Now it's time for some respect. Twenty-five flight attendants died in the line of duty on Sept. 11. At least two were stabbed by hijackers, according to cell phone conversations reported later. At least two others reportedly made calls to their supervisors on the ground, giving details about the crimes in progress, doing their jobs until the end.
Hundreds of others were in midair throughout the hemisphere when word of the terrorist attacks reached their planes. Federal officials ordered pilots to turn around, or divert to unexpected locations. In those scary minutes it fell to flight attendants to keep the passengers calm -- while they wondered if their own planes might be next.
When takeoffs resumed, most flight attendants pushed aside fear and grief, and returned to duty. On this morning at Dulles, the facial expressions are resolute, the small talk minimal, as the blue platoons file briskly down the corridor to the security barrier.
The firefighters who rushed into the inferno of the World Trade Center have been turned into folk heroes, deservedly so. Flight attendants haven't enjoyed a fraction of the acclaim.
Maybe we're finding it just a little hard to ascribe personality, biography, emotion, heroism to airborne actors stuck with lines like "Please place your seat backs and tray tables in an upright and locked position."
What thanks are flight attendants getting?
How does this sound: You're fired.
Since Sept. 11, airlines have announced more than 90,000 layoffs. Some details announced so far: Continental says it will furlough 1,800 flight attendants; American says it will furlough 1,000 who have less than six months' seniority; United will cut 5,000 for the month of October, with future plans to come, according to the attendants' union.
They're scared, all right: of terrorism and unemployment, not necessarily in that order.
Let us then inquire of the blue platoons. What is going on inside the well-coiffed head, behind the reassuring mask?
Francois Schneider, a United Airlines flight attendant bound from Dulles to Brussels, has the bearing of a man going to war. "It's so unsure what's going on with the layoffs, safety on the planes," he says, furrowing his brow. Then his body stiffens and his face clears. "I won't let those people get to me and I won't let them change my way of life. . . . No matter what, I will make sure people know they are safe."
As they pass through security and file to their gates, there's something to add. It is the universal prayer of flight attendants -- a plea for respect.
It's on the lips of Betty Malish, heading to Denver with United: "They might see us as a little bit more than a waitress."
-- -- --
Their job is to be the smiling face of flight. The public identity of a critical chunk of the economy is distilled in that peppy figure at the front of the cabin.
With base salaries topping out around $39,000, they are trained to handle crash landings, births, air rage -- though not terrorists bent on suicide. Since the late 1960s they've been living down "Coffee Tea or Me?," the bestseller purporting to chronicle the adventures of two stewardesses.
They're so good at what they do that we stopped paying attention. We did not get out the laminated safety information cards to study the closest emergency exit. We were sold: Flying was safe and easy, and flight attendants were the hired help to ease us on our self-absorbed journeys to fabulous vacations and vital business meetings.
Now the smiling face of flight is grieving and scared, mostly on the inside. Still, some can't quite nail the main trick of the trade anymore, the underappreciated ability to communicate at a glance a profound message: "All is well."
Hundreds have sought counseling. Some disappear into lavatories to collect themselves when rogue insecurities threaten that outward unflappability.
Some return to duty a little too tightly wound. Last week a Northwest Airlines flight attendant mistakenly declared an emergency on the Dulles tarmac, prompting the pilot and cockpit officers to abandon ship via rope ladders. (The flight attendants were afforded no such means of escape -- something else for them to ponder.)
Some have been temporarily grounded by horrible nightmares.
"People put on that uniform, and they get through security, and they can't do it," says Jennifer Grega, a United flight attendant who provided emotional support at Dulles as co-chair of the Association of Flight Attendants' employee assistance program. "The hardest part for everyone is getting on that airplane. Once they're on, they can keep it together."
The images in a flight attendant's mind are still horrifyingly personal.
"Those bastards were here," Grega says. "They were in this airport. You walk through security and you see the same people looking at those screens, and you tell me: What's changed?"
Martine Primm, with US Airways, watches replays of the fiery crashes, and pictures herself inside one of the doomed cabins. "I could imagine getting my neck slit in order to move the passengers back to the back," she says. "I know what went on in the galley. I can see the fear. I can feel the surprise of it."
-- -- --
The actions of the flight attendants on the four hijacked planes may never be known for sure. Almost certainly they operated under the old assumed ground rules. Hijackers were thought to be desperate to reach a particular destination, extract ransom or score political points without necessarily sacrificing their own lives.
Flight attendants were taught not to resist and to keep everything calm. "We need to make sure that gets updated to reflect the realities that we know now," says Dawn Deeks, spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants.
Aboard American Airlines Flight 11, which took off from Boston's Logan International Airport, flight attendant Madeline Sweeney used a cell phone to contact a ground services manager, according to an FBI report disclosed in the Los Angeles Times.
Two flight attendants had been stabbed, she said. "A hijacker also cut the throat of a business-class passenger, and he appears to be dead."
The manager asked if she knew her location. She responded: "I see water and buildings. Oh my God! Oh my God!"
The call ended abruptly, and Flight 11 was the first to crash into the World Trade Center.
Aboard United Airlines Flight 93, some passengers with cell phones learned from people on the ground about the earlier hijackings. They apparently resolved to regain control the aircraft.
Flight attendant Sandra Bradshaw called her husband and told him the flight attendants were boiling water to throw at the hijackers, according to her hometown paper, the News & Record of Greensboro, N.C.
"We're all running to first class," she said. "I've got to go. Bye."
The plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania.
At about that instant, flight attendant Tammie Andersen was high above the Atlantic Ocean, aboard a United flight 3 ½ hours out of London's Heathrow Airport, heading to Dulles.
The first officer emerged from the cockpit to speak to the purser, the lead flight attendant. Then the purser quietly informed Andersen that two airliners had crashed into the World Trade Center.
Over the intercom, the captain told passengers that the United States had declared a state of emergency, and he was flying the plane back to London. He connected a BBC news feed to the cabin that passengers could listen to on their headphones. The news was constantly updated, and soon the passengers knew more than the flight attendants. The passengers told them of the crashes into the Pentagon and Pennsylvania.
Andersen didn't know whether to let herself -- force herself -- to smile. She wanted to put on a brave front for everyone.
"You find yourself smiling, have-a-nice-day type thing," she recalled. "Then you think, how can you smile? You also want to show you're human."
Three days later, Andersen was preparing for that tense initiation, the first post-Sept. 11 flight. She picked up a Gideon Bible and started reading the 23rd Psalm, a favorite of her grandfather's. She noticed some of the words echoed in a newspaper headline in the hotel room: "Shadow of Death."
The same crew and many of the same passengers were booked on the flight to Dulles, but one flight attendant declined to make the trip. It was too soon after the tragedy.
Andersen discovered she did not feel afraid. "I'm not going to let this take over my life," she told herself.
Airborne, she gingerly attempted a little humor as she and some first-class passengers chuckled over having to use plastic knives to cut airline pork -- no easy task.
One passenger came up and hugged Andersen, saying: "I'm back and here for the flight and so glad to see you. Is your family all right?"
Andersen was struck by the shift in passengers' attitude toward her. Flight attendants from many airlines have been reporting the same phenomenon: Passengers are treating them more like real people.
An answered prayer. How long will it last?
On that first flight, one of Andersen's colleagues was pushing the meal cart through the cabin. The dinner selection was not to the liking of one passenger.
"Don't I have a choice?" she wailed.
Nothing the flight attendant said would console the hungry passenger. The smiling face of flight retreated, before losing its temper.
Andersen recalls the incident later, as she watches a bomb-sniffing dog patrol the Dulles terminal.
"We were all just thinking: People lost their lives, and you're worried about a meal choice?"
[ 03 October 2001: Message edited by: flyblue ]