Too Excited To Flap My Wings...

This has caused a temporary pause... retracing my life through years in the airline industry.
I am still active at writing my blogs but I must learn the right techniques to spread my...words.

So, while I flap my wings, please help me and pass the word... as a friend or as passenger ...or any man or woman who meets my heart and soul when you read my humble words.

Thank YOU !

TheAirPro

Life Challenges..

Life Challenges...

Three months had passed …quickly.

The pre-required observation time had come its final stage.

Although I had been actually working as a full-time Airline Hostess and not as an additional crew member, I was still new at this. However nobody could see or guess by the way I was running up and down the narrow aisle, carrying and balancing two full dinner trays, filled with porcelain dishes, glasses along with real cutlery, on my left arm and one on my right arm…and up and down, twenty two rows, three seats on each side of the aisle.

We had no serving cart in coach to serve dinner…and three choices of warm dinner dishes to choose from.

I was running a marathon on high heels.

So, my dears, gold wings had be pinned on my left “upper” breast but no other sign to witness I was a “fresh-woman” in the Flying University because I was flapping my wings like a pro! Mother Hen would have been mighty proud of me.

However I had to go through this critical phase because, if I did well, the skies were mine to fly away …indefinitely… and would bring awesome benefits.

On each leg I was working on, I had accepted all the pre-assigned duties given to me by the Flight Purser. He would then judge my performance and report to my supervisor.

For me, it meant that I was allowed no choice, no preference and only agree and cover each cabin service positions.

Although a rookie initially, practicing on the operational details of the galleys and cabin services, in both classes, it didn’t take me long to become fully familiar with flight management.

However every flight was a totally new experience of course. The passengers made the difference and also the crew, each time a new one with whom I shared strenuous hours of cabin duties.

 Finally, the biggest change was in my travel destination which gave me an occasion for wonderment for everything and everyone.

During all this diversity, I was getting more polished for each flight.

Upon the end of my trainee period, my supervisor had called, asking me to make a short stop at her office before my next crew briefing.

After the emotions of going through the two rounds of interviews, followed by the deep concentration studying during training in Kansas City, ending with graduation, I had now come to the final evaluation, the performance appraisal!

The pleasant smile on my supervisor’s face along with her warm greeting was for me enough signs. She was efficiently brief in her appreciation of my work. Her parting line:

- “ if you keep on doing what you do today and with the way you are… you will become one of the best! “ and her handshake with “ Welcome on Board!” ended her final and professional send-off.

I had made it!

The consecration of my employment as a full-time International Airline Hostess was a fact.

I would be able to choose my flight schedule for each month now. That was perfect as it gave me the chance to revaluate my personal life, review my living conditions and most of all, the possibility to open some “forgotten “obligations.

There was no point in avoiding those now.

I had to inform my parents and family in France who had heard nothing from me…since the beginning of my flying adventure.

Being a full time crew member gave me the benefits of reduced fares on all TWA flights and most airlines around the world.

For me, buying my first non-revenue, stand-by ticket and enjoying a flight as a passenger, from New-York to Paris, round trip during my three days off, represented a major task and one not to postpone any longer.

Face the bull by its horns.

That was me.

                                                             ***********

“Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.”

                                                 - Joseph Campbell -

Wild, Wilder, Wildest ...

 

Being able to work on an airplane from New-York to Lisbon, capital of Portugal, to enjoy two full days of rest, all expenses paid in a four-stars luxury hotel downtown, I thought life was a ball and pulling at me… with the urge to search for excitement.

Upon landing and shortly after exiting the terminal building to step into our crew limousine, however tired and longing for a bath as we all were…I still possessed enough energy to bring forth some idea I had…although to no one in particular.

In few words I expressed this wish to go to a casino and play the tables just to “see” if I had a lucky hand. Of course I knew about the Casino in Estoril which was a taxi ride away.

The three men in our crew, the Captain, First Officer and Flight Engineer, brightened up instantly. They emerged from semi- lethargy and agreed then and there to accompany me.

Brilliant, I thought. The perfect escort: serious men and no women giggling with fear in the background.

Later that evening, a taxi was summoned and with my American cowboys, I was on my way… thrilled with the prospects of navigating into the unknown.

As the etiquette called for, the dress code was strict to enter any European Casino.  Suits and ties for the Gentlemen and for the Ladies, formal evening dresses were mandatory.

In my crew case, I always had a respectable classy gown. A  black long and sexy strapless dress along with the matching black silk gloves that went up to my elbows.

To finalize this “dramatic “vision, I had an elegant telescopic cigarette holder to smoke with. It went from 5, 5 cm to its fully extendable 23cm.

As I entered the Casino, elbowed by my dignified male escort, I was oozing with self-confidence, in a kind of easy nonchalance. With a dancing motion of the hips, I walked gingerly on high heels, making my way slowly towards one of Blackjack tables.

I climbed quite comfortably on one of the high stools framing the table, nodded to the croupier, a young attractive Portuguese man…while a  glass of Dom Pérignon suddenly appeared by my side.

My escorts were attentive to my unspoken desires.

It was my first time at playing Blackjack but, after a few minutes of observing my neighbours, I began to play my own hand.

I was enjoying myself thoroughly and getting cockier by the second… so much so that I decided to light a cigarette…um… at full length!

I had placed the lit cigarette at the very end of the holder and IT, being at an arm’s length from my mouth, made smoking a wee bit perilous because… I couldn’t see the ashes.  

Also from the corner of an eye, another happening was developing itself, as I could see.

A crisp and expressionless man in a conservative tuxedo was watching me attentively as he approached our table.

He stood by the croupier, looked at him, exchanged glances first at the table, then at the players, finally, with the longest inquisitive stare towards me!

It didn’t take long.

 I was quietly but firmly escorted out of the Casino…

There was no drama. It was done with class. I didn’t even raise my voice when I asked for an explanation. 

The important man just looked at my cigarette holder. Ha! I thought… what then?

What did I do… except win each hand?

I was up to $300 and that was a lot of good money in those days…in poor Portugal before their entrance in the European family.

He wanted to know, in a halting school English, what “my “device was all about.  Before I had a chance to answer, in a couple of seconds, the cigarette holder had exited my mouth with the man’s brusque but precise dexterity.

There was something quite strange about it, he said.

I believe, at this point, that his action was not a way to warn me about the dangers of nicotine but an expression of concern about this “ object “ I had in my mouth.

Was my telescopic cigarette holder a kind of spying instrument? ( Come on, I thought, even James Bond is more sophisticated than I ).

 But what else…could it be…since I had been winning…in such a brilliant way?

In retrospect, the only real probable danger during this whole episode, I thought, would have been my cigarette burning the tables’ felt carpet…or even starting a fire!

Yes, I must confess that, while I had been playing and winning, I had perilously kept my cigarette holder more or less in my mouth the whole time, but the distance between my mouth and the cigarette tip made me totally oblivious of the exact precision the ashes had landed.

CONCLUSION:

Next day, I went shopping with my bird-sisters and spent my $300 winnings.

Confessions On A Velvet Cloud ...

If I have given the impression that I was getting bored with my job already during the first months of my flying career, well, I apologize.

In such a fantastic life, being bored was not my option and would never come to that point. But I was determined to accept whatever came along and on any brutal awakening I would meet…there was only one issue left for me: get out and… in a hurry!

I was an Airline Hostess, serving people like a waitress, but when the dessert of the meal came and it was time to thank you for your presence, for choosing TWA and say good bye, I would have landed  in another country on Earth, allowing myself to live fully my private adventures.

To explore the exotic hippy bazaars in Kensington London, the Louis Vuitton shop on the Champs-Elysées in Paris, my beautification at Eve Of Roma Beauty Institute in Rome, the shopping of fantastic hand-made shoes in Spain, even travelling alone on the ferry in Hong-Kong from Kowloon where my 5ft2 height went proudly above all Chinese heads…!

Who wouldn’t appreciate the positive sides …this incredible opportunity to meet people from all over the world and not be touched by the beauty of it all?

So when an ugly situation appeared during the routine of my work, I would listen, nod, smile, sympathise or agree with absolutely everything a passenger wanted to share with me, although with lots of modifications.

There are legitimate claims, yes. I would fix those instantly. But if it went from one remark to another, all negative, and from the same person, well, I couldn’t just let go.

I wouldn’t accept those in the long run because they were dangerously contagious.

I have read the words written by other female birds, and their confidences about unruly passengers and how they handled them, but these foul truths which surfaced didn’t fit my personality.

I strongly rejected the idea of spitting in the drink of a difficult passenger. I thought that was utterly primitive and vulgar.  I would hear peeping birds in the background, conspiring frightful scenarios just to relieve the bottled anger, accompanied with the effusive cursing of words I hadn’t yet copied.

I shun away from them…They were teen-ager pranks in my opinion and it wasn’t me.

However my observations showed the differences between a compulsive complaint and a humble or legitimate request. Most claims were never argued or repeated while I worked in the cabin.

Being attentive to the spontaneous burping of discontent and reacting instantly to it, I would calm the spirits clamped shut.

Humour did the trick…always, and without demeaning the human outburst, neither for a passenger nor for the quality of my services. This is the best way to make a growing ball of annoyance disappear into thin cabin air!

A win-win customer service was at its best.  

We understand each other.

We respect each other.

But we do not accept bitching about the…impossible!

                    One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth doing

                    is what we do for others.

                                                   -  LEWIS CAROL -