Realities Of Life In The Air ...

In training, we learned a lot.

About the aircrafts, the cabin, the service and most important ...how to act in an emergency. From ditching at sea to crash on land…to the procedures of extinguishing a fire on-board to other unusual and dramatic situations, and always how to handle the human factor, our passengers on the day real danger would face us.

Therefore our training made us understand that, in case of any emergency, the most important decisive action was to get as many passengers as possible and, in record time,  out of the aircraft…!

We were never given the basics of the real world, regarding the passenger’s " psyche "...

Nor were we introduced to crisis psychology after a dramatic accident, nor into what I thought was even worse: the simple “ethics “of customer service in plain and normal situations.

How do we do that?

How do we forbid ourselves to treat a whole bunch of people like a pack of vulgar wolves and forget the individuality, the differences in each of them?

How much room do we have, by the way, considering the shortness of time?

We all know that any human, taken out of his/her usual homely environment, loses some vital rational cells in the brain, and allows a whole range of unfamiliar or hostile behaviours to blow out!

Whether they are aware of it remains to be seen.

For us, no matter how much we had or didn’t receive, we were also human, but additionally, what we understood about the job of Airline Hostess is the lessons that were hammered into us, day after day, by our professional instructors!

We were taught to believe we were superior humans, well bred, polished and proud TWA representatives for the whole world to watch and admire.

I could swear that this was what we were led to think. This made us so attractive.

We would lead the pack!

I was young and the ambition to prove to my supervisors that I was indeed well-fitted for the job was the only drive I felt…at first, and that was not difficult for me.

My upbringing, sophisticated and elegant, was a reflection of the strict discipline imposed by my French peers.

Not only from the catholic nuns…but also and primarily by my mother, the matriarch of the mansion. She taught me to never answer back, not matter how angry or unfair or frustrated I would feel inside.

Therefore it wasn’t difficult for me, in the beginning and no matter how hard I worked, to just assume and swallow. At first I was so keen to do a very good job, make my employer proud of me.

But, I didn’t take too many flights to figure that one out:

How long would I last, behaving like the perfect attendant who just smiled and nodded each time a nasty remark from an unsatisfied or obnoxious passenger was thrown my way?

When the service became a boring routine?

I was getting tired of being the “good girl “. The put-on was unbearable. The search for dynamism, excitement and the mere exploration into the adventurous world was leading me...

All I needed now was the Green Light!